District makes deal with hedge fund group to sell KCSM-TV's public airwaves to wireless companies

Blackstone Group to pay District $900K per year for 3-4 years and will then receive 38% of proceeds from sale of station's "spectrum holdings"

by Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance

Time is running out for KCSM-TV. The 5th largest public television station in California, whose license has been owned by the College of San Mateo since 1964, has been placed in the safe-keeping of Locuspoint Networks, a commercial entity founded by former wireless executives. Locuspoint's activities in "spectrum speculation" are described by Ben Mook in an article in the February 26, 2013 issue of Current. Locuspoint, which is a 99%-owned subsidiary of one the nation's largest hedge firms, the Blackstone Group, is described as one of three for-profit firms gambling on the upcoming TV auction to hit the jackpot buying and disposing of television stations around the country, including noncommercial ones like that belonging to the College of San Mateo.

So what does that mean for us here in the Bay Area? Local media watchdog group Media Alliance has observed the transactions surrounding KCSM-TV's demise for more than two years and has filed several public records act requests to get more details on the actions of the SMCCD board. The requests have not always been responded to promptly (one filed in April of 2012 took more than six months to get any response at all), but the most recent one has provided supporting documentation for the Locuspoint deal. If you'd like to look at the documents, they have been posted on the Media Alliance website and can be downloaded.

Disturbing implications

Given the massive amount of lawyers involved, one can assume the legal dots have been connected at a significant cost, but the gist of the agreement has some disturbing implications. Here's a quick version of what we're looking at:

Locuspoint will subsidize the operations of KCSM-TV at the cost of $900,000 per year for the next 3-4 years. The District will operate the station at substantially reduced costs for this period, which indicates a program schedule consisting of a feed from one national program supplier, aired without closed captioning for the hearing-impaired or elderly, to cut station costs. Should the TV auction go forward during this period, on the receipt of a bid at or above the unknown number described as the "minimum acceptable bid" (which is blacked out), the station's spectrum holdings will be surrendered to for-profit wireless companies and broadcasting will cease. The Blackstone Group via their "tactical opportunities division" will receive 38% of the proceeds in a massive shift of millions of dollars in public assets to the private capital firm.

Should the national spectrum auction not proceed within the designated time, then the speculator may exercise an option to sell off KCSM-TV's license to any FCC-qualified bidder of their choice, with no right of refusal from the District. In practical terms, an FCC-qualified bidder can be any California not-for-profit corporation, including national chain Christian broadcasters like Daystar (a bidder in the earlier RFP). The District, in order to meet financial obligations to a hedge firm, has signed away the ability to exercise any discretion over the invasion into Bay Area broadcasting of entities who may not be desired or appreciated by the viewing community. The members of KCSM-TV, past and present, the college community, and the viewers will have no say. It's up to the Blackstone Group.

Loss of airwaves = loss of public expression

This loss of control over college property poses some questions about the District's interpretation of the preamble to their mission statement: "The District actively participates in the economic, social, and cultural development of San Mateo County. In a richly diverse environment and with increasing awareness of its role in the global community, the District is dedicated to maintaining a climate of academic freedom in which a wide variety of viewpoints is cultivated and shared".

The financial pressures on higher education, and the California community college system in particular, are intense and should not be minimized. But by turning down an offer for $6 million dollars received last year, in search of greater short-term riches, the District's Board of Trustee's have brought to the campus community the kind of irresponsible speculation that has defunded public education and a host of services and damaged our economy – all to hand over a piece of the campus for profiteering.

It's a real question whether the campus community, the viewing community and the residents of the Bay Area would have agreed to this if the District had ever asked them.

A Washington State appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and ruled in favor of Washington State University communications professor David Demers in his faculty free speech case against WSU.

Demers is a professor at the Murrow School of Communications and sued for First Amendment protection after submitting plans to improve the school's programs.

He writes about his experiences in an e-book. The Lonely Activist, available here for complimentary download.

Often disparaged as "Obamaphones", the Lifeline program (which was actually started during the Reagan administration) provides subsidized communication services to low-income people, enabling critical safety, health and job search services.

This DC panel (heavily populated by Californians, including Sacramento congresswoman Doris Matsui and CA Public Utility Commissioner Catherine Sandoval), deconstructs the myths about Lifeline and defines why we all need to care about affordable communications for all.

Here in California, the Public Utilies Commission is overseeing Lifeline modernization and recently fought off an attempt from legislators in Sacramento to gut the Lifeline update.

