Teachers’ leader: ALEC kills rights for corporate power
WASHINGTON (PAI) - The secretive, right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - a business-funded cabal that controls 1,810 state legislators nationwide - "strips away rights" of workers and voters "in the interests of the power they represent," American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten says.
And thus, in a telephone press conference on Dec. 3, she welcomed the latest exposure of ALEC's schemes, including ALEC's plan to require its state lawmaker chairs to pledge their legislative allegiance to ALEC's goals, not to their constituents.
Weingarten and other ALEC critics spoke as ALEC met for three days, Dec. 4-6, in a hotel in downtown Washington. The conclave brought together, as usual, corporate chieftains and lobbyists who fund ALEC with state lawmakers they influence.
ALEC is a prime mover of anti-worker, anti-voter laws in the states, including legislation stripping teachers of tenure, banning collective bargaining for state and local workers and so-called "voter ID" laws that toss workers, the elderly, young voters and minorities off the rolls.
But it's been losing corporate members and is running $1 million in the red, due to a nationwide backlash, internal ALEC documents published by The Guardian show.
Corporations dropped out after ALEC was cited as the author of the "stand your ground" Florida state law - copied elsewhere - that let so-called neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman fatally shoot unarmedAfrican-American teenager Trayvon Martin.
One item on ALEC's agenda, according to the leaked internal board documents, is to reclaim those firms that left due to the flak, such as Walmart and Coca Cola.
"They (ALEC) push legislation to disenfranchise people and to take away workers' rights," Weingarten told the