This web site reflects the views of college and high school youth and interested adult activists about current issues not seen in mainstream media.
America's Digital Divide: A Fact of Life For Tens of Millions
by InternetForEveryone.org
Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and other telco giants have spent mad public relations money spreading the myth that the digital divide is a thing of the past. But redlining of and denial of service to poor and minority communities have been a core feature of the business models of the cable industry since its start decades ago, and of the phone companies for more than a century. In the 21st century, cheap available broadband internet is as necessary to economic development as paved streets and roads. Communitgies without it will become or remain economic, educational, business and social backwaters.
Don't stop here. Explore the links below, which trace the stories, in print and video, of five instances in which the digital divide affects access to careers and employment, to health care, to the basic rights of citizenship and humanity we should all be able to take for granted.
TVA sends spilled coal ash to impoverished black communities in Georgia and Alabama
The Tennessee Valley Authority has begun shipping toxic coal ash from the massive spill that occurred last December at its Kingston power plant in east Tennessee's Roane County to landfills in the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama as part of a test to determine a final resting place for the waste.
The counties where the ash is going have large black populations and high poverty rates, raising questions about environmental justice.
The disposal decision came just days before the federal Environmental Protection Agency announced it was stepping in to oversee cleanup of the disaster, which released some 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into a nearby community and a branch of the Emory River. Pollutants in the ash include arsenic, lead and cancer-causing combustion byproducts known as PAHs, as well as radioactive elements that occur naturally in coal and concentrate in the ash.
Why Low-Power FM Radio Is Important to Your Community
In this 2007 interview, Bill Moyers explains what Low Power FM Radio is. Although the legislation referred to was in a previous Congress, the information is still entirely relevant. The Low Power FM legislation in the current congress, has an excellent chance of passage, and will be the final enabling act for the establishment of thousands of low power FM radio stations in urban and rural areas throughout the country.
What's at stake here is whether local people are going to have access to local information on what's happening in their neighborhoods.
Is Junk Media Making You Sick?
What is the absence of news and journalism in media doing to us? Nothing good, according to this video from StopBigMedia.Org,
From Broadcast to Broadband: Robert McChesney, Malakia Cyril, Tim Wu at the 2008 Natl Conf for Media Reform
We Stand at a crossroads in the history of the media reform movement, a moment when traditional media are in disarray, and a new form of communications and organizing - more grassroots and decentralized - is on the rise. The Internet is upsetting conventional wisdom about "mass media" and changing media power in way never before imagined. But change also raises new threats. Will an open internet succumb to the same companies that control traditional media? The new challenge for media reformers is to organize around a new set of policies and ideas that will
Davey D Interviews Somali-Born Rapper Knaan, part 1: The Truth About Somalia's So-Called Pirates
What the Western news media call "pirates" off the Somali coast, locals there call the Coast Guard, explains Somali-born rapper Knaan.
Somalia has been without a central government for two decades, thanks to a prolonged US, European and Ethiopian intervention in that country's affairs. The US will not permit establishment of a government that does not grant rights to the country's oil and resources to the West, and people won't stand for it. While there is no central government, and no law enforcement off Somalia's coast, Knaan says, Western fleets have cleaned out Somalia's fisheries and dumped millions of tons of toxic and radioactive wastes in its waters. Who are the real pirates here?
Davey D Interviews Somali-Born Rapper Knaan, part 2
In the second part of this Davey D interview, Knaan shows what he really has, and discusses the intersections of music, media and culture.
produced by Free Press, the national not for profit media democracy organization. tracking the latest developments in the struggle for a fair and just media. 