An article by Danielle Paradis in PolicyMic:

**

Online harassment is a prolific, largely a gendered problem. A University of New Hampshire study found that 72% of online harassment victims are women. As the prolific, self-described "troublemaker" Laurie Penny wrote in the Independent a few years back, "a woman's opinion is the mini-skirt of the Internet." Cyberharassment isn't limited to women who critique gender roles, either. Audrey Watters, an ed-tech writer disabled comments on her blog in an effort to stem similar issues.

Unfortunately, when the harassment is addressed at all, it is usually through inneffective means such as insisting people use their real names in the comments. Ultimately we need to look beyond the usual surface strategies but first we have to understand the problem.

Here are six of the primary ways online harassment silence women.

1. The cyber mob

Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter campaign to examine how women are portrayed in video games. No stranger to backlash, she has come to expect gendered insults and yawn-worthy jokes about kitchens and sandwiches. After the campaign, however, she found herself targeted by thousands of commenters threatening violence, rape, and even murder. Her Wikipedia entry was vandalized by people with dozens of different IP addresses. Attempts were made to hack into her email and other online accounts. DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks) were launched to knock her website offline for days at at a time. She was harassed by pornographic renderings depictingher being raped by video game characters. A particularly dedicated harasser created a video game where people were invited to "beat the bitch," which caused a virtual Sarkeesian to become bloody and bruised.

The cyber mob mentality plays into all the ways in which harassment of women takes place in online spaces. This harassment does not happen in a vacuum and it is not new, but new technology enables faster pile-ons and ways to coordinate attacks.

Sarkeesian speaks about her harassment in a video, along with the ways she combated the abuse. One particularly disturbing revelation: mimicking a key way women are silenced in real life, she had to document everything because she was so often met with disbelief.

2. Anti-harassment tools used for harassment

Sarkeesian's YouTube videos were false-flagged, meaning her videos were labelled as violating the YouTube's terms of service agreement. Sarkeesian says people reported her accounts for spam and even terrorism; in a sad twist that shows how ill-equipped we are to deal with cyberharassment, anti-harassment tools themselves were used to harass her. Sarkeesian's crime? Starting a project to critique video games.

When Adria Richards complained about a joke about "dongles" at a conference and Tweeted a picture of the two men she too was subjected to harassment and rape and death threats. Her website was under DDoS attack and she was fired for causing a stir. The two men making the jokes were also fired which further antagonised the situation. Whether or not you agree with her actions of outing people rather than attempting a conversation the amount of vitriol she experienced was disproportionate to the offense.

3. Take-down Culture is a Game

Un-moderated and anonymous forums like some areas of Reddit or 4Chan act as a gathering place to plan attacks and post triumphs when a group of people with similar beliefs decide to target someone. The connectivity that works so well in creating viral content also aids a pile-on in the case of disagreements. In her video about online harassment Sarkeesian spoke about the ways in which online harassment was treated like a game. People would gather in forums with screenshots as proof of the harassment and as people sought to outdo one another the ferocity of the attack escalated.

4. The Online Tools Used to Connect People Also Marginalize People

There are many dynamic web 2.0 features that allow for the compilation of data in interesting ways. Ask.fm, for example, allows a platform for anonymous questions and is great for a "get to know you" low-stakes situation. It has also facilitated online bullying that led to suicide, and is frequently used to target outspoken trans women through Twitter. One trans woman I spoke to, who wished to remain anonymous, is subjected to abuse all day without a way to block it. The harasser copy-pastes a degrading message including the transwomen's Twitter handle so the message is sent to her.

Ana Mardoll writes on her blog about a harassment issue with Storify that was also recently covered by The Daily Dot (author note: yours truly is quoted). Writes Mardoll, "[The Storify user] ElevatorGate has been instead using the Storify tool to obsessively compile the tweets of women he is stalking." He now has over 7300 stories compiled that he claims is journalism. Unless users opt out, they receive notifications that your tweets have been storified: a little reminder to keep looking over your shoulder because people are watching you.

Elevatorgate on the other hand does not feel as though he has been harassing anyone. He minimizes the distress expressed by those who are having their material collected by him by reminding people that their tweets are publicly available, and that he is not misogynistic because he also collects tweets from men. And while the Tweets certainly are public, Storify can be used to collect pieces of a conversation out of context and encourage a cyber mob-style pile-on.

These two methods of harassment have no way of blocking a person that you do not wish to engage with and no mechanisms in place for dealing with the harassment. Free speech is often cited as a defense that excuses the actions of the people upset by this.

5. The Problems Are Erased

When in the midst of an internet takedown a lot of the advice that you are given is the same as it would be in grade school. Stay away. Pay no attention.

