On September 12,  Internet rights activists gathered in Downtown San Francisco to welcome FCC Chair Ajit Pai to the Bay Area and tell him to stop handing the Internet over to corporations and preserve net neutrality.

Here’s what happened.

It all began when MA’s director got an early notice of Ajit Pai’s speaking appearance at a panel hosted by Lincoln Networks. Although time was short, she couldn’t imagine letting the FCC Chair get in and out of San Francisco without hearing about the Bay Area’s anger at his attempt to scuttle Open Internet protections.

A huge coalition of organizations answered the call and threw down to pull together a spirited rally on short notice. In the end, 13 organizations co-sponsored and we live streamed the rally (see above). The full list of groups: Media Alliance, Tech Workers Coalition, Credo Action, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press Action Fund, Center for Media Justice, Greenlining Institute, 18 Million Rising, Presente, TURN, Color of Change, ACLU of Northern California, and Courage Campaign.

Speakers included Cayden Mak of 18 Million Rising, James Rucker of Color of Change, Shahid Buttar of EFF, Tracy Rosenberg of Media Alliance, Brandy Doyle from Credo Action, Erin Shields from Center for Media Justice, Mark Toney from TURN and Paul Goodman from Greenlining. Our indefatigable MC was Judy Tuan from the Tech Workers Coalition.

After gathering in a nearby plaza, we listened to the speakers, enjoyed some music, handed out flyers to enthusiastic passersby and unveiled our present for Chairman Pai – a replica of his peanut butter cup coffee mug (much parodied on late night television) filled to the brim with comments, and then marched the mug to the panel where Lincoln Networks took our mug for the Chairman and we chanted loud enough to make sure they could hear us inside the building,

Net Neutrality Informational Handout

Enjoy the photos below.