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Internet For the 1 Percent: New FCC Rules Strike Down Net Neutrality, Opening Fast Lanes for Fees
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Federal regulators have unveiled new rules that would effectively abandon net neutrality, the concept of a free and open Internet. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission would allow Internet providers like Verizon or Comcast to charge media companies like Netflix or Amazon extra fees in order to receive preferential treatment, such as faster speeds for their content. Under the FCC’s proposal, broadband providers would have to disclose the terms they offer for the more rapid lanes and would be required to act in what it called a, quote, "commercially reasonable manner."
AMY GOODMAN: Media reform groups like Free Press denounced the new rules, saying, quote, "Giving the green light to pay-for-priority schemes will be a disaster for startups, nonprofits and everyday Internet users who cannot afford these unnecessary tolls. These users will all be pushed onto the Internet dirt road, while deep pocketed Internet companies enjoy the benefits of the newly created fast lanes," Free Press said. In fact, this statement echoes what then-Senator Barack Obama said about net neutrality in 2007, when it was a key part of his campaign platform in the 2008 presidential election.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality, because once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out, and we all lose. The Internet is perhaps the most open network in history, and we have to keep it that way.
AMY GOODMAN: That was November 2007.
Well, if the FCC approves the draft rules on net neutrality next month, it will then accept public comments and issue final regulations by the end of the summer.
For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by the longest-serving member of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Copps. He retired in 2012. He’s now advising the Media and Democracy Reform program. And here in New York, Astra Taylor is with us, author of the new book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Juan, you also wrote your column in the New York Daily News, headlined "FCC Flip-Flop Could Turn the Internet into the Superhighway of the Rich."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, and actually, I called it maybe the Bo Jackson Turnpike, because when President Obama nominated the current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, to take over the FCC, he referred to him as the "Bo Jackson of telecom," by referring to—Bo Jackson was an athlete who was an all-star in both football and baseball and was an all-star in both of those sports. And Wheeler is the only person ever inducted into both the cable industry hall of fame and the telecom hall of fame, because he was a lobbyist for both of those industries before he became the FCC chairman. And so it’s under Wheeler now, apparently, that the FCC is moving in this direction to create this superhighway for those who can pay on the Internet.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Michael Copps, you’re the longest-serving member in the FCC. You retired in 2012. Why do you see this ruling as a threat to equality on the Internet?
MICHAEL COPPS: Well, this is all about making sure that the Internet, which is the most transformative communications technology in all of history, really serves the people and consumers, and we are playing very fast and very loose with it right now and turning it into the playground of the few and turning it over to big companies, consolidated companies, that are able to exact tolls for content producers and their friends and the people who can afford to pay for those fast lanes. So, you know, they may say NBC News, with all of glitzy infotainment, or the other networks, the newsless news over here, they get the fast lanes; Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, well, they can get the slow lanes over there. What you’re really seeing here is kind of a transformation of the Internet where 1 percent get the fast lanes and the 99 percent get the slow lanes. That’s not what the potential and the promise of the Internet was. This was to be our town square of democracy. This was to be our opportunity-creating technology to open doors to a more profitable future. And to shackle it now and to not have clear rules of the road going ahead to make sure that we all have access and that we’re not being ripped off and that these companies aren’t just managing scarcity for their own benefit, if we let that happen, we have really undercut the potential of this transformative technology. This has to be stopped.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Commissioner Copps, it’s amazing that this is occurring under President Obama, who himself admits that the Internet played a great role in his being able to cobble together the coalition that brought him to power in the White House, and who insisted that he would defend net neutrality.
MICHAEL COPPS: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Here’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler responding to concerns about the proposed rules and saying that "There is no 'turnaround in policy.' The same rules will apply to all Internet content. As with the original Open Internet rules, and consistent with the court’s decision, behavior that harms consumers or competition will not be permitted." That’s what Wheeler said. And he later wrote on a blog post titled "Setting the Record Straight" about the proposed changes, "That," quote, "all ISPs must transparently disclose to their subscribers and users all relevant information as to the policies that govern their network;" and "That no legal content may be blocked; and That ISPs may not act in a commercially unreasonable manner to harm the Internet, including favoring the traffic from an affiliated entity." That’s what Wheeler says. What’s your perspective on this?
MICHAEL COPPS: They’re going about this in entirely the wrong way, and the courts have even told them that. The FCC a couple of years ago passed some rather pallid network neutrality rules. I didn’t think they really got the job done, but the big companies took them to court anyhow. Right now—and the court threw them out, so we have no rules right this minute. Anybody can block content, slow down, speed up, favor who they want to favor and all the rest. The only way to get around that is to impose that part of the law that recognizes broadband as a telecommunications service. The court literally told the FCC, if you want to do this open Internet and Internet freedom, you should have classified broadband this way in the first place. But back in the early part of the century, under Chairman Powell and Chairman Martin, the commission got this silly idea, the majority, that they would call broadband something else, put it in another part of the law where there was no authority, and that’s where Chairman Genachowski resided, the rules that got thrown out, and that’s where Tom Wheeler right now is putting—pinning his hopes for network neutrality. And it’s not going to work, because the authority is not there.