In the UK, Laurie Penny mentions in her book on cybersexism that as cyberharassment is being written about in the media, women are being warned against engaging online. In a video about online harassment she says there's little difference "between that and people saying … well if you don't want to get raped maybe you shouldn't go out at night on your own." The logic is still the same. Women are being told to avoid another public space.

6. Chilling Effect

These ruthless attacks and harassment go beyond personal disagreements. The language used in these attacks are often deliberately chosen from the pool of women-focused, racial, or gender-identity based slurs. This affects not only the person targeted but also the bystanders, creating a chilling effect for women thinking of participating in public life. In an article on Mother Jones, Jaclyn Friedman, the executive director for Women, Action and the Media, says "The idea that a social-media network should be entirely neutral is a myth, [n]eutral platforms are only neutral for straight white dudes. These companies need to make a decision: Do I want to be making a money off of a platform where abusers and harassers feel more comfortable than the abused and harassed?"

The irony is that while those flinging these insults or participating in harassment cry free speech as a justification, they limit others in their ability to speak freely.

Rushbridger's blog can be found in its entirety here.

He writes "The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood the absolute threat to journalism implicit in the idea of total surveillance, when or if it comes – and, increasingly, it looks like "when".

We are not there yet, but it may not be long before it will be impossible for journalists to have confidential sources. Most reporting – indeed, most human life in 2013 – leaves too much of a digital fingerprint. Those colleagues who denigrate Snowden or say reporters should trust the state to know best (many of them in the UK, oddly, on the right) may one day have a cruel awakening. One day it will be their reporting, their cause, under attack"

Ecuador's new media laws pose some creative thoughts about what democratic communications looks like.

Despite the virulent attacks launched by some US-based media companies, a closer inspection of the laws reveals serious thought and attention about how a people-based media system might work and attempts to address many flaws in the markets-based model.

Sally Burch provides this analysis in Truthout.org:

****

On June 25, 2013, Ecuador's new Organic Communications Law came into force, after more than four years of debates and delays. Attacked by the mainstream press, both nationally and across the hemisphere, as a "gag" on freedom of expression, this new law in fact reflects in essence the proposals developed over more than two decades by movements supporting the democratization of communications, guarantees for diversity and plurality, and the need to regulate the media in the public interest.

As this small Latin American country has come onto the global radar due to whistle-blower Edward Snowden's application for political asylum, and is now under attack from the media cartels because of a supposed "double standard" regarding freedom of expression, it is worthwhile to clarify the scope and origins of this new law.

Following in the footsteps traced by Argentina's Audiovisual Media Law, the Ecuadorian law, mandated by the 2008 Constitution that recognizes communication as a human right, goes further in that it covers communication in its multiple dimensions.

As expressed on the day of the parliamentary vote (June 14) by Mauro Andino, main proponent of the new law and National Assembly Member from the (governing) PAIS Movement, the spirit of this law both recognizes "the enormous value and the importance of freedom of expression formulated in international instruments of human rights," while it also adds to this "a series of opportunities and services in order for that freedom to really exist for everyone, so that it ceases to be a privilege enjoyed only by those better situated in our society."

Communications, a Public Service

One of the central elements of the new law is the definition of social communication as a public service (i.e., similar to health or education) that must be provided with responsibility and quality of content, irrespective of whether the media outlet is public or private. Although this might appear obvious, given that information is a crucial aspect of democracy, right-wing opposition parliamentarians have nonetheless declared this clause as one of the first they hope to challenge in the Constitutional Court.

The law prohibits prior censorship in the press while at the same time emphasizing ultimate media liability for the content they publish (in compliance with international norms). In the interest of the universal principles of plurality and diversity, it establishes the redistribution of radio frequencies, with 33% for private media, 33% for public media and 34% for community media (to be applied gradually; at present 85% of such media are in private hands), and the elimination of monopolies in audiovisual media (with no more than one main radio station frequency concession in AM, one in FM and one in television to any one natural person or legal entity).

Other articles of the law encourage national cultural production, such as the obligation for 60% of daily broadcasting (in time slots apt for the broader public) to consist of nationally produced content, 10% of which must be from independent producers, while musical programs must include a minimum quota of 50% music produced, composed or performed in Ecuador. In countries that apply similar measures, such as Colombia, they have provided an enormous stimulus for cultural industries and artists.

Most of these proposals were initially put forward not by the government of Rafael Correa or the PAIS movement but by communications organizations and networks and social movements that for years have been fighting for the democratization of communications and recognition of the right to communicate as a universal human right. (1) The fact that the governing bodies finally came to recognize the legitimacy of these demands represents a major achievement for these movements.

