The eve of the Republican convention was a bad day for ALEC as five more national and global corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council have cut ties with the group.
General Electric, The Western Union Company, Sprint Nextel Corporation, Symantec Corporation, and Reckitt Benckiser Group all told ColorofChange that they have cut ties with the right wing policy group. GE said that they left ALEC, “in connection with our ongoing review of the political and policy organizations we belong to.”
Sprint had previously decried the boycott as “corporate intimidation and bullying,” but today announced that they were not renewing their membership in ALEC. GE, Sprint, and Western Union had all been targeted by the ColorofChange boycott. The three corporate giants were joined by Symantec Corporation and Reckitt Benckiser Group in also dropping the formerly secretive right wing policy making and bill writing organization.
ColorOfChange.org Executive Director Rashad Robinson said, “These significant developments, coupled with recent withdrawals from ALEC by companies like Walgreens and GM, further prove that everyday people working together to hold corporations accountable can achieve tremendous change. ColorOfChange celebrates these corporations who have withdrawn their funding from ALEC, which continues to defend its push to enact discriminatory voter ID laws across the nation.”
In total, 38 companies have dropped ALEC since the boycott began including, General Motors, Walgreens, CVSCaremark, Best Buy, MillerCoors, John Deere, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Procter & Gamble, Yum! Brands, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Mars Inc., Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Intuit, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Reed Elsevier, Kaplan, Scantron, Medtronic, American Traffic Solutions, Arizona Public Service, Express Scripts/Medco, EnergySolutions, and Connections Education.
The left has been able to be successful with their boycotts because they have something the right doesn’t. Dedication. Have you stopped by a Chic-fil-A lately? If you did, you would have noticed that the long lines that were there when the right was pushing back are gone now.
Yeah, the Fox News led campaign to support Chic-fil-A lasted for about two days.
Whereas the ColorofChange boycott that got Glenn Beck fired, the StopRush boycott, and the ALEC boycott went on/are still going on for months.
The thing about boycotts is that they only work if the boycotters are committed and stick with them. Progressive and liberal activists have learned that sponsor and advertiser boycotts work.
ALEC has lost their ability to work behind closed doors and in the shadows. Rush Limbaugh lost millions of dollars and continues to lose advertisers, and Glenn Beck lost his last bit of relevancy when he vanished from Fox News.
Boycotts are about holding people and organizations accountable for their actions. ALEC has more than been held accountable. Their name has become toxic, and those who dare join them know that there will be a high price to pay both in terms of profits and public image for their decision.
The worst news for ALEC isn’t that the boycott is working, but that the boycott will not be ending anytime soon.
PoliticusUSA
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Doris
Aug. 27th, 2012 at 11:55 pm
I applaud any company that does the right thing cutting ties with ALEC because this is America and
democracy is what we build here in America. We built that!!
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Echelon
Aug. 28th, 2012 at 12:16 am
Politicususa,
Thanks for the great reporting you all do. You people deserve a Pulitzer.
But with that said, thanks for this informative story. I will be sure to tweet this one and share this info on the other sites I frequent.
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majii
Aug. 28th, 2012 at 3:16 am
I have cut ties with Papa John’s and Chic-fil-A, and so has my daughter. We have no use for corporatists that support the wrong candidates and those who push hate. We discussed it, and my daughter and I decided that if they want to be azzzholes, we’ll spend our money somewhere else. We don’t need Chic-fil_A and we don’t need Papa John’s, but they need us and millions of others who have decided not to patronize their businesses. The one day event at Chic-fil-A, which is right around the corner from where we live, drew lots of conservatives, but you’re right, there has not been a crowd that large at my local Chic-fil-A since.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Aug. 28th, 2012 at 6:23 am
I am grateful for the corporations who have decided to leave this organization. At the same time I wonder about those who were against boycotts. Is readily apparent that some corporations think that they have the right to do as they wished but if you say anything back, you are bullying the corporation. Any corporation who thinks this, is totally against your having rights in this society. Rush Limbaugh has the right to be on the air and we have the right to try to get him off the air. And that’s just the way it is. ALEC must be stopped no matter what can we have the right to do it
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Gloria G
Aug. 28th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Now let’s dump GE who is spending $2B to train Chinese to do American jobs!
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A Walkaway
Aug. 28th, 2012 at 10:20 am
Someone needs to check to see if a new organization has been formed, but is hiding in the shadows – and if they’re just changing their “outlet”. We may also even see ALEC change names… try to re-brand as the dominionists often do.
I wouldn’t put it past the corporations (and the conservatives) to do something like that. Cockroaches do tend to scurry from the light.
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