Telecom spying and media control were the focus of a day of protest around the country Wednesday. Activists in several US cities held rallies outside the headquarters of telecom companies that have become implicated in the NSA spy scandal and that have lobbied against net neutrality. Here in New York, Democracy Now caught up with a protest outside the offices of telecom giant Verizon.

• Betty Yu of Manhattan Neighborhood Network: “This COPE Act, if it were to be passed in Congress, would potentially dismantle Public, Educational, and Governmental TV, known as Public Access Television. So it would dismantle the public access television stations in all the five boroughs here in New York City, and in the 3,000 access centers across the country. This would be damaging for our free speech, our media democracy, and many local communities that depend on public access, again, to have their voices heard. These telecom companies do not want to pay the local franchise fees that the cable companies do now, they want to reap all the profits, and they don’t want to be accountable to the public interest, or to local communities.”