Protecting Privacy and Media Workers' Rights

The Washington Post in its criticism of "double standards" in Ecuador points out that "Mr. Snowden should be particularly interested in Section 30 of the law, which bans the 'free circulation, especially by means of the communications media' of information 'protected under a reserve clause established by law'" - establishing fines as sanctions. While such clauses are standard legislation, the Post fails to mention that the clause 31 guarantees the protection of personal communications and their inviolability and secrecy, and the prohibition to record or register them, without the correspondents' consent or a court order. This is precisely the human right that the US has systematically violated.

The law defends the rights of press workers and their employment security; moreover, it stipulates that the hiring of workers in media of national scope should conform to "criteria of equity and equality between men and women, intercultural representativeness, equality of opportunity for disabled persons and intergenerational participation."

One innovation of the law is the obligation for private advertisers to allocate at least 10% of their annual advertising budget to local or regional media outlets, as a guarantee for media with a smaller broadcast range or lower print run, and those in rural areas, to share in advertising income.

Another is the prohibition of "media lynching," understood as "the dissemination of information that is expressly and recurrently designed to destroy the reputation of a natural person or legal entity or to impinge on their public credibility."

An aspect that is only marginally mentioned in the new legislation is that of digital frequencies - which have a great democratizing potential - although it does contemplate the need for an "equitable distribution of frequencies and signals made available through the digitalization of radio and television systems." However, the notion that this is largely a "technical" issue prevails, and therefore it has been left for the Telecommunications Law - in preparation - to deal with in detail.

Among the most polemical issues is the institutional framework. The new legal body creates a Council of Regulation and Development of Information and Communication, as a regulatory body; a Superintendence of Information and Communication, with powers of sanction; and a citizen Consultative Council, whose role is not yet clear and whose decisions are not binding.

Opposition groups predict the executive branch will wield "excessive power" within this structure, although, in fact, it is no more concentrated and has, in some aspects, fewer powers than under the previous law, adopted under the 1970s dictatorship (which, for example, empowered the government to close down a media outlet).

The fact is that under previous governments the mainstream media were used to creating their own rules and were rarely brought to answer for their practices or abuses. With a government that has resolved to bring order into this sector, new conflicts are likely to arise with the application of the law; and, predictably, these will be decried throughout the hemisphere as attacks on freedom of expression. When these outcries are heard, it would be worthwhile to seek out both sides of the story, which is not precisely what is usually to be found in the mainstream media when their interests are at stake.

Update 9/9/2013 - Here is a brief blog entry on the Stop Watching Us coalition meeting with Nancy Pelosi's SF District office on August 26th.

Stop Watching Us also met with Representative Mike Thompson in the North Bay. Read an account of that visit by Anna Givens in the North Bay Bohemian newspaper.

**

Talking About Spying with Nancy Pelosi's Office

When Edward Snowden's revelations about the scope and extent of NSA surveillance activities started breaking on the pages of the U.K. Guardian, it was a wake-up call for Internet freedom activists that many of our worst suspicions had come true.

As the flow of stories continued, both in the pages of Guardian and now in many other media outlets including the Washington Post, Der Speigel, the NY Times and Pro Publica, the American public grew more and more convinced of government over-reach and an overly loose interpretation of the Bill of Rights. These perceptions crossed partisan dividing lines and reached 75% of the population. Half a million people signed a petition at http://www.stopwatching.us demanding an end to the programs.

When Justin Amash, a libertarian-leaning Republican Congressman teamed up with Democrat John Conyers to amend an appropriations bill to remove funding for telephone metadata collection, it seemed like a moment when the will of the people was manifesting in DC across party lines. But when the votes were counted, Amash-Conyers came up a dozen votes short in the House. What shocked many was prominent Democrats, from the party usually identified with concerns about civil liberties, were essentially responsible for the defeat of the amendment. The nay-sayers included Democratic stalwarts like DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former whip Steny Hoyer, Texas Rep Sheila Jackson-Lee and, from one of the most left congressional districts in the country, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

What happened? Putting cynicism aside, Bay-Area-based media watchdog group Media Alliance, (a member of the national Stop Watching Us coalition), decided to find out. The best way to answer a question is to ask. So we asked for a meeting with Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco District Office on NSA surveillance. After a few rounds of messages, I received a call on August 15th. I was told the meeting was not going to happen in August. Short-staffed. I asked if the meeting could be scheduled in September. Short-staffed. I asked if any date was available for a meeting at any point in the future. I was told no date could be set, but I would be emailed Representative Pelosi's position paper on blanket surveillance.

