And here's what I sent my House Rep. who, to my surprise and disappointment, voted AGAINST net neutrality . . . maybe y'all can lift a useful phrase or two, esp. of your senator's a Dem:
Dear ____________:
I am writing as one of your constituents to express my shock and profound disappointment that you did not vote to protect internet neutrality.
Perhaps you are unaware of the many thousands of Democratic supporters out there who not only rely on the internet as a major source of the real news but who also use the internet to communicate with one another and to work for progressive causes.
In my own case, for example, following the 2004 elections, I started getting much of my most important news through www.democraticunderground.com <
http://www.democraticunderground.com> . It is there that I find out about most of the stories I consider to be of greatest importance but that are either ignored or misinterpreted by the corporate media. Indeed, I fear many stories wouldn't make it into the corporate media at all were it not for people like me who are actively using the internet to track and even investigate these stories.
I'm talking about stories like the Downing Street Memo, the outing of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings, Abu Ghraib, rendition, NSA spying, government propaganda pieces presented as "news", the vast sums disappearing into the pockets of private contractors in connection with the Iraq war and otherwise, etc. etc.
After Katrina, I personally invested hundreds of hours researching, preserving, and cataloguing reports relating to the bungling of relief efforts, collecting information from all sources available on the internet and helping to make a website where these reports could be preserved and made freely available, since many of them were potentially embarrassing to FEMA or other authorities and, as we've learned, even official governmental reports have a way of"disappearing" soon after their significance is discovered.
I shudder to think how much more difficult and/or expensive that work might have been had AT&T been allowed to interfere with or charge me extra for the access I needed.
I understand Bob Kerry of the New York Times is now stating in the Times that Kerry would have won Ohio in 2004 but for the election fraud that took place there. Do not suppose for one moment that that story would be making it into the Times now were it not for literally hundreds of thousands of hours of effort by volunteers not only on the ground but also working via the internet.
Through websites and in response to other internet efforts, I, who gave barely a dime to any political campaign or cause in my previous 30-odd adult years, have during the past year given nearly $1,000 in support of progressive causes and candidates (including your colleague, Representative Conyers).
Allowing big telecoms or others to discriminate financially or to otherwise control or interfere in any way with the currently free uses of the internet by users or providers can only damage these and other important activities among citizens, including but not limited to your Democratic base.
I hope you will reconsider your position on this matter, in case another opportunity to take action arises.
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