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fotkividiki…

agent007…

If you live in another state, find out of similar legislation is on the table in your state, and what you can do to stop it. In Illinois, for instance, visit keepusconnected. In Pennsylvania it’s Keep It Local! And be mindful of the fact that since Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox and Charter are big contributors to black legislators and practically owners of the National Black Caucus of Black State Legislators that black legislators may know LESS than you about this issue, though they all have well developed opinions on Confederate flags, reparations and apologies.

Sorry for being so longwinded.

Personally, I think the perennial fixation of southern black legislators for sputtering, bloviating outrage about confederate flags, memorials to the white folks’ lost cause and now apologies for slavery are born of their impotence and corruption and general uselessness to the black body politic.

An apology for slavery will get minor headlines and make talk show fodder but it will not educate one black child, create one black job, or boost one black business or not for profit organization. It’s purely useless political theatre, rich in symbolic value and totally without substance.

If you want a fine example of what kinds of creatures most GA’s black legislators are and what opportunities they blow every session to grow jobs, education and opportunities for black Georgia you need look no further than GA HB 227.

Current and next generation fiber optic cable is how the new superfast broadband internet, dozens or hundreds of times faster than current speeds, will be delivered to homes and businesses in the coming decades. So the misleadingly named “cable franchise” bills being introduced in dozens of state legislatures this year are really broadband internet deployment bills. Georgia’s version, among the worst of the worst, was written by Comcast and AT$T lobbyists, and freezes black and rural communites out of broadband deployment permanently by instituting a statewide cable franchise regime that OKs digital redlining and cherry picking, kills network neutrality, ends all community access and educational channels, absolves cable providers from any responsibility for wiring Georgia schools, libraries, universities and local governments, and excuses all cable companies from existing franchise agreements with local governments. Last week it passed the GA House, which has dozens of black members, with only 2 opposing votes. One of them black. It’s in the GA senate now, and we have only about a week to stop the thing.

In the new century, broadband internet deployment will be as esential for education and economic development as paved streetsd and roads. But black GA black legislators (and the National Black Caucus of Black State Legislators) would rather discourse about apologies for slavery.

Not that hifalutin discussions of white privilege, reparations for slavery and all that don’t have a place, shouldn’t be conduced somewhere. They should. But the GA legislature, like quite a few states, is only in session for 60 days. The fact that our black legislators would rather focus on this crap instead of real work that affects real lives tells you all you really need to know about the distance between life as it is lived by ordinary black folks and the dog & pony show put on by our traditional black leadership class

What a joke.