AMY GOODMAN: Financial analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities told CNBC why Internet service providers want to charge extra fees from content distributors like Netflix.
MICHAEL PACHTER: I’m certain that every Internet service provider ultimately is going to charge, because they can. I think that the ISPs view their proprietary networks the way that, you know, crude pipelines view their transportation as a valuable asset. It’s capital-intensive, and I think that they believe that they should be able to charge people to put stuff through their pipelines.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Michael Pachte of Wedbush Securities. Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, respond.
ASTRA TAYLOR: Well, I think, first off, every time we refer to Wheeler, we should call him "former cable lobbyist Tom Wheeler" instead of dignifying him just by calling him the commissioner. Yeah, there is a sense that this is inevitable. I mean, I’ve seen in The Wall Street Journal, it’s "people are willing to pay; that’s the model we’re going to have." But we need to understand, you know, what’s driving this. This is not something that’s happening because consumers are demanding a faster lane on the Internet, because if you have a faster lane, you’re slowing down everything else. Cable companies, they make 95 percent profits on broadband already. They’re lobbying for these changes. Comcast’s lobbying budget went up from half a million to $20 million in 2011, so in the span of 10 years. And this is not something that is inevitable or necessarily going to benefit anyone except the incumbent players. So I think we’re—I think that we also need to think about how we describe this. "Net neutrality" is kind of such a dull term. I’ve seen many of my friends commenting online: "I’m trying to care about this issue." You know—
AMY GOODMAN: Right. What exactly does it mean, "network neutrality"?
ASTRA TAYLOR: It basically means that all data, all bits, should be treated equally. So, we had common carriage obligations for the telephone lines, where telephone land lines could not discriminate. They couldn’t deny anyone service. They had to serve all. But when broadband was reclassified, like Michael Copps just described, in 2005, ISPs went from being a telecommunications service to an information provider, and then they were—they don’t have the same common carriage obligations. So we need to reclassify and go back and acknowledge that in fact these are telecommunications services. So—but I feel like there’s something in the way we’re framing this, that we need to find a new term to talk about what it is they’re trying to do to the net. And some people have said a "payola Internet," "broadband discrimination," but something to get people to see what this change means and to care about it a bit more.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Commissioner Copps, as Astra was saying, that there are some people saying this is a done deal already. But you recall those phrases being used more than 10 years ago, when there was an attempt to consolidate media ownership.
MICHAEL COPPS: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And everyone was saying that was a done deal, too.
MICHAEL COPPS: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But then you went out into the heartland of America and began holding hearings that changed, really, the nature of the discussion. Do you think it’s time for something like that again?
MICHAEL COPPS: It is imperative. This is a real inflection point for the future of the Internet. The decisions that are going to be made by the FCC this year with regard to Internet freedom and with regard to further consolidation, like this ridiculous Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, are going to determine, almost, the future of the Internet for a generation. So, the future is now for the Internet.
And you are absolutely correct: The only way we’re going to put a stop to going down this road is citizen action. That happened in 2003 when Chairman Powell was trying to change the media ownership caps at the commission so that fewer and fewer behemoths could own more and more, gobble up more and more independent stations around the country. And there was a grassroots movement at that time, led by Free Press and Common Cause and others, concerned senators and congressmen. And I went out, and Commissioner Adelstein went out around the country. Three million people, thereupon, wrote to the Federal Communications Commission and Congress saying, "We don’t like these rules." Meantime, Powell had pushed them through with this majority at the commission. But you know what happened then, after those three million people spoke, was that the Senate voted twice, the U.S. Senate, to overturn those rules; the House expressed its displeasure; and then the courts sent those back to the commission saying they were inadequate. That’s what we need to do again right now.
And when I used to talk about media consolidation on—in radio and television, I think a lot of folks thought, well, the Internet is somehow exempt from that: It’s so dynamic that it’s exempt from what happened to radio and television and cable with all of the consolidation and gatekeeper control. Now people are beginning to realize: Wait a minute, this is happening to this wonderful new transformative technology, too. We can’t afford to let it go down that same road. What a horrible denial of the opportunity-creating potential the Internet it would be to cable-ize it. And, of course, who better to cable-ize the Internet than the biggest cable company in the United States of America, Comcast, as they seek to take over Time Warner Cable and already took over NBCU News.
