How’s this for effective activism?

Let’s say you visit your local library and check out Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and The Kinsey Report, both of which are included in a conservative hit list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Or maybe Heather Has Two Mommies, or a few books about guns and hunting.

As you leave the library, a police officer stops you and says that you cannot drive home with those “controversial” books in your car — not on the main road anyway. You’d wonder what they were smoking down at the precinct, right?

Well, in essence, that’s what Verizon Wireless did to the reproductive rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America in September. When the organization asked Verizon for a “short code” in order to send text messages to the cell phones of people who had requested information, Verizon said no. Other mobile networks had given NARAL the go-ahead, but Verizon contended it had the right to block messages it deemed “controversial” or “unsavory.”

The news of Verizon’s denial of service went public with a Sept. 27 New York Times article that positioned the dispute as a “skirmish in the larger battle over the question of ‘net neutrality’ — whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they provide to customers.” Thousands of angry customers, myself included, immediately called and wrote to Verizon. With egg on its face, the company reversed itself the same day.

I remember opening NARAL’s action alert the day after it was sent. As a recently former Verizon customer (I was able to squirm out of my contract when I moved, since my new place doesn’t get decent coverage), I was eager to rip ‘em a new one, but I was surprised – nay, shocked – to find that the action alert had already expired.

It doesn’t happen often, but it’s an awesome feeling when your ideological opponents buckle so quickly under the pressure. Too cool.

Remember this one the next time I pass along an action alert…

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Tagged: naral now national organization of women below the belt Kim Gandy verizon net neutrality feminism abortion activism reproductive rights

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 2:00 pm and is filed under bitches is crazy, the internets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.