Protesters in Chicago Take on ALEC's 'Forty Years of Corporate Greed'

[Bill USA]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/08-6

Community activists, labor groups, and other progressives are making noise outside a downtown Chicago hotel on Thursday in order to draw attention to the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council's (or ALEC)—derisively known as the rightwing's regressive "law factory"—being held inside.

The anti-ALEC rally—led by groups that included StandUp! Chicago, the Center for Media & Democracy, ColorOfChange, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and others—was taking place outside the Palmer House Hotel with a call to put an end to the powerful lobbyist group.

Described as the engine of the corporate "retrograde agenda" by CMD's Mary Bottari, the laws proposed by ALEC members include "bills to roll back wages, worker rights, access to paid sick leave, and even renewable energy standards."

CMD's Brendan Fischer, who has studied the group extensively, called their operations a collusion between corporate interests and rightwing lawmakers.

ALEC is celebrating its 40th anniversary of operation this year, but the meeting in Chicago—though designed to be more secretive than ones in the past—will follow the same playbook in which "lobbyists from U.S. and foreign corporations will vote as equals alongside state legislators to adopt ALEC "model" bills, which then will be distributed nationwide with little or no disclosure of their ALEC roots."



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