Should we be picketing our local chamber of commerce?

[alfredo]

It might be a good educational tool. Tie them to the GOP and foreign dictators. Demand they show where the money comes from, and where it is going.

[grantcart]

1. no but a large number of phone calls would have an impact

An even greater lever is to get the list of their local business supporters and call the local owners asking them if they know that the US Chamber is using foreign money to take jobs from their customers.

I don't think that the US Chamber has any connection with local chambers at all but asking local businesses will have the greatest impact.

[alfredo]

5. Lobbyist who represent foreign interests, have to register

as a foreign agent.

http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Lobbying_for_foreign_interests

Definition of Foreign Agents

An agent of a foreign principal (a foreign agent) is any individual (agent, representative, employee, servant) or organization that acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal, or whose activities are directed by a foreign principal, <22 U.S.C.§611 (c)> who:

Engages in political activities for or in the interests of such foreign principal. The term “political activities” means any activity that the person engaging in believes will in any way influence any agency or official of the United States government or any section of the public with reference to U.S. domestic or foreign policies or with reference to the political or public interests of a foreign principal. <22 U.S.C.§611 (o)>
Acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal. The term also includes any person who is engaged in furnishing, disseminating, or publishing accounts, descriptions, information, or data with respect to the political, economic, cultural, or other benefits of any foreign principal.
Solicits or dispenses any thing of value within the United States for a foreign principal.
Represents the interests of a foreign principal before any agency or official of the U.S. government.

[Ineeda]

2. My city's chapter has always been underhanded....

supporting every sleazeball candidate that comes along for mayor, city council, etc. Disgusting organization.

[Monique1]

3. The Az Chamber of Commerce

is trying to get their greedy fingers into our State Retirement.

[BlueIdaho]

4. The Chamber of Commerce is a terrorist cell.

Destroying America from within.

[blindpig]

11. yep

It's a capitalist plot.....

[DinahMoeHum]

6. Absolutely UNH-UNH. Maybe the state COC's, but not the local ones. . .

Your friendly neighborhood COC is NOT to blame for this sordid state of affairs...in fact a number of them have taken great pains to distance themselves from the national COC headed by Tom Donohue...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.verini.html

(snip)
...large parts of the Chamber’s base...have come to find themselves at odds with the organization’s aims and methods. While I talked to many local chamber heads who said they rely on the Chamber’s resources, I also spoke to many who are coming to resent Donohue. “Their stances have occasionally alienated local businesses,” says Tim Sink, president of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce in New Hampshire. In Sink’s region, the Chamber ran health care attack ads targeting Congressman Paul Hodes, a popular legislator with bipartisan support who’s now running for Senate. “It put the local chambers in an awkward situation, I can tell you that.”

A particularly awkward instance of this took place in 2004, when Donohue publicly exhorted Chamber companies to stop doing business in Mississippi, alleging that the state’s courts had become too friendly to lawsuits against businesses. This came as a surprise to most of Mississippi’s businesses and local chambers of commerce, few if any of whom had been notified of Donohue’s exhortation in advance. That same year, the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform became involved in an attorney general race in Washington State, waging a campaign via a front group called the Voters Education Committee. The Chamber’s interventions met with such broad public disfavor that Steve Leahy, president of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at the time, had to send out 10,000 e-mails distancing his organization from the U.S. Chamber. “We had a lot of cleaning up we had to do on their behalf,” Leahy told me. Even the institute’s director from 1999 to 2002, James Wootton, whom Donohue appointed, regretted at least one attack ad campaign he waged against an Ohio judge, one that resulted in a suit against the Chamber. “I came to believe that we probably shouldn’t have run those ads,” Wootton told me.

Other chamber heads have taken similar steps to separate themselves from the national Chamber. “I now have a standard e-mail saying we’re not a chapter of the U.S. Chamber that I have to send out a couple of times a week,” says Timothy Hulbert, president of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. Stan Kosciuszko, president of the Butler County, Pennsylvania, Chamber of Commerce, which is no longer a member of the Chamber, said, “They’ve abandoned the interests of smaller chambers like mine for their larger corporate members.”



Friend, you're aiming in the wrong place when you want to attack your local town or city Chamber of Commerce. If you want to call them, fine, but don't get personal and don't take offense if they tell you they have nothing to do with the national office's aims. The way things have gone for a number of years, odds are, they hate Tom Donohue for defiling their good name.

Read the link, then use your anger against the NATIONAL and Tom Donohue. He's a real sleazebag, a $$$ shakedown artist - and a free-spender to boot.

:think:

[alfredo]

8. I'm going to check to see if my local COC is affiliated with

the American COC. As far as a location for picketing, downtown during rush hour might be better. More traffic sitting at lights. They will have time to read our signs.

[Historic NY]

7. First if any Democrat business belongs they should pull out...& state the reason foreign money.

[alfredo]

9. Our Mayor and vice mayor belong to the local chapter.

[alfredo]

10. The vice mayor is a member, but think it has no affiliation with the national.

It is a good old boy club

[B Calm]

12. Damn right they should!

[EFerrari]

13. And then let's picket the State Department for sending "aid" money

to influence elections in other countries.

[alfredo]

14. true