Today I attended a political protest held in New Orleans against the American Legislative Exchange Conference. With such a benign name and low profile, many of you have probably not even heard of this group.  Indeed, I had only very recently discovered who they were. An article about ALEC a couple days ago in the local newspaper mentioned that controversy now slightly surrounds the group, but it did not even mention the protest.

Thankfully, Lisa Welch, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, recently launched the site Alecexposed.org, exposing them as a quintessentially fascist group.  They are made up by groups such as, Koch Industries, Pharma, AT&T, just to name a few.  Their founder was the first president of the Heritage Foundation.  They yield extremely high influence over state legislators who Welch says then “act as super-lobbyists for corporations, giving those corporations disproportionate  influence in the political process.”  ALEC’s “model legislation” has become almost word-for-word law in state houses all over the country.

Hopefully Welch and others can get the word out about how this nefarious group and others like it have taken over our country.  Truthfully, I didn’t expected much of a turnout to this demonstration given how few people know about ALEC.  Also, it was a sweltering day in New Orleans, and many people likely were at work.  I estimated about 150 people on hand, including about 20 anarchists.  Quite a few were from out of state too.  Overall, not too bad in my opinion.  Let’s make it more at their next conference!