Printed courtesy of Poor News Network and authors Guillermo Gonzalez and Gloria Esteva
I am the co-teacher of the Voces program and a migrant scholar myself and as I heard Gloria speak I realized that her words and the fact that we were even there was the actualization of what POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork(PNN) along with other individuals and organizations were fighting for through testimonies in the public comment portion of the meeting of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on net neutrality at Stanford University last Thursday. Gloria’s words resonated the powerful voice of migrant raza communities and other poverty scholars that otherwise would not be represented at this meeting.
A tour bus that was commissioned by Media Alliance to transport a cross section of folks including several poverty, race, disability and migrant scholars from POOR Magazine/PNN, First Voice Apprenticeship program, Oasis High School, Center for Media Justice and KPFA arrived at Stanford and got off the bus only to be greeted with a somewhat unwelcoming aura of academic entitlement generated by the faces of the Stanford kids walking by and wondering what in the world people that looked like us were doing on their campus. Maybe I was just being paranoid, maybe I just get uncomfortable when there is a noticeable class difference, or maybe it was the long bus ride that just had me feeling over-suspicious. We all gathered around just outside the auditorium where the hearing was being held for a group photo when we were suddenly aggressively and rudely approached by a lady in a suit.
“There will be no signs or banners inside! There were rumors about some of you people were pulling out banners from your bags. Just know that if we see you with banners inside you will be thrown out!” Yes, it was obvious, our people were not wanted there. But just in PNN fashion, we brushed off the belittling remarks and glares of the suits, and proceeded to carry out our mission.
After all of our comments were videotaped by Palo Alto Public Broadcasting, the group of over twenty of us made our way inside. As the instructor/language facilitator for the Voces de immigrantes en resistencia program, I was instructed by POOR Magazine co-editor (and one of POOR Magazine’s lead poverty scholars in residence) Tiny a.k.a Lisa Gray Garcia to translate as much of the hearing as possible. So, I took a seat amongst Gloria, Patricia, Angela and Teresa, (the powerful women that make up the core group of poverty and migrant scholars of the Voces program) and prepared to translate the gist of the conversation between the panel of experts speaking on the issue of net neutrality on stage… Or so I thought. The experts on stage were going on long, technological savvy rants that even I needed translation for. So I tried to convey what I understood from the panel, which was very little. Maybe it was that I was not as computer savvy as I thought I was, but all this talk of electronic internet frequencies made me feel like an uneducated field worker at a technology conference. Thoughts and feelings of inferiority ran through my spine, supplemented by the feeling that everyone was looking at us and thinking, “They’re in the wrong place.”
Wasn’t this conference going to be about freedom of speech? Why are they making it all about technology when the real issue is going unrepresented? Should I change my testimony to make it relevant to the issue of technology that these people are talking about? I thought I was the only one having these feelings. I walked outside to get a breath of fresh air as I was approached by Tiny. She told me what I needed to hear. She said to me that these people were intentionally trying to make us feel inferior, they were intentionally trying to trip us out with all this technology mumbo jumbo to make us think that this hearing wasn’t really about freedom of speech.
Finally after hours of “experts” talking about the future of the internet, the public comment portion of the hearing began. Speaker after speaker, the issue of freedom of speech was mentioned more and more, and the tone of protest began to grow amongst the speakers. The public was speaking, and the message was clear. In the first queue of speakers Tiny came up to the mike, “I am standing here in honor of all the poor mamaz, youth, adults and elders of color locally and globally who are not at this hearing much-less getting internet access at all,” Tiny went on to remind us who was Not in the room and how this new infringement on our access would take us even further into the very real digital divide.
The underlying action that was trying to be committed by Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T was criminal. The “pay to play” concept that was being proposed by the big telecoms was reserving the right to unfairly tax the internet and deny users the access to a neutral internet state, one where no entity could dictate to the public what we can and can’t log onto. The events preceding this meeting were the unconstitutional actions taken by Comcast to deliberately block information being emailed to users from organizations they seemingly felt to be “unethical.”
The reason for the meeting: to let the FCC figure out what they should do about this. As Joy from KPFA reminded the members present from the FCC, their duty is to serve the people, not the conglomerates of corporations who are trying to turn the internet into yet another cash cow. Aren’t these big companies making enough money off of the users of the internet? Aren’t they content knowing that the United States’ internet is ranked sixteenth in the world and yet is one of the most expensive? The big internet providers of this country’s internet are overcharging us for slow internet that is faster, and in some cases even free in other countries.
Gloria’s name was announced by the moderator and she was up next to speak, “We at Poor News Network/PNN publish articles written by the Voces de immigrantes en resistencia on the internet, we also work with KPFA El Tecolote, The SF Bayview, and other sources of published media around the bay. I know you’re not really interested in that, but, I am here to say, that we have a right to be informed. We have a right to any and all information published on the net. The information that PNN, and other organizations like us, who are trying to spread the truth, is published on the net. We, the people at Poor News Network have the right to be heard.”
Her voice captivated everyone’s attention in the audience. As she spoke and I translated, I noticed that every pair of the FCC representatives’ eyes were focused on this strong, immigrant woman’s presence. And how could they not be completely captivated?
As the one minute time limit bell rang the whole audience rose up with their voices and demanded that Gloria be allowed to finish, “I just want to say, that although we are at the lowest link of our economy and our society, we still have the right to be informed. Because even though we don’t make enough money with our meager jobs to pay the internet fees and the costs of computers, our truth should still be heard, and our truth is asking the scientists and all the righteous people of this world, why it is that poor people exist? Our answers are not what the books tell us, but the truth that we publish at POOR Magazine. We are working people, that are contributing to the economic prosperity of this country and we have a right to be heard!”
Gloria spoke with a passion that was almost non-existent at this hearing. A passion fueled by the constant oppression of poverty and injustice that this woman lives through everyday of her life. She spoke from the heart, she spoke with the conviction of revolution and distress that all the staff at POOR Magazine and PoorNewsNetwork strive to express and educate our readers about.