According to wise Latino elder Cisneros:

“Today’s mobile technology allows teachers to teach their children about the Seven Wonders of the World in a way never before experienced by kids who came before. Learning comes to life with the Internet; it allows kids to experience almost firsthand what the teacher is teaching. This added dimension in the classroom backed up by access at home or on a teenager’s smartphone will add to the sentiment that nothing is out of reach for this child.

The importance of high-speed Internet service can be seen everywhere these days. Not just in classrooms as mentioned, but also in the entrepreneurial world as small businesses continue to fuel the engine of growth and job creation. Any new business today needs instant access to customers and suppliers. President Obama has been a leader on this, calling for all Americans to have high-speed Internet access and setting a goal of covering 98 percent of Americans by 2016. The proposed ATT/T-Mobile transaction is purported to cover 97.3 percent of Americans, giving them the ability to access 4G LTE mobile technology. This is the fastest wireless Internet access available, and it’s the kind you need to take full advantage of new online opportunities in areas such as business and education. In pure numbers, the merger has the potential to bring high-speed service to an additional 55 million Americans.”

That is why I urge federal officials to approve the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger. The company has committed to spend an additional $8 billion to expand next-generation wireless Internet service if the deal is approved. Wireless service offers the best, fastest hope to reach President Obama’s dream of universal Internet access. This is quite literally an investment in our future competitiveness. It means more students will graduate prepared for college. It means more businessmen and women will open more businesses in their communities which will in turn create jobs. And so forth.”

Plainly, this opinion piece by Cisneros was written to push the momentum that many Latino organizations have helped propel in support of this planned merger. Improving educational outcomes has more to do with promoting literacy, persistence, creating better learning environments at home and in our communities. While I love the internet and online learning, it is only one piece of the pie or rather one tool to help a student achieve success. Some may even argue that the internet creates distractions for students (time spent on social media, online games, and other time sink activities that are now online or available via cell phone).

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) will host a number of events next week that celebrate Latino history, heritage and the American dream.  The event will be both a significant and memorable experience as six of President Obama’s cabinet secretaries as well as his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama plan to attend.  The program also promises to be both exciting and educational, as more than 3,000 Latino leaders from across the country, including more than 20 members of Congress, gather together to discuss major policy issues affecting the Latino community. As a former mayor and concerned member of the Latino community, I feel it is tremendously important that we consider how key policy issues affect Americans – ALL Americans, including the growing population of Hispanics – and am pleased that the CHCI events will provide a platform for this important dialogue.

The list of policy issues to be discussed next week is broad – spanning from education to health and health care reform to immigration reform – and includes one issue that I think is the stepping stone for the future and empowerment for Latino kids:  technology.  Technology – and broadband technology, in particular, is an empowering tool that holds the key to our economic equality.  Unfortunately, the digital divide that exists today disproportionately affects the Latino community, placing both native-born Latinos and foreign-born Latinos at a serious disadvantage.  A recent Pew report finds that Hispanics are less connected to the internet than non-Hispanics overall and there is a tremendous disparity between the internet usage adoption rates of U.S. born Latinos and foreign-born Latinos.  I know that we can do better than this.

High speed Internet access is a transforming technology that provides countless benefits and unprecedented opportunity to its many users – allowing increased productivity and helping to develop tomorrow’s leaders.  In our increasingly digital society the cost of living without this tool grows greater every day – making it critical that we ensure all Americans have affordable access.

Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) laid out a vision to achieving universal access with the National Broadband Plan.  I believe that in doing this – while maintaining an open Internet – we will be on the right track to create jobs, revive our economy and provide valuable opportunity to Latinos and other underserved and un-served communities.

Moving forward policymakers should ensure that all stakeholders are working together to ensure that we are successful in reaching the goal of affordable access to high speed Internet.

As we celebrate our Hispanic Heritage this month and all year, it is important that we honor the progress that we have made – and continue to look for opportunities and pursue policies that will enable continued progress and success.  I am confident that technology provides a solid path to both.

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Last week a new coalition, Latinos for Internet Freedom “LIF”, was formed to fight for internet freedom and to support the concept of net neutrality. Over 40 local and national groups comprise this coalition from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists to more local groups like the New Mexico Media Literacy Project and CARECEN. These groups realize that our livelihood depends on an open and free internet that allows us to communicate, organize, and challenge the traditional propaganda machines.

If you notice, some of our community’s most prominent or noted civil rights organizations have not joined the newly formed LIF coalition. Notably absent are NCLR, MALDEF, and LULAC. However, this should not be a big surprise since big telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon tend to be high level donors to these organizations. But since many of the grassroots organizations do work that fits in line with and supports the stated goals of the larger Latino organizations, I would hope that they (the holy trinity of NCLR, MALDEF, and LULAC) will eventually join this fight.

