Unions, teachers, others protest ALEC conference in Chicago. Huge.
Last edited Thu Aug 8, 2013, 05:57 PM - Edit history (1)
Arrests have already started
My phone chose a bad time to restart itself. Just watched 4 extremely violent arrests. They literally ripped the clothes off them. #noALEC
The cops rushed in, slammed me into the concrete, pulled a man by his hair dragged him into the street #noAlec
Backtalk - August 8, 2013 12:01 pm
Unions, others protest ALEC conference in Chicago
Protesters stage a "die-in" Wednesday at the Palmer House in Chicago. (Photo Cathy Sherwin/AFL-CIO)
The American Legislative Exchange Council, perhaps best known for helping to persuade legislatures to enact “Stand Your Ground” gun laws around the country, usually has its conventions in red states.
But this year, ALEC decided to have its 40th annual meeting Aug. 7-9 conference in Chicago, so it’s perhaps not surprising that protesters showed up at the Palmer House, 17 E. Monroe, on Wednesday. Another protest and rally is scheduled for noon today.
ALEC writes laws promoting a conservative agenda and works behind scenes to have them passed. By one estimate, 200 of its bills become law each year. A different accounting by the Center for Media and Democracy concluded that of 466 ALEC bills introduced in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the 2013 session, 84 became law.
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Labor unions were protesting at the Palmer House because they believe ALEC is funded by corporate special interests and is largely anti-worker.
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Nick Kaleba, spokesman for the Chicago Federation of Labor, said, “We’re involved in exposing ALEC and the agenda they push because of the negative impact that it has on working people across this country. Their agenda includes a systematic effort to strip workers of their rights, to lower wages, to weaken unions and generally put more power in the hands of major corporations and special interests.”
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http://voices.suntimes.com/early-and-often/backtalk/unions-others-protest-alec-conference-in-chicago/
= new reply since forum marked as read
OPPOSED! 
protestors
Go here to check on your state:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Politicians
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You know, it's just hard to believe that SO MANY business people and politicians apparently see NOTHING wrong with ALEC and their agenda. These ALEC people really have no integrity, no morals, no conscience.
Just Pure GREED. Jackals. Marauders.
Go union! 
... and get your ass kicked by cops. That really sucks. 
‘Cops Slammed Me to the Concrete’ — Multiple Arrests at Anti-ALEC Protest in Chicago Published:3:46 pm EDT, August 8, 2013| Updated:3:46 pm EDT, August 8, 2013| By Brad Michelson
Mass #NoALEC rally outside Palmer Hilton housing #ALEC conf in #Chicago
11:41 AM - 8 Aug 2013
The protest is motivated by a leaked internal document obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy that, according to protesters, reveals new methods to be used by fossil fuel companies, agrochemical interests and corporate lobbying groups to influence future state policies.
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ALEC's annual meeting is taking place in Chicago today, discussing the drafting of new bills with its Environmental Agriculture Task Force on behalf of its members, which include Duke Energy, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries and Peabody, according to Greenpeace.
Greenpeace refers to ALEC as a place "where partisan politics are set aside to focus on the mission of destroying environmental protections, clean energy competition and liability for crimes against both people and the ecosystems sustaining us." Police began forcefully pushing back the crowds Thursday afternoon before conducting violent arrests on protesters, much of which were captured and posted to Twitter.
Photo (@bullhorngirl) from when cops smashed barricades into #noAlec #alecExposed crowd before waded in attacking
12:30 PM - 8 Aug 2013
Cops rushed in, slammed @constantnatalie into concrete, pulled a man by his hair dragged him into the street #noAlec pic.twitter.com/r4YHI7BeWm
12:29 PM - 8 Aug 2013
RT @phillipcantor: How many cops does it take to arrest a peaceful protester? #ALECinChicago #noALEC pic.twitter.com/taxkbtKdVi
12:48 PM - 8 Aug 2013
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http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/08/cops-slammed-me-to-the-concrete-multiple-arrests-at-anti-alec-protest-in-chicago/
BANNER DROP at #alecExposed #exposeAlec #noAlec
another pic
Published on Thursday, August 8, 2013 by Common Dreams
Protesters in Chicago Take on ALEC's 'Forty Years of Corporate Greed'
Activist rally against forty years of 'legislative-corporate collusion' as new report documents assault on democracy and progress
- Jon Queally, staff writer
(Photo: Twitpic via CTU)
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."
Aspects of the protest, including photos from the street rally, were being actively reported on Twitter:
As ALEC is known to provide state and federal lawmakers with their "model legislation" on numerous policy fronts, the coalition of protesters in Chicago were highlighting numerous laws pushed by the conservative group, including 'stand your ground' laws, 'right-to-work' legislation, ploys to limited voting rights, and many others.
Citing the role of ALEC-backed 'stand-your-ground' law in the Florida shooting death of Trayvon Martin last year, many in Chicago were blasting the proliferation of similar laws in other states.
“These laws encourage people to act on irrational fears fed by biases and prejudice," said Shani Smith with Stand Up! Chicago, who spoke about her anxieties as the mother of a black teenager. "I know that where I see my son—a caring, creative, vulnerable young man—others may see a dangerous stranger. We’ve lost enough young black men in this country to fear and prejudice.”
'Too many politicians of both parties carry the corporate greed agenda'. (Photo: AFSCME via Twiter)
'Too many politicians of both parties carry the corporate greed agenda'. (Photo: AFSCME via Twiter)On the same day of the protest, the Center for Media & Democracy—which has done yeoman work in uncovering the operations of ALEC in recent years—also published their latest report on the group, documenting and analyzing 466 new ALEC bills introduced across all fifty states in 2013.
Among the highlights included in the report, CMD offered these key findings:
-* CMD identified 466 ALEC bills from the 2013 session. 84 of these passed and became law. ALEC bills were introduced in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2013. The top ALEC states were West Virginia (25 bills) and Missouri (21 bills).
-* Despite ALEC’s effort to distance itself from Voter ID and Stand Your Ground by disbanding its controversial Public Safety and Elections Task Force, 62 of these laws were introduced: 10 Stand Your Ground bills and 52 bills to enact or tighten Voter ID restrictions. Five states enacted additional Voter ID restrictions, and two states passed Stand Your Ground.
-* CMD identified 117 ALEC bills that affect wages and worker rights. 14 of these became law. These bills included so-called “Right to Work” legislation, part of the ALEC agenda since at least 1979, introduced in 15 states this year. Other bills would preempt local living or minimum wage ordinances, facilitate the privatization of public services, scrap defined benefit pension plans, or undermine the ability of unions to organize to protect workers.
-* CMD identified 139 ALEC bills that affect public education. 31 of these became law. Just seven states did not have an ALEC education bill introduced this year. Among other things, these bills would siphon taxpayer money from the public education system to benefit for-profit private schools, including the “Great Schools Tax Credit Act,” introduced in 10 states.
-* CMD identified 77 ALEC bills that advance a polluter agenda. 17 of these became law. Numerous ALEC “model” bills were introduced that promote a fossil fuel and fracking agenda and undermine environmental regulations. The “Electricity Freedom Act,” which would repeal state renewable portfolio standards, was introduced in six states this year.
-* CMD identified 71 ALEC bills narrowing citizen access to the courts. 14 of these became law. These bills cap damages, limit corporate liability, or otherwise make it more difficult for citizens to hold corporations to account when their products or services result in injury or death.
-* CMD identified nine states that have been inspired by ALEC’s “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” to crack down on videographers documenting abuses on factory farms. These so-called “ag-gag” bills erode First Amendment rights, and threaten the ability of journalists and investigators to pursue food safety and animal welfare investigations.
-* CMD identified 11 states that introduced bills to override or prevent local paid sick leave ordinances, such as the one recently enacted in New York City. At least eight of these bills were sponsored by known ALEC members. Although ALEC has not adopted a preemption bill as an official “model,” ALEC member the National Restaurant Association brought a bill to override local paid sick leave ordinances to an ALEC meeting in 2011, along with a target map and other materials.
Read the CMD's full report: ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress (pdf).
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/08-6
This article is from yesterday
By DAVID A. LIEB 08/08/13 04:53 PM ET EDT AP
CHICAGO -- More than a thousand conservative lawmakers and business executives are gathering this week for conference that could shape a new wave of Republican legislation in state capitols pushing for deeper tax cuts, limits on union powers and a private-sector makeover for government Medicaid programs.
Attendees at the American Legislative Exchange Council were countered Thursday by a roughly equal number of protesters upset by the close ties between big businesses and lawmakers. As meeting participants handed out awards and dined at a meal sponsored by the Texas Oil and Gas Association, picketers denouncing "corporate greed" paced the sidewalks and clogged the street in front of the Chicago hotel hosting the conference.
The conservative organization's 40th annual meeting comes as it is experiencing increased influence due to a growth in Republican-led legislatures and enhanced opposition from liberal-leaning groups that have successfully persuaded some corporations to drop their support of the council. Businesses provide the bulk of the financing for the association, and industry officials serve with lawmakers on closed-door, issue-oriented task forces that develop model legislation for states.
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One of the group's most recent high-profile initiatives was a state-based rebuttal to the federal Affordable Care Act that sought to outlaw the individual insurance mandate at the core of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law. At least 17 states have adopted laws or constitutional amendments modeled on the ALEC initiative, though their effectiveness is questionable because the Supreme Court upheld much of the federal health-care law last year.
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Some of other the topics at the conference focused on ways to overhaul education financing laws that currently allow little school choice for parents and how to advance coal-friendly energy policies. Businesses or groups that fork over a substantial sponsorship payments often have speaking roles at meals or workshops. Because of that, ALEC's private-sector chairman, C. Stevens Seale, of SAP America, urged attendees to keep down their chatter at Thursday's lunch before an official from the Texas Oil and Gas Association spoke about the economically damaging effect of the federal Endangered Species Act.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/alec-meeting-in-chicago_n_3728213.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
Pic of an arrest. I think 8 people were arrested. Several people and legal activists went to the jail house for support.