Short-staffing can be a legitimate issue, (although as a tiny nonprofit organization, I would venture to say we deal with levels of short-staffing unknown to congressional offices). But on an issue of such popular interest and backed by a petition signed by over half a million people, the refusal was startling. It's an awkward analogy, but for a moment there I felt the quandary of the White House press corps: do I kick up a fuss and risk being blackballed forever? Media Alliance sent an email blast to 10,000 people the next day saying we had been refused the meeting. The meeting then got scheduled within a week.

By meeting day, a group was assembled that represented the breadth of the Stop Watching Us coalition: ACLU, EFF, Bill of Rights Defense Center, Hackers and Founders, and Restore the Fourth. We were meeting with Dan Bernal, Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff.

Did we get an answer to the question? Not really. And It wasn't because we didn't ask. Representative Pelosi was on the record voting not to reauthorize the Patriot Act in 2011, but seemed to see no direct contradiction between that vote and the Amash-Conyers vote.

The quickest way to describe the 45 minute meeting is as a tug of war between two ideas:

a) blanket surveillance is fundamentally unconstitutional and needs to stop

and

b) NSA surveillance programs need to be tweaked to rein in some level of over-reach.

The second position present in the room revolved around the discussion of vehicles (as in legislative vehicles). The vehicle focus was strangely lacking in urgency, considering that the issue has been in the headlines non-stop for months. It was as if we were casually sitting at a road dstop ebating the proper choice of vehicle to continue a leisurely journey to our destination.

I think most of us were saying “stop, we want to get off”.

A few things should be added. I appreciate the opportunity for dialogue and am glad to live in a country where I can struggle to make an appointment with legislative leaders – and succeed.

And I'd rather have a conversation where there is disagreement than no conversation at all.

But I am left with the feeling of a massive perceptual gap between the constitutional liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and a country where that is just a piece of quaint history no one takes seriously any more.

**

Update 8/21 - Nancy Pelosi's District Office has agreed to the requested meeting on Monday August 26th. MA thanks her and her staff for making this time available to discuss this important issue.

On Thursday August 15th, Nancy Pelosi's office informed the Media Alliance executive director that it wasn't possible to schedule a meeting to discuss blanket surveillance and the threats posed to individual privacy rights.

It is worth noting how bizarre this is. In my six years as MA's executive director, I have scheduled and attended lobbying meetings with virtually all of the Bay Area's congressional delegation, including Ms. Pelosi's office numerous times. Such requests are routine, and while sometimes they take a while to arrange, pro forma.

This is the first time I have ever been, simply, refused a meeting.

The meeting was requested on behalf of the stopwatching.us coalition, a grouping of major civil liberties organizations and tech companies, and includes thousands of people living in, and employed in, Ms. Pelosi's district. Stopwatching.us petition drive resulted in (at last count) 567,000 signatures. https://optin.stopwatching.us/

In my mind, this brings up serious issues of accountability and representation if it is no longer possible to express, in person, concerns regarding Ms. Pelosi's votes and activities in Washington DC as a Bay Area congressional representative.

If you live in Ms. Pelosi's district, please let her know this conduct is unacceptable and a shutdown is no way to address the concerns of Bay Area residents over her pro-NSA advocacy.

What's the cost of the so-called "free" services we use online every day? What do you gain and what do you give up when you accept the Terms and Conditions of your favorite app? And why should you care?

In this online discussion: documentary filmmakers, media activists and tech workers talk about what we give up and why it matters.

Brought to you by Active Voice and NAMAC.

A discussion on Democracy Now of channel guides in TV cable systems and how they can make alternative TV programs really, really hard to find. And what media activists are trying to do about it.

This short video from the Open Technology Institute features community broadband projects: Brooklyn, Detroit, and Dharmasala.

The recently-deceased maverick reporter was a questioner of presidents for generations.

Here she is in 2006, in conversation with Belva Davis, at Media Alliance's 30th anniversary birthday party at the Herbst Theater Green Room in San Francisco.

**

Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, the two 16-year-old Chinese school girls who died in the Asiana Airlines crash this weekend, aren't around to experience the kind of knee-jerky modern racism toward Asians the tragedy inspired in both mainstream and social media.

They've been spared.

But 14-year-old Milena Clarke in Kentucky certainly has had an earful of the good old-fashioned kind face to face the last two years.

"Gook." "Nigger lover." "Chubby chink."

Straight from the Paula Deen lexicon, those were just some of the point-blank epithets Milena says her own basketball teammates at Russell Middle School in Russell, Kentucky spewed at her incessantly since the 6th grade.

