Demonstrators protest against ALEC in the lobby of the Palmer House Hotel. (Courtesy of Flickr user Mikasi)
The notorious American Legislative Exchange Council is meeting in
Chicago, and the city’s mighty protest warriors are in effect: writes
Micah Uetricht today on the
Nation website, “A crowd of forty
protesters took over the lobby of the Palmer Hotel on Monday, with six
people arrested as religious, environmental, and labor activists
denounced ALEC. A group of several dozen hoodie-wearing protesters
staged a die-in at the hotel this morning, noting the group’s role in
spreading Stand Your Ground laws that helped protect George Zimmerman
after shooting unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, a mass rally has been
called for Thursday organized by the Chicago Federation of Labor, and
other actions are expected throughout the week.”
By now most everyone on the left knows of ALEC and how it works,
which is an accomplishment in itself: it writes “model bills” intended
to ram right-wing notions through state legislatures, to institute the
“right to work” (for less), to repeal the minimum wage—and, of course,
Stand Your Ground. And they did so under the radar—until, that is, a
brilliant and concerted activist effort to flush them out into the light
of day. Now you can learn everything you need to know about them in
this outstanding episode of
Bill Moyers & Company, “The
United States of ALEC.” Which means, in one important respect, ALEC has
already been beaten. For escaping the notice of Washington-focused
observers was always their goal.
As the 1980 book Thunder on the Right,
by Alan Crawford, documented (a must-read for anyone who wants to
understand the rise of the Reagan Revolution), there had been an
American Legislative Exchange Council before the right-wing godfather
Paul Weyrich convinced Richard Mellon Scaife to cough up $80,000 in seed
funding to turn it into a right-wing ideological wrecking crew in 1974.
But it had merely been sleepy educational exchange for right-leaning
state legislators, and one which besides, as a 501(c)3, was banned from
direct political participation. One day, however, quite nearly out of
the blue, that $80,000 check arrived from Scaife. ALEC’s executive
director, whose name was Jaunita Barrett, asked Weyrich, Scaife’s
emissary, why in the world he would want to underwrite such a shell of
an outfit, and a non-political one to boot. He responded that this was
precisely her organization’s appeal: “Juanita, ALEC is the only state
legislative organization in the country—of our persuasion—which has a
501(c)3. If they took ALEC to Washington and did a good job, they…could
go back to Scaife and get Scaife to set up a Political Action Committee
to finance state legislative campaign races.”
It worked: dismissing the meddlesome Jaunita
Barnett, ALEC set up shop in both Washington and the rent-free office of
a conservative Illinois state representative, whose phone lines it
illegally made use of, and began surreptitiously advancing the
conservative infiltration of state legislative agendas. ALEC wasn’t even
mentioned in any newspapers until 1978. By which point the
Trojan Horse had already begun ferrying politicians on propaganda
junkets Taiwan, sponsoring conferences to seed Proposition 13–style
movements around the country—and surely more, but it’s hard to know
what, because they had been so effective in avoiding publicity. And
hardly at all before the 1990s—and, until a couple of years ago, even
political junkies didn’t know it existed, even as it became one of the
most powerful forces in state capitols around the country.
Well, ALEC can’t hide any more. Certainly not
in Chicago. I’ll be there yelling and screaming at them in front of the
Palmer House Hotel
tomorrow, Thursday, at noon, side by side with my Chicago Teachers Union brothers and sisters—kids, come by and say “Hi!”
Micah Uetricht writes about the coalition of labor, community and environmental groups is making it clear that ALEC isn’t welcome in the union town.
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