As we head into the August, Congress will be on recess and most of your senators and representatives will be heading back to their home states. That means it’ll be easier for you to reach out and talk to them or their staff and ask them to act on important legislation. Earlier this year, the Save the Internet Act—a bill which would restore the net neutrality protections of the 2015 Open Internet Order and make them the law of the land—passed the House of Representatives. The Senate needs to be pressured into following suit.

To help you do that, we’re updating and relaunching our Net Neutrality Defense Guide. Last year, the Defense Guide was focused on using a vehicle called the Congressional Review Act (the CRA) to overturn the FCC’s repeal. Since the Senate voted for the CRA with a bipartisan majority vote, last year’s guide focused on getting the House of Representatives to vote.

This year, we have the opposite situation. Since the House has voted for the Save the Internet Act and the Senate has not, and our guide has been updated to reflect the new bill, the new target, and the new arguments we’ve heard for and against the Save the Internet Act.

Net neutrality means that ISPs like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon don’t get to block websites, slow speeds on certain sites, or make deals that give faster speeds to some content and not others. It means that you—and not your ISP—control your experience online. A free and open Internet depends on net neutrality to maintain a level playing field, which disappears once ISPs are free to do whatever they want with your traffic. Established players—or companies under the same umbrella as the ISP (like, say, HBO and AT&T)—shouldn’t get to leverage their money and connections to get to customers more easily than competitors with better products, but less money.

We can prevent that by passing strong net neutrality protections, like those in the Save the Internet Act. The Senate needs to know that this is an important issue, supported by a majority of Americans, and that we want them to vote on this bill.

The Net Neutrality Defense Guide is built to empower both regular people and local organizations to make themselves heard on this issue. It includes:

  • A how-to on setting up in-person meetings with senators
  • Tips on how to get press coverage and place op-eds in local papers
  • A sample letter to send to senators
  • A sample call script for calling local and DC offices of senators
  • Basic talking points and counters to common arguments against net neutrality
  • An image pack you can use and remix for your own campaigns

The guide is located here, along with a downloadable pdf version. Get out there and make yourself heard!