M_Clarke.JPG
The toxic mix of bullying and racism isn't kid stuff. Milena, adopted as an infant from Kazakhstan, is nothing like the fictional Kazakh movie character, the jokey "Borat." Milena's features are more Asian, typical of the people from the country tucked between China and Russia in Central Asia. Indeed, Kazakhstan was the last of the Russian republics to declare independence in 1991. When Kentucky lawyer Terry Clarke and his family adopted Milena, he promised to help her never forget her ethnic roots.

He never figured her Asian-ness would bring out the intimidating racist taunts from her white teammates at Russell Middle School. Apparently ignorant of Jeremy Lin and Yao Ming, they'd harangue her about how "Asians can't play basketball."

"I'd say [to teammates] why are you saying that, and they'd just laugh and start talking about me more, and I couldn't do much about it," Milena said.

It's a real example of racism that may seem out of place in a diverse world when Asian Americans are common in urban enclaves like San Francisco or New York City.

But in Kentucky, Asians are just over one percent of the population of more than 4 million. As Asian Americans increasingly find themselves scattered throughout the U.S., they can often find themselves, like Milena, isolated and subjected to a fresh version of racism from a new generation.

When I talked to Milena this weekend, she said after two years, the impact of the racist taunting began to affect how she felt about herself.

"I just felt awful for being Asian because of them, because they were telling me how bad [Asians] were. It just really got to me," said Milena. "Everything they said made me think if I wasn't Asian, if I were white, it would be a lot less likely for this to happen."

What would be less likely, I asked?

"The harassment," she said.

Milena said along with the verbal abuse came actual physical abuse. Teammates would shove, push, and trip her. And not like the Miami Heat did in Game 7 of the NBA finals. This wasn't a game. It was an everyday occurrence.

Wasn't there ever a moment when there would be a time out? A break?

"No, not really," said Milena, who said she'd often pray that the taunting would stop.

It got to a point in 7th grade where after a practice, Milena finally had to tell her father.

"I went to the car and just broke down," she said.

Her father, an environmental lawyer, was angered. But first he reached out to the coach. And then to the school district. When nothing changed, he went to both the state and federal education departments. Finally, he sought legal help from AALDEF.

AALDEF, which has had success fighting racial bullying at South Philadelphia High School, is taking on the case. It has filed official complaints with both the Justice Department and the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education.

I put in a call to the Russell Independent School District, but Superintendent Sean Horne was unavailable for comment.

What's surprising to me is how long it took before Milena's family decided it was time to fight back. Indeed, for a while, the Clarkes took solace by having Milena, who at 5'-8" is a prized 8th grade center or power forward, play for one of the best travelling AAU teams in the area.

That team had mostly black players, which made the mostly white players on her school team call her "nigger lover."

That hurt Milena. But throughout it all, she said the most hurtful thing was when her school teammates went to the core of her being--her ethnic identity as a Central Asian from Russia.

"They said you speak Russian but you look Asian, you don't even know where you're from," Milena said. "That really hurt. Like the worst thing they could even say."

It hurts me as a parent to see someone like Milena go through this. It hurts even more to know that she's such an innocent, she didn't even know what the term "gook" meant.

That is until she went on the internet and got her definition.

This weekend she would have found much more.


Asiana Airlines Crash and the Internet's 21st Century Racism
If you thought the internet was colorblind and free of racism (it's all 1's and 0's, this digital world, right?), all it took was an Asian airline crash to prove that it doesn't take much to trigger a lot of suppressed racism.

After the Asiana Airlines crash, I was astonished to see so many examples of anti-Asian racism in both mainstream and social media (primarily on Twitter).

It remains one of the most underreported things about the crash of Asiana Flight 214.

And what was truly astonishing was how it became suddenly debatable whether an Asian slur was a slur at all. Even amongst Asian Americans.

Is racism really debatable?

Shouldn't we know it when we see it, like Milena Clarke?

Online, this headline was one of the most egregious examples:

Sun-Times Headline.jpgGet it? Fright 214. Asians often confuse "L"s and "R"s. I first thought it was a hoax. Who would be this blatant? Or maybe someone was playing around on the internet. Didn't matter really, it was still a racist thought.

Then Monday morning, Jim Kirk, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, apologized.

"There was nothing intentional on our part to play off any stereotypes," Kirk said. "If anybody was offended by that, we are sorry."

Thanks for the cop-out apology..."if anybody was offended"?

And if you weren't, party on?

The Flight/Fright pun is no different from the "chink in the armor" racist double entendre we saw during the media's Linsanity frenzy last year.

One can plead innocence, as a pun does let you have it both ways, but there's no doubt that racism is present.

The bigger question: where's the sensitivity to diversity? To Asian Americans? A diverse staff of editors would have known better. A staff sensitive to Asians and Asian Americans would have caught that.

That's the digital mainstream. Chicago Sun-Times.com.