But yes, you’re exactly right. This change, protecting the Internet, isn’t going to come from the top down. It was bittersweet to hear that quote. That was not the sound of an uncertain trumpet from the president. But fast-forward now five years, and we’re getting this sellout of the Internet and the Internet for the 1 percent. We cannot let that happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, the European Parliament voted to protect the neutrality of Internet service providers toward websites. Telecom companies will be barred from blocking or slowing down selected services. The measure drew opposition from the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association. Its chairman, Luigi Gambardella, argued the move would restrict the number of services available to European customers.
LUIGI GAMBARDELLA: We don’t see why we should limit the European Internet and restrict the European consumer to have access to new services. And also, we see that this is very dangerous to start to regulate the Internet, and maybe we will have a regulation of Internet in Europe which will be completely different of the regulation of Internet in the rest of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Astra Taylor?
ASTRA TAYLOR: Well, I mean, there’s doublespeak in there, but he’s right: There might be a completely different regulation of—not necessarily regulation of the Internet, but regulation of access to the Internet in the U.S. compared to Europe, because we might choose this payola model, while the European Union has enshrined net neutrality. We’ve seen Brazil take a big step forward with its Internet Constitution enshrining net neutrality. So we are at this crossroads, where we might be going down one path while the rest of the world has stronger privacy protections, has net neutrality and is able to build on this technology and actualize its potential.
So I think if we’re to kind of change course, we have to recognize some of the factors. Sometimes people compare the fight for net neutrality to SOPA. But I think the power alliances are shifting—
AMY GOODMAN: That was the so-called Stop Online Privacy [sic] Act, that was defeated.
ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes, exactly. And a lot of the big technology firms came on board for that. And I think we’re seeing—
AMY GOODMAN: Piracy.
ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, against SOPA. And we’re seeing them be a little silent on this issue, because some of them have gotten so big in the last few years that they might benefit. They might see a competitive advantage in being able to use a fast lane and see it as a way of squelching competition. So it really is up to civil society right now to comment as much as they can around May 15th, around the time that these proposed rules are announced, and to flood our officials with—you know, make it loud and clear that we’re not the ones asking for this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, when you’re saying about some of the big companies, one of them, Netflix, immediately after the court decision in January that struck down the latest attempt by the FCC to establish open Internet rules, immediately cut a deal with Comcast to begin paying them extra to make sure that their video wasn’t being degraded.
ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, exactly. And that shows you the power that these ISPs are amassing and why we should be so worried. If they can beat up Netflix, then they can beat up the rest of us, right?
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Copps, you compare what’s going on now with Comcast’s attempt to merge with Time Warner. Talk about specifically that, because that’s happening at the same time.
MICHAEL COPPS: Well, this is amazing, and it all started with the big Comcast-NBCU merger a few years ago. And when they came into the commission, and I was there, and told me the dimensions and the extent of that merger, I was just about—breath taken away, because this was not just a cable company merging with another cable company; this was about broadband as well as broadcast, because they’re a huge provider of broadband. It was about old traditional media, and it was about new media, content and distribution. And it was just giving so much power to one specific company. And now they’re taking that footprint that they got by paying all those billions of dollars to buy NBCU, and they’re buying up Time Warner Cable and going to extend that footprint over an even wider swath of the United States of America. And the way I see the business plan, it’s kind of to ration scarcity, to make a profit from the scarcity, data caps, having people pay for faster lanes and slower lanes.
You know, what I really want people to realize is that this isn’t just about speeds and gadgetry and gimmicks. This goes to the heart of small-d democracy. If we’re going to give a company such tremendous power over distribution and content to slow down news, or maybe saying, "We don’t like that advocacy cause or that good government cause over here, so we’re going to—we’re going to block that," then we have taken this tool that could give us a wonderful new town square of democracy paved with broadband bricks and turn it into the same old same old that we have right now. And given the problems this country has right now, we can’t afford to go down that road. We need an informed public. We need open news. We need journalism, that these companies are also limiting.
It’s a sad—it’s a sad story right now. But we do have an opportunity here. With these new rules, people can see that they’re not going to get the job done. We can’t have rules that say, "Well, we’ll look on this at a case-by-case basis over some ambiguous term, 'commercially reasonable.'" We need to say "no blocking, no discriminating, no speeding up, no slowing down," and put it in that part of the law that allows the commission to do it, get it over and done with. Everybody will know what the rules are, and then we can go forward.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, the rules will be actually laid out—we don’t even know exactly what they are—in May and then voted on. Michael Copps, we want to thank you for joining us, former FCC commissioner, retired in 2012. Astra Taylor, we’d like you to stay with us after break so we can talk further about your book, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. And then, it’s the 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair that took place here in New York. As President Johnson came here to inaugurate it, why were 700 people protesting outside? We’ll speak to two of its leaders. Stay with us.
