New Orleans    

Sadly, our extensive conversation seems to have created even more information about the pattern that really follows Comcast’s pretense at “outreach.”  In effect they seem to have foisted the “sale” of this service off to already strapped and under resourced public school officials and principles by simply handing them pamphlets that redirect desperately strapped families to wend their way through an 800-number call center.  But, I’m finger pointing at the schools.  They should not be in the business of doing sales for Comcast for cry-eye.  How can this possibly be appropriate?!?

Another thing I learned that somehow I had missed before, is that Comcast is not offering any financing for the $150 computer.  Poor families have to have all of the money up front to pay on the barrel head.  I had thought I had clearly read that there were finance plans to make these computers accessible.  WTF?!?  This isn’t a program yet, it’s a promotion and a farce!

Reading through research our allies in Philly sent over, it turned out that one of the FCC members is a former lobbyist at Comcast.  Hope that’s not a problem?!?

New Orleans   

In Philadelphia members of ACTION United passed out 75 baloney sandwiches at the Comcast headquarters demanding the promised response from earlier meetings that indicated the company was considering improving its weak performance to date (“Activists Tangle Over Accessibility of Low-Income Program”).   Ironically, Comcast seems to have convinced some school principals to apologize in their behalf and accept responsibility for the limited outreach that should have been the company’s responsibility, not the public school that hoped to partner with them and benefit.  What a shell game?

There is no date for a reply in Houston yet?  The meeting in Little Rock is still “sometime” in the first two weeks of February.

The FCC had called Houston, Little Rock, and Philadelphia to ask for our permission to share the letters with Comcast and send our complaints to the company.  The Comcast lobbyist in Philly undoubtedly watched on his television as they read his email denying there were any complaints and begging the City Council to ignore our pleas.

Is the FCC trying to simply sweep this all under the rug and abandon their commitment to greater Internet access for lower income families by in effect pretending this is just Comcast’s “problem?”

Seems like we have no choice but to start having families file deceptive advertising complaints against Comcast with the FCC.  The FCC will have a harder time passing that buck back to Comcast.

This shell game has to stop.

New Orleans   

If this were just Google and the gang fighting Hollywood, it would be a yawner, but when trusted sources like Wikipedia, the less than perfect, but upstanding non-profit information resource, and the widely respected Electronic Frontier Foundation, so clearly join the protest, then you know which side is righteous.  Wikipedia took the highly unusual step of shutting down today – love ya, gang! – in order to make their protest crystal clear.  Others are rerouting on-line inquiries to explanations of SOPA and why it doesn’t make sense.

Many sites, like Craigslist, are enabling people who believe in internet access and freedom to write Congress and demand that their representatives stop SOPA and similar bills.  Seems like a good idea to me, so why don’t you spend a minute and join in with me:  www.craigslist.com.

Oh, but be careful which ones you pick because many of them (Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Reddit, Reverse Robocall.com) seem to mainly be harvesting emails for good and whatever.  The link to Electronic Frontier Foundation asks for your zip code, which is legit to find your representative, and gives you some choices for response.

It’s a wild world on the Internet, so PROTEST NOW!  And, caveat emptor!

New Orleans     

I’m delighted:  what a win!  A real bridge being built for crossing the digital divide with affordable internet access for the poor!   Let’s get all of our members, head start clients, free lunch eligible folks in our schools, and people in the community signed up and ready to go, first on Comcast, then on Cox, Times-Warner, and get the rest on board, too!

It turned out we had Local 100 members in Comcast service areas throughout Houston and Harris County, Little Rock, and Shreveport.  Even better we also represented workers in the Head Start programs in all three of those locations and throughout the schools in Houston.   Funny thing though, no one seemed to have heard of the program hardly.  It was virtually impossible to go through the maze of the system and get an application.  When our people asked for applications some were asked to pay for credit checks, which were not part of the program.  One of our members was asked to pay a deposit to be able to qualify.  If you didn’t call the right number, Comcast tried to “up sell” over the $9.95.  It would take two to four weeks to get an application, if one arrived at all.  If you were a tenant you had to prove that you were not someone who rented the apartment years ago and to do so, you had to go downtown to only one place, despite more than a dozen Comcast offices in the city in the case of Houston.  This was not a bridge over the digital divide; this was a false front on a new and higher wall blocking access to the poor.  Oh, and it turned out this really wasn’t about the poor or the unemployed or seniors or any of these groups, but only for families with school age or Head Start children who qualified for free school lunches.  Sigh.