The Twitterverse is like the Wild West. But I still didn't expect to see the flat-out racist tweets on the same day as the crash.

Here are some examples posted by the folks at ChangeLab:

miriam.png
devin.pngDismiss the communications on Twitter at your own peril. It's a real reflection of the way racism exists today.

In fact, the digital world can at times provide just enough anonymity to embolden racists who would otherwise suppress their racism and keep it to themselves.

In that way, the internet is how some people can use the digital cloak as if slipping on an all new "white hood," where it's still "no eyeholes necessary."

As I said, I find it equally disturbing that some Asian Americans are debating whether these slights--by the Sun-Times or on Twitter--are a big deal at all.

Considering that most Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29, they may not be aware of how this all fits into the history of racism toward Asians and Asian Americans.

In that sense, a pun created by using an "L" over an "R" vs. a racist tweet may seem like nothing, especially in a world where nothing lasts and everyone's on to the next thing.

But it does all add up.

I noticed people on Twitter who were sensitive to what was happening were mostly not Asian Americans; they were African Americans like "This Week in Blackness" host Elon James White (@elonjames), who called out the racist tweeters and their lame Asian driver jokes.

That made it important for non-Asian Americans to be "first responders." And when the two deaths of the Chinese school girls became known, the jokey racism they alerted us to was exposed for what it was--obscene.

At that point, there should be no debate. You take a stand. You speak up.

Or as b-baller Milena Clarke might say, you post-up and go for it.

It's called justice.

It's definitely on the long side, but we wanted to archive the historic FCC hearing on interstate calls from prisons - 11 years after Martha Wright filed her petition seeking relief from unmanageable calling rates.

Watch here - all of it or as much as you'd like:

A video statement by filmmaker Oliver Stone on the surveillance state, sponsored by the ACLU.

"The question is whether we control the government or the government controls us"

Even when we win, we don't win. A DC law firm is claiming the 2010 Verizon consent decree, much celebrated as a sterling example of the FCC's dedication to consumer protection, collected barely a 5th of customer overcharges.

****

In recent years the Commission has repeatedly characterized its mission as one of “consumer protection”. One prominent example: back in 2010, the Enforcement Bureau claimed to have “ma[de] things right and put customers back in the driver’s seat” with respect to “mystery fees” that Verizon Wireless had apparently been improperly imposing on its customers for years. Then-Chairman Genachowski said that the Bureau’s successful negotiation of a consent decree with Verizon demonstrated to American consumers that “the FCC has got your back”. Then-Commissioner (now Acting Chairwoman) Clyburn said that the “voluntary contribution” Verizon agreed to pay the government – $25 million, over and above the $50+ million in unlawful charges to be refunded – “sends a clear message as to how important this is to us”.

You’d think that the 2010 Verizon consent decree was a massive triumph of Good over Evil, with all innocent victims made whole and the wrong-doer brought totally to its knees.

Um, not exactly, according to the folks at Smithwick & Belendiuk (S&B), a D.C. communications law firm.

Art Belendiuk, one of S&B’s namesakes, has filed a Petition for Investigation with the FCC’s Inspector General that casts the Verizon consent decree in an entirely different light. According to the S&B Petition, the $50 million or so that Verizon agreed to refund was about $250 million short of the amount that Verizon had actually collected in wrongful charges. S&B also alleges that Verizon knew that it was overcharging its customers but, in its submissions to the Bureau, denied doing so. And S&B claims that the Bureau itself undertook no independent audit of Verizon’s claims, and instead simply took Verizon’s word that the $52 million would cover refunds to all overcharged customers.

If S&B is correct in its charges, somebody’s got some ’splainin’ to do.

S&B’s claims are based on a raft of documents S&B managed to wrangle out of the Commission through Freedom of Information Act requests – and some litigation in U.S. District Court when the FCC’s initial responses to those requests were less than satisfactory, in S&B’s eyes. Whether the Petition will get any traction remains to be seen. Invoking the office of the FCC’s Inspector General is somewhat unorthodox (although, under the circumstances, completely understandable), and it’s far from clear whether the IG will be eager to grab for this particularly hot potato.

But if nothing else, the Petition reminds us all of a couple of things.

First, despite any claims the FCC might make to “transparency”, there remain aspects of the agency’s regulatory activities which are anything but transparent. Indeed, the difficulties (described in the Petition) that S&B ran into in trying to get hold of the underlying documents supposedly considered by the Bureau in its investigation of Verizon scream “stonewall”. An inclination to withhold such materials from the public seems curiously inconsistent with the fanciful notion that the Commission is a “consumer protection” agency.