I was able to ask Roberto Lovato of Presente.org about the absence of some of these larger Latino civil rights organizations from the net neutrality fight, and he offered this:

“The response to our launch of the Latinos for Internet Freedom coalition has been overwhelming. Latinos and non-Latinos from across the country have stepped to say they want to keep the internet as open and free from the excessive greed and control of extremely powerful corporations. These same corporations that have, over the past 10 years, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence “opinion leaders” and “civil rights” organizations. That so many leaders and organizations have joined our fight despite the attempts to buy Latino opinion speaks well of these leaders and organizations- and of our cause. Other leaders “brillan por su ausencia”, they shine for their absence against the dark cloud of corporate control looming over the internet. The conspicuous silence of some “civil rights leaders” around network neutrality, an issue at the core of the civil and human rights struggles of the present and future, provides, I believe, an opportunity for the courage and conviction of the brave new leaders of the Latino community to shine forth. Digital age activists like LIF members  Amalia Deloney of the Center for Media Justice, Andrea Quijada of the Media Literacy Project and Steven Renderos of the Main Street Project stand to inherit and redefine what were the civil rights struggle of the industrial age civil rights organizations. They are at the heart of Latinos for Internet Freedom.

To my knowledge, Janet Murguia and the Natonal Council of La Raza have remained neutral about network neutrality.”

If you want to preserve the free and open internet that allows you to go where you want to when you get online, please take action here and consider voicing your concern to Latino oriented organizations who are not yet taking a stand in the net neutrality fight.

By Jorge Bauermeister

The political world was abuzz this week as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid unequivocally stated, “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.”  Senator Reid’s comment was inarticulate at best and serves as an unfortunate reminder of the all too common practice of inserting race, gender and even fear into American politics. His quote also reminded me of a blog post I wrote in July, Free Press: Shame on You! For those not familiar with Free Press, it’s an organization dedicated to media policy and is a powerful lobbying force in Washington.

In the world of political blogs and 24/7 news coverage, I’m rarely surprised anymore, however after reading a report paid for by Free Press, yes even I was a little shaken.  This wasn’t a slip of the tongue on the campaign trail, it was a well thought out strategy to categorize and influence Americans.  While funded by Free Press the report was composed by the Harmony Institute, a non-profit research institute according to their website.  The goal of the report is to explain how to sway the public on an Internet regulation policy known as Net Neutrality.

While the lengthy report is filled with questionable logic, one section is particularly troublesome especially for those in minority communities.  The report explains that “core supporters” of their policy issues are affluent whites while the group labeled “persuadables” includes African Americans, women, the unmarried and those of a liberal persuasion.  Additional characteristics of “persuadables” include living in the southern region of the US or rural areas and having a low income.  What’s equally disturbing is the patronizing tone throughout the entire report.  I am dismayed at the sponsors of any report that can so easily talk down to others and label people as “targets” without any thought to the repercussions of lumping people together based on skin color, gender or circumstance.  Haven’t we been taught that our individuality is what makes our country unique?  Isn’t our common thread as Americans the belief that others have the right to think for themselves even if we disagree?

As a Latino American I certainly hope Free Press and Harmony Institute take stock in the thoughtful criticisms of their report.  We must ask ourselves, should race and financial status be part of our political mudslinging for the foreseeable future?  While Senator Reid is certainly taking some heat for his comments, I’ve seen little in the press or blogosphere bringing attention to the alarming Harmony Institute report.  Please tell your friends, fellow bloggers and fellow Americans, this sort of calculated exploitation of women, minorities and the disenfranchised will not stand.

I will be ramping up the blogging in the next few days, but I thought that I would share some articles that I have been reading and pondering the last few days before delving into more detail and commentary in the coming weeks:

1. Everyone should read this article in today’s Washington Post about how there has zero net job creation in the last decade. This part is particularly worth highlighting:

“There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.”

Part of this problem involves the exportation of manufacturing and the reality that the United States has transitioned into more of a service economy, while capital was funneled into the housing industry that went bust.

2. The Pew Hispanic Center came out with a report a few weeks ago revealing that more Latinos are using the internet, so the digital divide is lessening. This will have implications for blogs like this and the dissemination of content online and how Latinos use it. I’m hoping that more of our people will start reading news from different sources and digesting information from different blogs from all ends of the political spectrum.

3. Drug violence in Mexico kills an up and coming community leader from El Monte, California. Right now people are saying that this was a random act of violence, but it will be interesting to see what the investigations reveal in coming days. I do believe that as violence escalates and is perpetuated that there will be more serious consideration of legalizing certain “drugs” like we are seeing in California with marijuana right now, as a case can be made for reducing violence and increasing tax revenue.

If you have any other blog post ideas or articles you would like to explore, please post links and share your thoughts.

Considering how quickly information moves on the internet, the conveniences, and even cost savings of purchasing certain items on-line, the Latino community, as a whole, is at a clear disadvantage in not getting up to speed with current technology. Additionally, Latino school children could suffer for not growing up in homes where technology is available to access the internet to complete homework assignments, learn how search databases, and even communicate with instructors and classmates. 

The digital divide is clearly an issue that the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus should address, and it seems that they already are atempting to do so with a Task Force to focus on Corporate America/Technology, Communications, & the Arts. I certainly hope that the Caucus reads this study and summons some of the experts in access to technology to devise policies to tackle the digital divide in our communities. Congressman Joe Baca is heading this task force, and from the looks of his own website… well you be the judge.