Day of Out(r)age

Day of Out(r)age

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On May 24th many cities around the country decided to show their outrage to the greedy telecoms such as AT&T, Verizon, Bell South and Qwest. These companies are spending $1million dollars a week to buy votes in congress for their deregulatory legislation known as the COPE bill. COPE, which stands for Communications Opportunity Protection and Enchancement claims to offer more choices and more competion, but will in fact endager Public Access centers around the country. Public Educational and Government Channels around the nation - known as PEG - receive their money from negotiations with the city and cable companies. These negotiations are known as a franchise agreement. These franchise agreements occur on a local level and what Verizon and these other telcos are trying to do - is get rid of the local franchises and have one big national franchise; thus taking away local control. It's also like saying that Manhattan, Kansas has the same needs as Manhattan, New York - we all know that's just not the case. COPE also threaten to red-lin media services in low income, rural and minority communites. What's redline? That means that telcos can cherry pick which communities they will provide service to; therefore, communities they deem unprofitable will not get service. Local cities have expressed their opposition to this bill - now it's time for the public to stop this phone company backed legislation - and demand accountability to local communites and the public interest. For more information please go to http://saveaccess.org Thanks to Jen Wager for editing this movie. This is a Spanish vlog - the English one will uploaded sometime in the next few days.