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Haiku Hijinks—More Net Neutrality Fun

Brilliant action plan / Net Neutrality haikus / Flood the FCC

July 1, 2014 (originally published on Storify)

Who says comments on Federal Communications Commission policy can't be entertaining? The Center for Media Justice has launched an #InternetHaiku campaign to encourage poets, visual artists, musicians and cultural organizers to make their voices heard in support of Net Neutrality. After all, our open Internet is a basic utility independent artists need to make a living. Hakim Bellamy, Sham-e-Ali Nayem, Emmanuel Ortiz and others kicked off the campaign.

Now a range of folks are chiming in with messages of their own. This campaign is a brilliant way to gather public comments on equity, freedom, access to information and all the other aspects of our Internet that are currently at risk. Like the Internet itself (at least for now), #InternetHaiku is an open platform for diverse points of view.

The movement to protect our Internet got a boisterous boost earlier this month when a John Oliver video helped explain what's at stake in the Net Neutrality issue. The video received nearly 4 million views and has rallied thousands of comments on the FCC web site--now at 125,000 submissions and counting.

Every public comment is important because individuals have to speak in enormous numbers just to be heard over the noise a few Big Telecom companies make. AT&T, Comcast and other giants spend millions on campaign contributions and lobbyists, and policy makers quickly get the message: support our corporate interests if you want to keep your job. In this case, those interests are directly opposed to the common good. If Big Telecom's influence on the FCC destroys Net Neutrality, these companies stand to make more than their already-inconceivable profits while ordinary users, small businesses, students, independent artists and innovating entrepreneurs are shut out of the stream of possibilities available on our Internet today.

So polish up your haiku now! Tweet it with the hashtag #InternetHaiku or email it to steven@mediajustice.org and the Center for Media Justice will send it to the FCC. Take an extra step and comment directly. Let's create a roar that drowns out the corporate bullhorns and saves our Internet for everyone.

—written by Keneta Anderson for Quixote Foundation

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