"Utopian Potential of the Internet": Astra Taylor on How to Take Back Power & Culture in Digital Age
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: "The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1" by Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Mangum’s band. Jeff Mangum is the husband of our guest today, Astra Taylor. We continue today to look at equal access to the Internet. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Astra, your book, I think one of the fascinating parts, to me, is you really try to reach out to young people who are—who have been sold a bill of goods about the liberating quality of the Internet and who don’t see some of the dark side of what is happening, because obviously every new technology promises to liberate the human race. It happened, as you mentioned, with the telegraph. It then happened again with early radio. It happened again when cable came around. And now this new communications technology, the Internet, has the same promises. Your concerns about the dark side of what’s happening?
ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, I love that you picked up on that. I really sort of wanted to write something that would influence the younger generation the way that books by Robert McChesney influenced me when I was beginning my path to become an independent media maker, filmmaker and activist. And I think, you know, these technologies have existed long enough to kind of see that the new system is looking a lot like the old, you know, and it actually makes it—I think that people who have grown up with these technologies will have a much more realistic relationship to them, because by the time I grew up, when there’s television, I just took it for what it was. It was, you know, something that was just part of the environment, and all of the sort of romance that it had been imbued with wasn’t there.
But I think it’s important not to get cynical. The utopian potential of the net is real. It’s a remarkable innovation. And it’s true that this sort of many-to-many quality, the fact that it enables us to talk directly with people, it’s very different than the old broadcast model. The problem is the underlying economic conditions haven’t changed. The same old business imperatives, the same old incentives that shaped the old media model and that made it so problematic are still with us. So, the Internet might have disrupted investigative journalism, but it didn’t disrupt advertising, you know, and that’s what I’m trying to—that’s what I’m trying to emphasize.
AMY GOODMAN: You say it’s a rearrangement, not a revolution. Explain.
ASTRA TAYLOR: Right. I mean, so much of the story we tell ourselves is about the revolutionary impact of this new technology. But I think continuity is as important to this story. So there are new winners and new losers. But so, for example, like we were told the old media dinosaurs were going to go extinct. Well, what we’ve seen is they’ve adapted very well. I mean, it’s exactly what Michael Copps is talking about. We have this—these old media companies, NBC, joining with the cable companies, buying up Internet startups, and so there’s this kind of integration, this merging of the new and the old that doesn’t fit into the sort of myth that we were—we’ve been telling ourselves.
AMY GOODMAN: And where does Google, Facebook all fit into this?
ASTRA TAYLOR: Right, well, you know, these companies that could portray themselves as upstarts 10 years ago have now become the biggest companies on Earth. I mean, the market capitalization of Google and Apple, they’re consistently in the top 10 technology companies, or 13 of the biggest—13 of the 30 biggest companies on Earth. Yeah, so they’re—they are the Goliaths of our age. So we have, you know, Hollywood moguls, and we have Silicon Valley tycoons, and we have them collaborating.
And the thing is that the old media model, which, again, was funded by advertising, was a situation where you could turn off your television, and you could opt out. We have a much more sort of pervasive, ubiquitous system right now. And in a way, the old problems have intensified because it’s not—it’s not just something—an ad isn’t just something you are watching, actually; now you’re being watched, you’re being tracked, you’re being monitored. I mean, the dominant business model on the Internet is surveillance. And this is going to create a lot of problems down the road. I think that we need to look ahead and look at the forces that are shaping the development of these tools.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, the same gender and racial and ethnic inequities of the old system are now being replicated in the new system. I want to play a comment from reporter Amanda Hess, who wrote a story in January for Pacific Standard headlined "Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet." She described the dangers women face online and her personal experience with threats from Internet trolls. This is Hess talking to PBS’s To the Contrary.
AMANDA HESS: So, this summer, I was on vacation with some of my friends in Palm Springs, and the first morning that we were there, I got a text message from my friend on the East Coast. It was about 5:30 California time. And I woke up, and she had texted me to say that she’d found a Twitter account that seemed to have been created for the purposes of making threats to me. So I groggily went over to my computer, looked at the account, and it was about seven tweets that were saying things like "I’m going to come to your house and rape you and remove your head," saying that we lived in the same state and that social violence against people like me was really important.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That’s reporter Amanda Hess. One of the chapters in The People’s Platform by our guest, Astra Taylor, is titled "Open Systems and Glass Ceilings: The Disappearing Woman and Life on the Internet."
ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, I talk about the gender dynamics in—when I’m sort of challenging the idea that the Internet is a meritocracy. The idea was that we would all be able to kind of transcend our bodies, our real-world identities, and go be whoever we wanted to be on the Internet, and the best would inevitably rise to the top. So I look at the way that, you know, old hierarchies carry over. And so, one aspect of that is the issue of persistent discrimination online. And it’s harder to measure in a network space, where it seems like, well, you know, if you look over here, there’s a whole lot of women; you know, maybe they just don’t want to participate.