Comcast is big in Philly.  An internet search on the program showed a lot of smiling faces and well known folks touting the importance of this Comcast initiative.  Calling friends and organizers in Philadelphia though produced the same head scratching response.  On first blush they had not heard of the program either.  Action United, a membership organization of low and moderate income families, had trouble finding any members or staff that knew much about this Comcast special on the internet.  They did a phone survey of 500 people and their worst fears were confirmed.  Few knew.  Even fewer had gotten on.   We found the same story in Little Rock.  One of our organizers knew about the program, because some of his children were solicited in their school, but not all of his children.

We reached out for Comcast.  No response in most places.  We reached out for the FCC, and most of the response was to forward the correspondence to Washington, D.C. and more recently to ask if they could forward our concerns to Comcast itself.

Action United, representing our entire coalition of organizations, including A Community Voice in Louisiana and Arkansas Community Organizations in Little Rock, met with the company.

• How many were enrolled?   No answer.  Not sure they knew.
• What are the goals for enrollment?  None and we don’t know yet was the answer.
• What is the real outreach?  They printed more than a million flyers and mailers touting the program.  Where did they go?  How were they supervised?  What were the results?  Anything more active?  Pretty much a lot of shrugging and excuses and whatevers.
• How about the problems around the country?  Hmmm.  No answers here either, though they seemed to say, it was all right to “up sell,” if someone called the “regular” Comcast numbers rather than the “special” “Internet Essentials” number.  Was this a “bait and switch?”

It was a dog-and-pony show rather than a really serious meeting about delivering internet access to lower income families.  They did promise to get back to us later in January, so perhaps they will begin to really commit to delivering access.

In Little Rock this week members of United Labor Unions Local 100 and Arkansas Community Organizations raised the issue with Comcast, but, weirdly, the head of Comcast tried to deny he had even received the certified letter.  Hardly matters, the problem remain the same.  He agreed to meet with us in Little Rock.  We’ll see if he follows through.

The FCC also called Houston, Philly, and Little Rock asking if they could forward our letters to them about problems with Comcast’s internet access program.  I’m not sure if this is a form of the FCC washing their hands of the problem or a signal to Comcast to live up to its promises, rather than its public relations?

Seems clear that thus far this program is mainly window dressing and feel-good-PR, so we seem to have little choice but to help families who are trying to get access to this program to file FCC complaints that so far it is nothing but deceptive advertising.  We have the Xeroxes burning in all of the cities that are part of this collaboration now so as we find more families denied or unable to apply or eligible and caught in the Comcast maze and bureaucracy, they can fill out an FCC complaint and move this up the chain.

Depending on the response, we will begin talking to local city officials about the questionable conduct of Comcast on this vital program.

Overnight we reached other potential partners in Knoxville, Tennessee and Springfield, Massachusetts where Comcast is also the cable company and internet provider.  Looks like we should start making a longer list of where Comcast operates to see if it is really following through anywhere.

We need to start talking to Cox and Time-Warner in other cities to make sure they understand what we have learned in the last several months.

Comcast has one heckuva advertising department, but when it comes to internet access to the poor, they may have run a game on the FCC, because this is NOT a model program.

New Orleans Rinku Sen somehow had perfect timing.  She happened to be in New Orleans as a board member for Restaurant Opportunities Center and its national operations, but as an author sharing the same publisher (

Colorlines it seems, like almost every publication these days, is having the print or web debate.  Rinku seems to feel the web is the future, and given the great interest and success of the magazine on the web, it’s easy to understand why.  More than 100,000 unique visitors are coming onsite to check out Colorlines and its perspective every month.  There’s no way to match that readership in print or unfortunately with subscriptions making them paying customers.

When I moaned at hating the loan delays between receiving and article and putting it between the covers and in the readers hands, and my temptation to start putting it on our website at www.socialpolicy.org , Rinku was clear:  put it on the web! Business model or no, Rinku was clear that it made sense to with the largest voice, regardless.  If anything was going to be subsidized, better to sink the money into 100K.  She mentioned at one point that in analyzing the magazine it was costing them $5000 for every “pair of eyes” that worked on the magazine.  I’m not sure I totally understood that, but I was scared thinking about the economics there.  Perhaps more compelling on the mission side of the magazine, they had found that they were reaching huge numbers of young people on the website, and that was where they felt they could impact the debate and direction of thinking about race most acutely.  Who could disagree?

Rinku’s books also seem to be doing well with movie options being discussed and new versions of old work.  I had the feeling as I dropped her off that the Applied Research Center might be looking at some changes, but was hitting a high stride now that Rinku had taken the wheel and was putting the pedal to the metal.