UPS. State Farm Insurance. Former President George W. Bush.
You might be wondering what these names have to do with you – or our democracy for that matter.
All three of them are driving forces behind ALEC – a secretive group of corporate lobbyists, funded by big corporations and a handful of wealthy families working to ram far-right legislation like “Stand Your Ground” gun laws through states.
ALEC is responsible for some of the most extreme ultra-conservative laws passed in the last decade: racially discriminatory voter ID laws, rollbacks of environmental protections, and blocking the Affordable Care Act at the state level.
What’s more – ALEC is shrouded in secrecy. We’ve barely scratched the surface of which companies fund them, and which politicians have pledged their loyalty. That means that your very own legislator, or even your favorite store, could be a part of it.
You see, ALEC’s secrecy is its greatest strength. But thanks to a whistleblower who released some of ALEC’s documents and named a few member corporations, we were able to piece together how the organization operates:
ALEC’s member corporations pay top dollar for direct access to state lawmakers – who allow lobbyists to write corporate dream legislation into ALEC “model bills.” Then, these ALEC-backed legislators rush those bills through their state houses, pretending they wrote the bills themselves and churning out laws that enrich corporations and hurt the rest of us.
John, we’ve been able to use the whistleblower’s leak to deal some devastating blows to ALEC in the past few years.
With your help, we launched a public pressure campaign that exposed ALEC for what it is, and named many of the corporations involved. The bad press and public outrage that ensued forced some of ALEC’s biggest funders – like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon – to cut ties with the corrupt organization.
John, our strategy to stop ALEC by ripping away its secrecy – and then its corporate funding – works. But here’s the problem: we’re working off of information that's 12 years old.
That means we’re totally in the dark about which corporations and right-wing megadonors have signed onto ALEC’s agenda to fundamentally transform this country for the worse.
So we’re pulling out all the stops to dig deeper into ALEC and expose each and every one of its members. But this work uses up a lot of our resources.
That’s why I’m writing to you today to ask if you can help fund our proven strategy to STOP ALEC.
We’re ready to pressure each ALEC corporate member, one-by-one, until they cut ties with this extreme right-wing lobby group – and step up to defend our civil rights, voting rights, and every other right you and I hold dear. But we need your help.
From now until midnight on December 31st, a generous group of donors is matching every gift, dollar-for-dollar, up to $100,000 – so your gift will have twice the impact.
Will you chip in $3 or more and EXPOSE ALEC? Your impact will be doubled!
If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
I’ve seen it firsthand: Our strategy hits ALEC where it hurts. They don’t have grassroots members, and don’t represent anyone besides major corporations – so if we keep uncovering ALEC’s funders and making clear to corporations and their customers what sort of extreme agenda they’re backing and the public disgust that goes along with it, ALEC loses its power.
But we can’t do this without you, John. Please let me know that I can count on your support.
Thank you,
Viki Harrison, Director of Constitutional Convention & Protect Dissent Programs
and the team at Common Cause
