|
|
Chicagoans Protest AT&T For Bringing "Tiers", Privacy, Corruption
| May 24, 2006 |
| Posted by Mitchell | Entry 438 |
More than 30 people attended the "AT&T: Bringing Us To Tiers" protest near the AT&T/SBC building (Congress and Federal) in downtown Chicago, organized by the media activist group Chicago Media Action.
Attendees unfurled two fifteen-foot banners on opposite ends of Chicago's Congress Parkway, a six-lane freeway exchange through downtown Chicago. Each banner read "STOP AT&T from ruining the internet", with the STOP resembling a literal stop sign, appropriate given the proximity to the flows of rush-hour traffic. The banners also featured the websites of savetheinternet.com and saveaccess.org.
The protest was one of a series of protests convened across the country in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Newark, as part of a grassroots-organized day of protest on May 24 entitled the National Day of Outrage.
The "tiers" in the action referred to a proposed "tiered" internet, which AT&T has and continues to advocate. AT&T and other telecom companies propose turning the reasonably free and open internet into a forced separate-and-unequal internet where general speed and access would be markedly reduced in favor of a drastic "tollroad" approach. The key point in this struggle is the internet's first amendment -- the guarantee of non-discrimination of internet content, which some call "network neutrality", which AT&T and other companies have lobbied to abolish.
Related legislation under consideration in Congress would eliminate community access television and all local control of telephone and cable TV franchising. This would also likely escalate discriminatory redlining by phone and cable corporations against low-income households and communities. AT&T is suing six Chicago suburbs over public rights-of-way involving AT&T's proposed video-by-phoneline service, called Project Lightspeed.
These issues are also punctuated by a growing list of scandals involving corporate and government corruption, dangerous mergers, and complicity with illegal NSA domestic spying. On the issue of NSA surveillance, six noted Chicagoans (including Studs Terkel) filed suit against AT&T for presumed privacy violations the day before the National Day of Outrage.
The event drew corporate cameras from Chicago's ABC and NBC television affiliates, as did reporters from Chicago's main 24-hour newsradio station (a CBS affiliate). The event also drew coverage from Chicago Indymedia (radio and video) and CAN TV, Chicago's main public access affiliate.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this
website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media
Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire
membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action
as an organization.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
