ALEC Legislators Try To Hide In Plain Sight
Thursday, December 5, 2013
(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)
“Are you state legislators?” Hand
outstretched, Arlene Holt Baker approached the
group of well-dressed men gathered in the
atrium of the Grand Hyatt. The men’s smiles
quickly vanished when Diallo Brooks asked them
to sign a pledge that they would put their
“constituents first – before corporate
interests and their lobbies.” State
legislators from across the country were
gathered at the Hyatt Thursday for the annual
meeting of the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC), the “ powerful, secretive
organization funded by the Koch brothers and
other corporate interests that is famous for
drafting conservative legislation that
Republican state legislatures adopt down to the
last semicolon,” according to the Washington
Post’s Dana Milbanks. While dozens of
protestors – and a giant inflatable fatcat
– rallied outside, Baker, the AFL-CIO’s
former Executive Vice President, Brooks, of the
People For the American Way, and new APWU
president Mark Dimondstein slipped past
security guards into the Hyatt in an attempt to
buttonhole legislators who quickly hid their
name badges and scurried away. “You can run
from us, but you can't hide!” thundered Metro
Washington Labor Council president Jos Williams
in front of the Hyatt, while Baker said that
ALEC members “should be ashamed” by their
refusal to sign the pledge to uphold democracy,
a stark contrast to ALEC’s draft loyalty oath
for legislators declaring that they will “act
with care and loyalty and put the interests of
the organization
first.”
See also: Internal
Documents Show that ALEC Is Bleeding Members,
Corporate Sponsors Money: An article from
the Guardian on Tuesday revealed internal
documents from the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) that show the
conservative, pro-corporate organization is
facing significant trouble, having seen sharp
declines in membership, corporate sponsorship
and income in recent months.