In a recent piece for Al Jazeera America, Free Press Senior External Affairs Director Joseph Torres explores the broader cultural impact of the Jan. 14 ruling that overturned the Net Neutrality protections.

Without Net Neutrality, we are entering an era where Internet service providers are free to block or discriminate against Web content. This could be especially disastrous, Torres writes, for people of color and other marginalized groups, who have used the open Internet to “tell their own stories and to organize for racial and social justice”:

Several advocacy groups have used the open Internet to organize online campaigns to protest against racism, hate speech and unfair treatment of immigrants. For example, ColorOfChange, an online advocacy organization, uses the open Internet as a tool to empower the black community to speak out against injustice and to make government more responsive to its concerns. The immigrant-rights group Presente has organized online campaigns to challenge inhumane immigration policies. Colorlines, a daily news website that focuses on racial justice, relies on the open Internet as a platform to report on critical stories often ignored by the mainstream media.

But this may all come to an end.

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