OCCUPY Silicon Valley April 4

I applied for a picketing permit for Santa Clara County, CA. It is time to picket Silicon Valley, CA Internet companies regarding censorship at their sites. I applied for April 4th weekend, in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination anniversary. We must not forget that he and tens of thousands of other people gave their lives in part so that Americans could have freedom of press and free speech. I do not feel that we should be censored without objecting. Our failure to protest censorship disrespects Dr. King's sacrifice and the sacrifices of all people who died fighting for civil rights and social justice throughout American history as well as in the military. I find that most human and civil rights activists consider themselves to be censored. Whether it is by the Internet companies or by the National Security Agency (NSA), it is done THROUGH the Internet companies that should deliver services without interference.

I believe that African Americans should have all the benefits of membership at Internet companies that Caucasians have. Services should not be withheld to prevent free speech to any human and civil rights activists and organizations. I believe all of the Internet companies have the capacity to identify the sources of interference and stop it from happening, but we have failed to give them an incentive. For instance, I should have had the option to secure the announcement about "Occupy Silicon Valley" to the top of my Facebook wall, but I did not. That option has been REMOVED from my settings. Black women should have the same options as white women; human and civil rights advocates should have the same capacity to share information online as people who share cake recipes, but that is not what happens. Give me your thoughts in comments, IF they let you.

I believe most or all of the censorship is by the NSA, using the methods Jacob Applebaum reveals in his two videos wherein he exposes how NSA takes over people's computers and telephones.

We are thankful to Applebaum and aware of the risks he took to expose NSA's censorship methods. But much of the interference seems to also demand access to one's Internet sites to accomplish. For instance, some of the urls to my articles published in my Care2 Sharebook were corrupted. The three w's were exchanged for the word "primate," and those links led to a large, black gorilla rather than to my articles. When I wrote to the Care2 Helpdesk about it, the Helpdesk did nothing to address this racist behavior which censored you and me while insulting my race. As Frederick Douglass pointed out, censorship is a double wrong. Censoring online authors deprives their readers of receiving information that was published or would have been published for the readers' access.

Years after my gorilla censorship, I read about Dr. Head, a teaching surgeon at UCLA Medical School. Dr. Head was demeaned by students with the apparent approval of the school's administration. The students used a photograph of Dr. Head and superimposed his head onto a picture of a gorilla's body. They then put a photograph of a Caucasian department chairman behind the doctor's massive, hairy gorilla body to simulate sodomy and bestiality. This picture was included in a slide show during a resident graduation event in 2006, after it had been reviewed by staff. The doctor complained like I did, was ignored like I was, then sued and won a sizable settlement. It is disturbing to know that young Caucasians in training to become doctors and young Caucasians in the computer industry are as prejudice in the 21st century as their grand daddies taught them to be. And most of them probably call themselves "liberals."

African Americans in the 21st century and all human and civil rights advocates of every race are too laid back. We cannot merely sit home and type our grievances. We cannot simply start another petition from which NSA steals signatures and issues denials of service (DOS). We must leave the keyboards and protest in person. 

I recognize that I am America's most censored person. Nobody else in the USA is censored as heavily as I am. But everyone who I speak with in human rights or civil rights is censored to some degree. "Occupy Silicon Valley April 4th" is a protest is for everyone who was ever blocked from tagging people on Facebook photographs or prevented from adding friends. It is for people whose Internet posts suddenly disappeared. It is for people who were wrongly locked out of their accounts on Internet social sites or found their videos had been removed. This protest is for our children. We must keep the Internet accessible, or future generations will have no place to share information. Mainstream media cannot be trusted. We must have an uncensored Internet to educate, motivate, energize, mobilize and organize to take our communities to a higher level of awareness and stronger commitment to justice. We must stop being armchair revolutionaries and hit the pavement like the Freedom Riders did decades ago.

OCCUPY SILICON VALLEY APRIL 4th

References:
Dr. Head v. UCLA: Gorilla Warfare
http://legalvictories.blogspot.com/2013/07/dr-head-v-ucla-gorilla-warfare.html

Jacob Applebaum's video revealing NSA takeovers of our phones and computers:
"30c3: To Protect And Infect, Part 2" (embedded below)
http://youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA





Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. ~Frederick Douglass

MaryLovesJustice ~ MaryLovesJustice@gmail.com ~ (678)531-0262

If we receive your email or phone message, I will respond within 48 hours. If we do not, please consider your message stolen and try again. The web address for this protest is
http://occupysiliconvalley.blogspot.com

Repeat of paragraph 1:  I applied for a picketing permit for Santa Clara County, CA. It is time to picket Silicon Valley, CA Internet companies regarding censorship at their sites. I applied for April 4th weekend, in commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination anniversary. We must not forget that he and tens of thousands of other people gave their lives in part so that Americans could have freedom of press and free speech. I do not feel that we should be censored without objecting. Our failure to protest censorship disrespects Dr. King's sacrifice and the sacrifices of all people who died fighting for civil rights and social justice throughout American history as well as in the military. I find that most human and civil rights activists consider themselves to be censored. Whether it is by the Internet companies or by the National Security Agency (NSA), it is done THROUGH the Internet companies that should deliver services without interference.