| Hi there,
I was petrified.
The university president had made it clear he would do nothing to help solve the financial crisis facing teaching assistants, but it was my turn to step up to the mic and speak my truth. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pant legs, did my best to swallow the lump in my throat and then, as soon as I started talking, the anxiety just melted away. It was invigorating. And when I finished talking, he was the one who tripped over his words.
I tell this story of my experience “bird-dogging”1 my university president because, during the month of August, you have the opportunity to do the same thing with your member of Congress on Net Neutrality.
Sign up as a Net Neutrality bird-dogger and we’ll help you show up and ask your rep tough questions about the Net Neutrality CRA.
With the passage of the Senate CRA back in May, the House has until the next Congress is sworn in in early 2019 to pass its own version and restore the Net Neutrality rules. But as we’ve said before, Paul Ryan and the other House leaders will never side with people of color, religious minorities and other marginalized voices over lobbyists from AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
That’s why we need a majority of House members to sign the discharge petition and force a full vote on the CRA. We’re really close — with 177 members signed on, we need just 41 more reps to open their eyes to how important this issue is to their constituents.
The August congressional recess is the perfect time to help them see through the fog of ISP lobbying.
Join Free Press Action Fund members across the country who will be showing up at town halls, county fairs and other public events to get members of Congress on the record about the CRA.
Stepping up to that mic or coming face to face with a powerful decision maker seems scary, I know. But I promise you that it’s an empowering political experience and makes an enormous impact.
No one thought our scrappy group of underpaid, underappreciated teaching assistants would be able to take on our university president and win but ultimately, we did win. No one thought grassroots activism would push the Senate to pass the CRA but that’s exactly what happened.
Now we have the opportunity to once again prove the skeptics wrong by passing the CRA in the House. But to do that we need to take advantage of every opportunity to show every House member that failing to support the CRA is a political liability of the first order.
Help put your rep on the record as a supporter of the free and open internet — or as an anti-democratic mouthpiece for Team Cable.
Thanks for all that you do—
Adam, Heather, Dutch and the rest of the Free Press Action Fund team
freepress.net
P.S. We need to make sure that members of Congress returning home for the August recess are feeling the heat on Net Neutrality. Sign up to bird-dog your member of Congress today!
1. Bird-dogging is a longstanding political tactic that involves shadowing a decision-maker and asking them tough questions in a public setting. |
