About the Voices Coalition

Structural and institutional racism have historically shaped our nation’s media and communications system. These dynamics have prevented people of color from leading newsrooms, owning broadcast outlets, and telling their own stories. As a result, people of color are often portrayed using thoughtless stereotypes and tropes, fueling the cycle of racial oppression.

Fed up with this problematic landscape, a group of activists launched Latinos for Internet Freedom in 2010, followed by Black Voices for Internet Freedom in 2011. The coalitions merged in 2013 to form a multiracial alliance. Today, the organizational partners within Voices for Internet Freedom are Center for Media Justice, Color of Change, Free Press and the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

What We Do

It is critical that communities access and control their own images, stories and identities in the digital age. Protecting the digital rights of communities of color is central to the struggle for racial justice. The core issues that the Voices Coalition focuses on are:

• Net Neutrality — Net neutrality protects the public’s right to speak freely and assemble online without having Web sites and content slowed down, discriminated against or blocked by internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.
• Affordable Broadband Access — Too many families of color can’t afford the high-cost of broadband services. And the home broadband adoption divide exists between Black and Latino households and White households regardless of various levels of economic income. We advocate for increasing broadband adoption within communities by addressing the systemic racism that is responsible for the digital divide.
• Preventing Mass Surveillance Online — The Voices Coalition stands against the mass surveillance and targeting of communities of color by the government, local law enforcement and corporations with technologies like fake cell phone towers (stingrays), facial recognition technologies and body-worn cameras, all of which are used to control and communities of color.