“The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),” according to People for the American Way, “is a front group for powerful corporate interests that is behind and actually writes some of the most extreme right-wing bills in state legislatures across the country.” It has been behind various voter ID laws that have passed in different states around the country. It is the source of Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. And it spawned the Florida ‘stand your ground’ law that has been faulted as a contributing factor in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
ALEC is pro-corporate and pro-privatization. As we wrote earlier this week, they draft legislation that privatizes schools and prisons, busts unions, and undermines environmental regulations–and then shop the bills out to state legislators who turn them into law. Paul Krugman explained in a New York Times column:
A legislator goes into a closed-door meeting with corporations, including a big operator of private prisons, and soon afterwards submits legislation that … sends lots of people to those private prisons.
And ALEC foments fear and division in the belief that xenophobia will help further their goals.
Activists have been working to expose ALEC for years, and today they took their movement to the streets. Supporters of People for the American Way, the NAACP, the Urban League, Color of Change, and other groups turned out in front of ALEC’s Washington, DC office to protest ALEC’s culture of corrupt extremism.
Watch our video from the protest here: