Statement From Fight for the Future On Day of Historic FCC Net Neutrality Vote

In a matter of hours the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on the strongest net neutrality rules in history. One year ago, no one thought that Title II based net neutrality rules that protect free speech online were possible in Washington, DC. But the Internet rose up to defend itself, and it won.

Fight for the Future, a digital rights group that led the grassroots charge for net neutrality, issued the following statement:

Fight for the Future co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng said, "This is our free speech struggle in the digital age. Institutions of power should know by now: Internet users will not stand idly by while anyone tries to take their freedom away. And when Internet users come together to fight for something they believe in, nothing can stop them."

Fight for the Future worked with a broad coalition of advocacy groups and small tech companies to organize an escalating series of actions including Occupy the FCC and the massive Internet Slowdown protest. Using cutting edge technology, they built tools to amplify the voices of Internet users, including CallTheFCC.com, which circumvented the FCC's switchboard to and drove more than 55,000 phone calls directly to the desks of FCC employees responsible for the new net neutrality rules. Over the past month, they organized the Internet Countdown, the largest sustained online protest in history, which brought together nearly 20,000 websites to count down the seconds until the FCC's historic vote.

Fight for the Future are a 6 person team best known for their role as catalysts in the epic SOPA blackout in 2012 and as the organizers of Reset the Net, an online privacy campaign that was endorsed by Edward Snowden. The group was recently profiled in the Boston Globe for their pivotal role in winning the fight for net neutrality.