But Amanda Hess did a fantastic job of challenging that myth and telling a personal story that was pretty dark and scary. But she’s not alone. There are so many women in the last few months who have come forward with similar tales of discrimination and harassment. And it’s not just anecdotal. I quote a study in one of the chapters that if you use a female user name online, then you get 25 times the harassing messages of a gender-neutral screen name. And so, you know, we just have to be aware of the way that these, you know, inequalities of the old world have carried over. And it’s a challenging—it’s a real challenging issue to figure out how to remedy, because, you know, who’s in charge? Who’s in charge of enforcing equality or silencing hate speech?
AMY GOODMAN: In this last minute, Astra, I think the power of your book, The People’s Platform, is the taking back power and culture in the digital age, that you don’t give up, that you say there are ways to fight back, not to reinforce the status quo that’s reflected in the old media, actually being transferred over to the new media. hat are the most effective ways?
ASTRA TAYLOR: Oh, there are so many things we have to do. I mean, net neutrality is the foundation, and so joining the fight, joining groups like Demand Progress and Free Press in that struggle. But as I argue in the book, a neutral network is just the beginning, actually, and it doesn’t solve the problems of the old media model, because there’s still centralization, there’s still consolidation, there’s still commercialism. And those are things we have to address head-on. We need to think of an alternative to the advertising model that’s dominant online and find other sustainable ways of funding culture and social media and funding our future.
AMY GOODMAN: Astra Taylor, thanks so much for being with us, author of the new book, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. She’s also a documentary filmmaker, who directed Examined Life: Philosophy is in the Streets and Zizek! about the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek.
This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, it’s the 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair. It took place here in New York in Queens. We’ll speak with two leaders of the protest that took place outside the World’s Fair. Stay with us.
Protesting the 1964 World's Fair: Activists Recall Effort to Highlight Civil Rights, Labor Struggles
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: "It’s a Small World After All" by the Disneyland Chorus. Yes, this is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. A song that many people heard for the same—for the first time at the 1964 World’s Fair. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, events are underway this week in New York to mark the 50th anniversary of that World’s Fair, that, in 1964, when the fair took place in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, it drew 51 million visitors over the span of two years. On April 22nd, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson spoke at the fair’s opening ceremonies.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: This fair represents the most promising of our hopes. It gathers together from 80 countries the achievements of industry, the health of nations, the creations of man. This fair shows us what man at his most creative and constructive is capable of doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, it was 50 years ago that fair-goers flocked to the World’s Fair to get a taste of the wider world and a glimpse of a possible future full of rocketships, superhighways and complex kitchen gadgets. But that year, a very different future was being chiseled out by a devoted group of civil rights activists who used the prominence of the World’s Fair to propel their fight for racial equality into the national consciousness. Their vision for the future involved less spaceships and more integrated schools. They were less interested in the fair’s futuristic exhibits and more concerned with equitable hiring practices on the fair’s grounds. The protesters greeted President Johnson with chants for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Of the 700 who demonstrated, nearly 300 were arrested and carted off to jail.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to looking at this largely untold history. We’re joined by Norman and Velma Hill, longtime civil and labor rights activists. Fifty years ago, they helped organize that nonviolent protest at the New York World’s Fair.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Talk about what the scene was like. You got into the World’s Fair, or you were standing right outside?
VELMA HILL: We got into the World’s Fair. But first let me just thank you for having us here. We’re very happy to be here, and we’re very happy to talk about an event that most people just aren’t aware of now. It was April 22nd, which, by the way, was Norm’s birthday. So we were doing—
AMY GOODMAN: Happy birthday, Norman.
NORMAN HILL: Thank you.
VELMA HILL: We were doing what we did most of the time, which was demonstrating. Now, that was a CORE demonstration. But—
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the Congress of Racial Equality.
VELMA HILL: The Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, under Jim Farmer, because CORE became a very different organization years later. But this was under Jim Farmer right after the Freedom Rides in the South. And we were very concerned. Norm was the program director of CORE, and we were doing many things to bring the—what was going on in the South to the North, because there were always problems in the North.
NORMAN HILL: Yeah, and Velma was East Coast field secretary.
VELMA HILL: Of CORE, yes. We were a couple at CORE. And we had something very interesting happening on that April 22nd. We had what we called extremist groups in CORE who had decided that they agreed with our goals, but they didn’t like our tactics. What they wanted to do was what they called a stall-in. And a stall-in, they had planned to do some very interesting things. They had planned to go onto subways, stop subways from running by pulling—pulling down the—
NORMAN HILL: Emergency.
AMY GOODMAN: The emergency brake?
