DC OneWebDay

This year, several MADCo members and allies participated in OneWebDay, an “Earth Day for the Internet.”  Now, in its third year, OneWebDay is an opportunity to celebrate the benefits that the Internet and the Web bring to society, educate the public on threats to an open Internet, and build a global constituency that will fight to protect and expand those benefits.  This year’s OneWebDay theme was online political participation.

In Washington, D.C. MADCo staff coordinated with several groups, including American University Center for Social Media, BroadbandCensus.com, Center for Democracy and Technology, Common Cause, Computer and Communications Industry Association, New America Foundation, PBS Engage, Public Knowledge, the Sunlight Foundation, and a number of individual volunteers in producing the virtual e-Democracy Time Capsule.  The Time Capsule was an open publishing platform where anyone could submit multimedia entries describing their favorite online political participation tools, policy issues, e-Democracy heroes, and letters to the future about the Internet and political participation. The Time Capsule received 100 submissions by OneWebDay. 

OneWebDay celebrants “closed” the capsule at a ceremony and public forum hosted by the New America Foundation, where the audience heard remarks from Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD), FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, New America’s Sascha Meinrath, Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller, Democracy In Action’s John Wheeler, Bread for the City’s Greg Bloom, BroadbandCensus’ Drew Clark, Obama technology policy adviser Alec Ross, and Coalition staff, Nathaniel James.  Further support came from the Media Democracy Fund and individual donors.

Advocating for the Public Interest in Broadband Economic Stimulus Spending

As Congress and the then-incoming Obama Administration considered investments in broadband as part of the proposed economic stimulus package, Media and Democracy Coalition members and allies released a statement on December 22, 2008 urging policy makers to focus on accountability, local approaches, access and adoption, Internet freedom and a coherent national broadband policy.

President-Elect Barack Obama and Congressional leaders are calling for government support to fund universal broadband Internet access as part of a potential economic stimulus package.   We applaud these discussions and strongly believe that providing every community in America with high-speed Internet access – particularly those who have long remained on the margins of public participation and debate – is essential to the economic and democratic future of the U.S.

The undersigned organizations, which represent a broad coalition of local and national public interest groups, strongly support investments in broadband build-out, as well as the training, tools and other resources needed to connect those that are currently on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Click here for the full statement.

The Coalition Works with Obama FCC Transition Team

In a series of meetings in late December 2008, Coalition members and allies also urged the Obama FCC transition team to consider an aggressive list of changes that would make the agency more accountable to the public, and would advance public interest media policies. Learn more here.