Recently I have been involved in organizing a campaign to rally support within a cross section of communities for Digital Inclusion. This topic has already presented itself as the over-arching focus for my personal grassroots efforts this year.

Today, February 15th, 2010 marks our first National Day of Action for the cause and you can keep up with all the real time action on Twitter by searching the hash tag #mediajustice and of course you can keep up with all the San Antonio happenings, including live updates from our press conference by following any one of these feeds.

What began a couple years back with new colleagues in Texas Media Empowerment Project (now the Media Justice League) as a discussion about the role of the Internet and technology in this new age has brought to light many realizations for me.

For one, though the topic itself covers bases and concerns for so many other grassroots organizations across the globe, the amount of individuals strategically pressing forward on the issue of digital inclusion are few and far between. This adds emphasis to our dedication on the matter and calls us to solidify our efforts with media justice advocates across the country.

Secondly, digital inclusion is not exactly a recurring dinner table conversation. Even I myself needed help piecing the idea together. That means that the majority of work on this frontier lies in educating our communities and the rest of the country about the need for net neutrality and universal broadband.

The principle behind digital inclusion affirms that our world and its ever evolving technological landscape once again demands an end to divisions between the haves and have-nots. The problems we face today are more apparently a class issue than any other and it’s time for a crash course education as to why. Our research shows that the struggling middle and lower class are constantly suffering the brunt of every financial crisis. When that crisis bleeds over into the knowledge gaining world presented in self-education through the internet, the social implications become extremely grim.

If we continue to leave our less fortunate neighbors behind, the digital division will only grow. This means that those who cannot afford internet access will only become more intimidated and will disengage from those who are defining the future of our society. Many of the people we have talked to exhibit a general fear of the Internet and it is my belief that this fear is bred by the lack of emphasis on behalf of our local governments to educate the public and preserve internet access as a human right.

What’s more is that the development of a sustainable world for future generations depends on the engaged involvement of these marginalized communities as much if not more so than the influence of affluent business heads of the past 100 years who seem to have no regard for such ideas. They are the ones suffering most on the freedom front and the time to take corrective action is to act now.

The 2010 launch of this campaign culminates in a pledge drive to gather signatures of individuals and groups ready to be digital inclusion champions, or as we like to think, the super heroes and heroines of our day. Simultaneously you can see the combined efforts of our outreach in this article, written in collaboration with Rebecca Ohnemus about why net-neutrality is important for musicians, and in the video below, which captures the perspective of local community organizers, media professionals, and artists about problems and solutions surrounding digital inclusion.

This San Antonio-based action is just a small amount of the extraordinary work motivated individuals are doing around the country…

… and we’re only getting started.