NORMAN HILL: Yeah, the cord.
VELMA HILL: The emergency brake. They had planned to sit in at the bridges and stop people from going to work. And they had planned to take ravenous rats and to set them loose when President Johnson was going to speak. And we just didn’t think that that was a good idea. We thought that that’s really preventing workers from going to work, who had nothing to do with the World’s Fair. So we planned something at the World’s Fair where we got 700 people from around the country to come in to sit in at pavilions, to say we want the passage of the civil rights bill, and we want to make sure that there are minorities working at the World’s Fair, visibly working, because this world is not a white world. It is a white world and a brown world and a black world. And we wanted to make that statement and make it clear.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Norman Hill, what about the hiring of people in the weeks and months before that at the World’s Fair? Had there been clear problems in the hiring at that point?
NORMAN HILL: Yes, there were. It was clear to us that the workforce was not representative and did not include minorities, especially blacks, at all levels. And so, we felt it was important to dramatize this situation and confront the key decision-makers at the World’s Fair about this problem and to organize a demonstration that would directly confront the World’s Fair and those who were running it. And we did so by assembling a group of demonstrators, as Velma indicated, who sat in at various pavilions of the World’s Fair, including the main entrance, where James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality; Michael Harrington, Democratic Socialist writer and author or The Other America, exposé of poverty in America; Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph’s most outstanding colleague and a master strategist and tactician of the civil rights movement; Ernie Green, assistant secretary of labor under Ray Marshall and President Clinton; and—
VELMA HILL: And before that, one of the Little Rock Nine, yes.
NORMAN HILL: In Little Rock, Arkansas.
VELMA HILL: Yes.
NORMAN HILL: Who endured mob threats, and Eisenhower had to call in the troops to enable them to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957. But we think that the clear focal point in 1964 here in New York City was the World’s Fair and our attempt to demonstrate that the workforce was not representative and inclusive.
VELMA HILL: By the way, one of the things that happened at that World’s Fair demonstration, I think it was the first time that we actually used walkie-talkies. You know, CORE sort of came into the 20th century with walkie-talkies. They were very big, nothing like you would see now. And we had about 15 CORE staffers who were placed all around the World’s Fair. And Norm was called King Cobra. And here’s Norm, who isn’t imperial at all. But he was King Cobra, and I was Cobra One. And we took them out a week before and practiced what they would say, who got arrested, which pavilion it was, and we had a whole dialogue so that we would know what was going on at the World’s Fair.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to turn to a clip from the person who was in charge of the World’s Fair, perhaps one of the—the most influential figure in the history of modern New York, Robert Moses.
VELMA HILL: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: He’s been memorialized, of course, in Robert Caro’s book, The Power Broker—
VELMA HILL: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —about the master builder of urban America. And he spoke at the opening of the fair in April of 1964.
ROBERT MOSES: We invite visitors from every state and land, solicit their friendship, and devoutly hope that in presenting here this Olympics of progress, we shall draw them closer together in our shrinking globe and thus, in the end, promote peace.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Robert Moses. And as Robert Caro has pointed out in his book, Moses and all of his building and reconfiguring of New York really destroyed many black and Hispanic communities. He had a racial edge to much of his redevelopment approach, and racial bias. And I’m wondering, your recollections of Moses at that time and his importance in the city?
NORMAN HILL: Well, he attempted to be an imperial figure and, in fact, a kind of a law unto himself. And he was, to put it gently, insensitive to the needs and concerns of minorities, especially blacks, in that period. And we thought it important that he understand that this could not be a peaceable gathering without economic justice, without equitable representation at all levels of the World’s Fair workforce.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to LBJ. After years of setbacks, advocates for equality, you—one of the protest’s reasons was—at the World’s Fair, was the the signing of the Civil Rights Act. This was Johnson just a few months later signing the Civil Rights Act.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit. Its purpose is not to punish. Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long. Its purpose is national, not regional. This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, that was July 2nd, 1964. You protested the World’s Fair April 22nd, 1964, pushing for this, as well as fair hiring. And just before this, in the summer before, Dr. Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, 250,000 other people—
VELMA HILL: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —were on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I wanted to turn to Bayard Rustin speaking in 1963 on August 28th.
BAYARD RUSTIN: We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation—no compromise, no filibuster—and that it include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote. What do you say? We demand the withholding of federal funds from all programs in which discrimination exists. What do you say?
AMY GOODMAN: That was Bayard Rustin, the chief organizer, along with A. Philip Randolph, of the 1963 March on Washington. Norm Hill, you became head of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, so you worked with both of these men through this period.
NORMAN HILL: In fact, I was staff coordinator under A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin of the March on Washington.
AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts today, 50 years later?