Second, it’s usually a good idea to take self-congratulatory governmental press releases with more than a grain of salt. Yes, the Commission doubtless felt good about shaking $75 million out of Verizon – but if the Bureau knew or should have known that Verizon’s real refund exposure may have been six or more times greater than what Verizon was claiming, who really got the better of whom here? If S&B is correct (and we emphasize that at this point we have no idea whether or not it is), what does that say about the thoroughness of the Bureau’s processes and/or the honesty and candor of Verizon?

Ellen Goodman writes about KCSM-TV for the Rutgers University Institute for Information Policy and Law

**

This delightful video shows Capuchin monkeys reacting to unfairness and inequity when one gets compensated with cucumber bits for doing a task and another with the much better pay rate of a grape. We can all relate.

From a TED Talk by scientist Frans De Waals:

An important speech by the Guardian reporter and columnist on the Snowden leaks, the ongoing surveillance stories in the Guardian and what the past few weeks have revealed about journalism.

A 20-minute video identifying the use of damsel in distress imagery in video games. Great for schools or the young girl in your life.

A discussion of Prism and activism by Alfredo Lopex of May First/PeopleLink

**

Recent coverage and public discussion of the government's Internet and telephone spying leaves a major question unanswered: How, given what we know, does this trashing of privacy affect activists, particularly women and people of color?

The question is important because privacy is at the heart of a free and democratic society and, like much of this stunning news, it has been framed in a frivolous way by our media and politicians. Given the dangers of the world -- their argument goes -- is your right to talk to your friends, shop, or read texts without surveillance more important than protecting your life?

That kind of personal privacy is important but it isn't the main issue. In the constitution, privacy goes hand in hand with the "right of petition" -- the right to demonstrate, organize and speak out against the government and its policies. You have the right to meet, plan and organize without having the government looking over your shoulder (or tracking your calls and stealing your email) because all power in the government's hands can and eventually will be abused without strong "checks and balances".

While the Obama Administration is working over-time to cloud the facts in disinformative smoke and partial information, we now know enough to say that privacy in this country has been completely suspended.

The revelations of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, still tumbling out every day, show that for several years the government has been capturing all our on-line and telephone communications. The National Security Agency has forced telephone giant Verizon to give up records of all phone calls -- people, places and times -- under a court order so secret the telephone giant can't even confirm it. It's probable that several other phone companies (land and cell) have gotten the same order.

It also operates a program called PRISM that's part of a long-running and much larger data collection program. PRISM uses a library of search terms to filter, read and analyze information being gathered from storage devices at nine major Internet companies (at least). It's not saying how much data it actually collects but this September it's opening a data center in Utah whose purpose is to store all the data on the Internet (and probably phone lines) in this country and most of the world. Where are they going to get it?

Part of the muddle in this story is the plethora "non-admission admissions". The companies say they only give up information that's subpeonaed (admitting that they receive tens of thousands of government requests each year) and the NSA insists it only listens to a few hundred phone calls linked to ongoing investigations. The President has assured us that no investigation "targets" U.S. citizens.

All of this is a diversion. In order to figure out if a "foreigner" is involved in something illegal, the NSA has to pull all communications with that person. Have you written something to or received something from someone in another country? Are you sure that person isn't being investigated or is a friend or associate of someone who is? What about videos, photos and even posts on message boards? All of that is being captured and stored and probably read because that's the only way the NSA can determine if it's relevant to an investigation.

Even if it's not read, it's held in storage probably permanently. Can you be sure that your currently legal organizing won't be deemed "illegal or dangerous" in the future? What about your support of movements in other countries?

To compound the damaging impact of this stunning intrusion, it comes at a time of massive entry of women and people of color into Internet use. By the tens of millions, people who have traditionally been marginalized from the use of on-line communications have now taken a premier place at the table of Social Networking. We're encouraged to use these services by their convenience, accessible design and the fact that they're free. In fact, most Social Justice organizations and activists rely so heavily on Facebook, Twitter and other social media that it's assumed that such technology will be included in our outreach and communications work. And many, if not most, of us use Gmail. Those are the very services PRISM targets and, intentionally or not, we are among the targets.

So what do we do? We still have choices. Here's a link for "PRISM-free" software and services you can choose to use. Consider making a switch. In general, be conscious of the surveillance situation and plan your communications and outreach accordingly. Finally, let's stop viewing the Internet as just a tool and start treating it as a right we have built. Let's make one of our main activities the ongoing fight to reconquer our right to privacy as the implement of change it can be.

Alfredo Lopez is Leadership Committee Co-Chair of May First/People Link, the progressive Internet organization. He's also technology writer for the online publication This Can't Be Happening.