Serious Political Momentum Is Happening on the Net Neutrality Front

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is clinging to his plan to allow rampant discrimination online the way Linus clings to his blanket. You know it’s time for both of them to let go, but they aren’t yet ready to step up and heed the call.

There’s still time to push the FCC to do the right thing and protect real Net Neutrality. And in the meantime there are lots of politicians all over the country who are taking up the cause.

Here’s what’s happened in just the last week:

  • The city council in Fayetteville, Ark., unanimously passed a resolution in support of Net Neutrality.
  • San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray wrote an Op-Ed celebrating everything an open Internet gives us: “Our residents — different creeds, colors and socioeconomic backgrounds — rely on the Internet for communication, business, entertainment, civic engagement and even public safety.”
  • The New York City Council called on the New York State Public Service Commission to expand access to affordable broadband and close the digital divide. In testimony on the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, the Council also spoke of the critical need to protect Net Neutrality.
  • Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer called on the FCC to reclassify Internet service providers as common carriers and pass strong Net Neutrality rules.
  • The Rhode Island Statehouse passed a resolution supporting “strong Net Neutrality regulations that mandate that broadband providers not block, discriminate against or interfere with the lawful content, applications and services that these broadband networks carry.”

And this weekend, the U.S. Conference of Mayors will consider a Net Neutrality resolution sponsored by Mayors Lee and Murray and the mayors of 10 other cities, including Hartford, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., and Tucson. If the resolution passes, it could send another strong signal to the FCC.

You can send your own message to the FCC: Click here to submit your comments to the agency. The FCC’s been inundated with pro-Net Neutrality comments from people all over the country — and its site was so overloaded the day after HBO’s John Oliver tore into the Commission that it crashed.

Let’s keep it up.