VELMA HILL: I think it’s very interesting, because that March on Washington did something that most people don’t understand. Before the March on Washington, the question of race was the dominant factor that we were protesting about. With the March on Washington and those demands, there was a convergence of race and class that most people don’t understand. But look at what Bayard was saying, what we wanted. We wanted full employment. The civil rights movement—
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
VELMA HILL: Ah, we wanted full employment and things that were both—were economic in nature.
AMY GOODMAN: And I think what’s so fascinating is that when the Civil Rights Act was signed, now the emphasis on LBJ, it was about movements—
VELMA HILL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —leading into that moment.
VELMA HILL: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were a part of that movement, leading 700 people protesting in the World’s Fair a few months before.
VELMA HILL: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: Norman and Velma Hill, I want to thank you so much for being with us to remind us of this historical moment, or teach us about a moment we didn’t even know about.
That does it for the broadcast. I’ll be speaking at the Green Fest at 54th Street, Pier 94, in New York Saturday at 3:00.
Headlines:
Ukraine to Continue Efforts Against Separatists; U.S. Warns Russia
Ukraine is warning it will continue efforts to retake control of eastern areas from pro-Russian groups despite warnings from Russia. Tensions have escalated after Ukrainian authorities said they killed five pro-Russian separatists near Slovyansk. Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced new military exercises on the border and warned of unspecified "consequences." On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry warned the United States could take further action against Russia if it does not back down.
Secretary of State John Kerry: "Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community, all of us, will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the costs for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act."
U.S. Journalist Released by Separatists in Ukraine
A U.S. journalist has been released by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Vice News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky had been held since Monday. He says he believes he was targeted for his reporting.
Simon Ostrovsky: "They had my photograph at a checkpoint that’s just down the road from here. And so the guy at the checkpoint saw my picture, saw my face, and then they pulled me out of the car and all hell broke loose. There was four other journalists with us in the car, and I think they were released pretty early on. And me, they took to the SBU [Ukraine’s SBU state security service] headquarters, where the pro-Russian forces have their headquarters right now."
Obama Fails to Seal Deal on Secretive TPP Trade Pact in Japan
President Obama has left Japan without sealing a deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive pact among Pacific Rim countries to establish a free-trade zone encompassing nearly 40 percent of the global economy. The deal has faced mass protest in Japan by farmers and others who say it will cause large-scale poverty and displacement like what happened in Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Obama said a deal could still be reached if Japan further opens its economy to U.S. products. Obama continues his Asia tour in South Korea today.
Israel Suspends Peace Talks After Palestinian Unity Deal
Israel has suspended U.S.-backed peace talks with the Palestinians following a unity pact between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Israeli officials say they will only resume negotiations if the PA abandons the deal with Hamas, which Israel deems a terrorist organization.
Marshall Islands Sues U.S., Other Nuclear Powers for Failure to Disarm
The Marshall Islands is suing the United States and eight other countries, accusing them of failing to meet commitments for nuclear disarmament. In an unprecedented legal action brought before the International Court of Justice at The Hague, the tiny Pacific island nation accuses the nine countries of "flagrant violations" of international law, saying they are upgrading their nuclear arsenals instead of working to reduce them. The Marshall Islands chain, which includes Bikini Atoll, was the subject of 67 nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s, which have left lasting health and environmental impacts.
Charges Dismissed Against Blackwater Guard; Soldier Accused of Murdering Iraqi Teens
A federal judge has dismissed criminal charges against a former Blackwater guard accused of firing the opening shots that triggered a massacre of Iraqis in 2007. At least 14 civilians died in the Nisoor Square massacre, including a nine-year-old boy. But the judge dismissed the indictment of Nicholas Slatten after a federal appeals court ruled the charges had been filed after the statute of limitations expired. Prosecutors may seek new charges ahead of the June trial of three other Blackwater guards in the case. The decision comes as an Army sergeant faces a possible court-martial for killing two unarmed Iraqi boys in 2007. At a preliminary hearing this week, military prosecutors said Michael Barbera shot the two brothers as they herded cattle, posing no threat. After an earlier investigation in 2009, Barbera received a letter of reprimand, prompting accusations of a cover-up.
Mass Protest to Cap Week of Action Against Keystone XL Pipeline
Native Americans and ranchers are continuing their weeklong protest against the Keystone XL oil pipeline in Washington, D.C. On Thursday, the Cowboy and Indian Alliance rolled out a fake pipeline in front of the Lincoln Memorial and called for leaders to reject the project.
Wizipan Little Elk, member of Rosebud Sioux tribe: "So our message to the Canadian government is let’s do what’s right for North America. Let’s not capitulate to multinational corporations and their greed."
Art Tanderup, Nebraska landowner: "We do not want to pollute our water and destroy our land. We want to see our children and our grandchildren survive on the plains as our forefathers have done for many generations. We need President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline."