For Immediate Release: August 8, 2013
Contact: Harriet_Rowan@prwatch.org
Today, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released a new report: "ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress." The report identifies and analyzes 466 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bills introduced in 2013.
http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed
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Two watchdog groups are asking the Internal Revenue Service and several state ethics committees to investigate ALEC for funneling corporate money through an ALEC slush fund to allow wealthy corporations to take a federal tax deduction for furnishing lawmakers and their families with luxurious trips at fancy resorts. One such meeting is the upcoming ALEC conference this week to celebrate the anti-democracy group’s 40th year of assisting the richest corporations to write and pass legislation beneficial to their privatization efforts and profits. The watchdogs’ complaints also charge that ALEC conceals the sources of “slush funds” from public view and obscures the amount of spending from the IRS by claiming that it holds the corporate funds in “trust,” all the while writing lawmakers’ checks to cover their trips.
The so-called “scholarship fund” ALEC uses to fund the lavish trips also raises serious questions about the corporate group’s compliance with state gift and disclosure laws that in turn brings into question the lawmakers’ ethics in accepting ALEC’s travel gifts and precipitated the watchdog’s letters to state ethics committees. In question is whether Republican state legislators taking the fancy trips (bribes) disclosed the gifts on their state financial disclosures, or if they noted they originated from corporate donors seeking favorable votes on ALEC template legislation.
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The complaints laid out by Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy contend that ALEC’s corporate sponsors contributed to the “scholarship fund” and then wrote off their donations because ALEC is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit similar to “social welfare” groups the IRS targeted last year. ALEC then writes checks out of the “scholarship fund” to pay for Republican lawmakers and their families’ trips to resorts. Both groups also called on the IRS to investigate ALEC for filing fraudulent tax returns that massively under-reported and grossly misrepresented its “scholarship scheme.” It does not take a genius to figure out that the corporate money takes a detour into the slush fund before being doled out to Republican legislators who return the favor by supporting ALEC’s templates written by the corporations paying for the trips.
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More: http://www.politicususa.com/2013/08/08/calls-grow-state-federal-investigations-alecs-illicit-activities.html
American Legislative Exchange Council, group behind stand-your-ground laws, vowed change in wake of Trayvon Martin case
Thousands gathered during a rally in downtown Chicago outside the hotel where Alec hold their 40th convention. Photograph: James Fassinger/For the Guardian
The American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive alliance of big businesses and largely Republican state legislators who co-operate to push a right-wing political agenda in the American hinterland, is continuing to wield outsized influence over gun laws across the US despite its promise in the wake of the Trayvon Martin furore to stop operating in this area.
As protesters gathered outside Alec's 40th annual gathering of lawmakers and corporate interests in Chicago, a new watchdog report finds that stand-your-ground laws of the sort forwarded by the group and made infamous by the Martin killing are still proliferating around the country. Last year, Alec came under intense criticism that its model stand-your-ground law, first adopted in Florida in 2005 having been drafted by the National Rifle Association, had prevented the arrest of George Zimmerman, Martin's shooter, and made his prosecution more difficult.
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A protester is pinned to the ground and arrested during a rally in downtown Chicago outside the Palmer House Hilton Hotel where Alec were meeting Photograph: James Fassinger/For the Guardian
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Bills impacting state education have also been high on the agenda, with 139 Alec bills introduced and 31 enacted this year. The legislation focused on redirecting taxpayer money from public schools to for-profit private schools.
Legislation making it easier for energy companies to forward polluting activities such as fossil fuel consumption and fracking were identified in 77 Alec bills so far this year.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/08/alec-lobbying-gun-laws-trayvon
Sun Voices, the Chicago Times blog section, covered it: Unions, others protest ALEC conference in Chicago
CBS2 Chicago: Demonstrators Shut Down Monroe Street Outside ALEC Meeting but they bumped the number down to "About 500 demonstrators"
The Nation yesterday: ALEC's Illegal Past?
Huffington post has a few things but other than the Guardian and CBS2 Chicago, I didn't see anything.
Shameful.
Heard nothing from Rachel last night on this. 
This kind of action is what's important to Democratic Values...that we hope to restore!
Instead of "Who is Running in 2016"...let's have a Poll for who YOU SUPPORT! 
Damned straight...If there are candidates who don't support this...then Hell with them...and who cares who they are at this point when we still have a President who has almost three and a half years to do What He Promised! Yet we are distraction with Election 2016 when the issues we put Obama into office to Support...He has Yet to even bother with!
Good work!
spotlight on fascism
Yep, this is what democracy looks like. And the Michigan Ave drivers love it. #noAlec #olb
In front of the Chicago Art Museum
Not totally sure where we are at this point. #noALEC
This pic from earlier
Political puppets bought to you by. Corporations #NoAlec
Fuck the ChiTrib.
Inequality, Racial divide, Womens rights, GLBT, ongoing unwanted war, the list reads just like a story straight out of the sixties.
?341
and I did carefully select the photo's to go with the music. 
