New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a press conference Wednesday in Washington, DC to denounce the "Shoot First" law conceived by the National Rifle Association and promoted through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The law, pushed by its supporters under the name "Stand Your Ground," had been cited in Florida to potentially allow Trayvon Martin's killer to escape liability.
On April 11, the Center for Media and Democracy filed a letter with the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board documenting how the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, provided the ethics board erroneous information about corporate-funded gifts to ALEC legislative members. This letter supplements the complaint CMD filed last month.
Wendy's International, the parent company of Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburger, is the sixth corporation to say that it is no longer a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past week. Wendy's International sent an email to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) this morning stating that the fast food chain had decided not to renew their membership at the end of 2011. CMD
launched ALEC Exposed and named Wendy's as corporate member in July 2011.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed Senate Bill 202, essentially a reversal of Wisconsin's Equal Pay for Equal Work Act (Act 20), into law on April 5, 2012, more than a month after the bill was passed. Despite Walker's attempts to sign the bill in secret, without the customary notice given to legislators and the public, the move did not go unnoticed and was rapidly drawn up into the national battle over what women's advocates and leading Democrats have dubbed a national "war on women."
Hours after the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and other progressive groups publicly called on McDonald's to drop its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the fast food giant announced it has left the organization. McDonald's is the fifth major corporation in a week to withdraw from ALEC, and groups are now calling for legislators to follow suit.
Roll Call reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will join Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft and Intuit in withdrawing its financial support from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Roll Call rarely writes about ALEC, but did have an exhibition booth at the ALEC 2011 meeting in New Orleans.
Gates spokesman Chris Williams, while careful to note that Gates has never been a formal ALEC member, told the paper that it does not plan to renew its financial support for ALEC's education initiatives. "We have made a single grant, narrowly and specifically focused on providing information to ALEC-affiliated state legislators on teacher effectiveness and school finance," said Williams.
More than 60 progressive groups are uniting behind the effort known as "99% Spring" and are planning to train 100,000 people across the country in methods of non-violent direct action.
During the week of April 9 – 15th, leaders from the groups will converge to train young activists to tell the story of what happened to the national economy, learn the history of non-violent direct action, and use that knowledge to take action on campaigns to win change. Lead organizing groups include the United Auto Workers, AFL-CIO, National Peoples Action, The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Rebuild the Dream, Moveon.org, and UNITE, the hospitality industry union. Following in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ghandi, the effort hopes to give young activists the tools to organize actions and follow in the footsteps of the Wisconsin Uprising and the Occupy Wall Street Movement. In some areas the trainings are supported by OWS, in other areas they are not.
The executive director of Gun Owners of America Larry Pratt has hit the airwaves with a rare defense of George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old man who shot and killed unarmed African-American high school student Trayvon Martin. Prosecutors and law enforcement in Florida have cited Florida's "stand your ground" (aka "shoot first") law, which was conceived by the National Rifle Association and ratified by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Pratt is a former ALEC board member and notorious for racially-charged rhetoric.
A stampede seems to be on the way as more and more groups break ties and dump ALEC.
Public interest groups campaigning to convince Coca-Cola to break ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) scored a major victory yesterday when Coke announced it had "elected to discontinue its membership with" ALEC.
According to a statement Coke made to the Washington Examiner, "Our involvement with ALEC was focused on efforts to oppose discriminatory food and beverage taxes, not on issues that have no direct bearing on our business. We have a long-standing policy of only taking positions on issues that impact our Company and industry."
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