Thousands of protesters are expected to join a march on D.C. on Saturday. The Obama administration has delayed a decision on the pipeline for a third straight year.
New Federal Rule Aims to Curb Resurgence of Black Lung Disease
Federal regulators have unveiled changes aimed at preventing deadly black lung disease among coal miners. The long-awaited rule lowers the amount of dust allowed in mines and requires new technology to monitor dust levels. Black lung disease has been on the rise in the United States since the late 1990s.
Vermont Set to Become 1st State to Require GMO Labeling
Vermont is poised to become the first state in the country to require labeling of genetically modified foods. Gov. Peter Shumlin has vowed to sign the bill passed by state lawmakers on Wednesday. The measure also bars foods with GMOs from being labeled as "natural." The measure would take effect in July 2016. Connecticut and Maine have passed similar laws, but theirs have clauses that prevent them from going into effect until neighboring states require the labeling.
Postal Workers Protest Transfer of Work to Staples Employees
U.S. postal workers rallied outside Staples stores across the country Thursday to protest the shifting of their jobs to nonunion retail workers. At issue is the opening of postal counters inside Staples stores, which are staffed by employees paid far less than union postal workers.
Arkansas Judge Strikes Down Voter ID Law
An Arkansas judge has struck down the state’s strict voter ID law, saying it violates the Arkansas Constitution. The law requires voters to present a photo ID before casting a ballot. It was enacted last year after the Republican-led Legislature overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe.
Right-Wing Backers Criticize Rancher Cliven Bundy After Racist Remarks
A Nevada rancher whose stand against the federal government became a right-wing cause célèbre has been caught on tape making racist comments. Cliven Bundy refused to pay decades’ worth of fees for grazing his cattle on federal land, prompting a standoff with federal rangers during which an armed militia of supporters flocked to his aid. In comments quoted by The New York Times, Bundy discussed what he termed "the Negro."
Cliven Bundy: "So now what do they do? They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy?"
Right-wing figures, including Fox News host Sean Hannity and Republican Senators Dean Heller, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, have all condemned Bundy’s remarks after they publicly supported his case.
Navy Reassigns Ex-Blue Angels Commander After Sexual Harassment Claim
The Navy has reassigned a former commander of an elite flight squad and is investigating claims he presided over rampant sexual harassment. Captain Gregory McWherter served two stints as commander of the Navy’s Blue Angels, an acrobatic flight demonstration team. Last week, the Navy announced he had been relieved of his most recent post as executive officer of a base in California. An internal military document, which was accidentally emailed to an editor at The Washington Post, shows a former squad member filed a complaint against McWherter last month. He is the latest in a series of senior commanders to face investigation amid an epidemic of sexual assault and harassment in the military.
Brown University Under Fire for Letting Accused Rapist Who Strangled Victim Back on Campus
The issue of sexual assault on college campuses is in the spotlight. Brown University is under fire for allowing a student who allegedly raped and strangled a classmate to return to campus after what amounted to a one-semester suspension. The victim, Lena Sclove, said her assailant was found responsible for sexual misconduct by a university panel, but will still be allowed back in the fall. Surrounded by supporters, Sclove described her injuries.
Lena Sclove: "It turned out I had a cervical spine injury in my neck from being strangled. It’s very common for trauma injuries like this to take several months to surface. I could not walk for about two months, from January and February. I was bedridden and was forced to take a medical leave. So I lost my one semester of freedom, and now my next opportunity to come back as a student, to matriculate here at Brown, is the same semester that the rapist is allowed to come back and matriculate here at Brown. ... I feel like I should have been thanked by the administration for keeping this campus safe. Instead, they kept him safe."
Brown is not the only Ivy League school facing scrutiny for its handling of sexual assault. Students at Columbia and Harvard universities have filed complaints accusing their schools of violating federal law by failing to adequately protect survivors and punish perpetrators. Last month, a Harvard student published an open letter titled, "Dear Harvard: You Win," detailing her unsuccessful battle to have her accused assailant moved out of her residential house.
Imprisoned Activist Mumia Abu-Jamal Turns 60
Imprisoned Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal turned 60 years old on Thursday. He has spent more than three decades in prison, much of it on death row until his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2012. He was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer, but maintains he is innocent of the charges. Human rights groups have pointed to racial bias that pervaded the trial, and have long called for a new trial. Abu-Jamal thanked his supporters in a birthday recording made from prison.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: "I breathe today because you fought for my breath. The state hates you and attacks you because you fought for me, with me every step of the way. I’m humbled by your support and energized by it. Struggles like this prove the possible and we are not done."
Abu-Jamal’s supporters are holding a "Celebration of Life" festival in Philadelphia Saturday to celebrate his 60th birthday.
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