It has been a few weeks since my last post and I’m been
struggling with motivation to write. I’ve been trying to find a balance of
attending rallies and marches and lectures on various subjects and trying to
not feel overwhelmed by the negative that seems to take over some times. I feel
it’s similar to why many people say they don’t like watching the news; they don’t
want to feel upset or angry afterwards. I personally often get panic attacks
reading different articles or hearing of various things happening in the world.
So I’ve decided since I’ve only posted three things as of yet to this blog to
redirect exactly how I was going to go about relaying information I receive.
I’m 23 years old. I’ve been slowly waking up for a very long
time. Waking up as in truly seeing the world, not this illusion that has been
put into place all around me. I’m going to write not only about issues that I
feel are important but steps I am taking in my own life to become a whole
person, a truly free human being. I struggle with so many things, as we all do,
like alcohol, procrastination, anxiety and ego and I want to write about the
steps I am taking to overcome these things in my life. I will write about
politics but I’ll also write about health, addiction and spirituality.
I believe we have been entering a paradigm shift for a very
long time and now it’s begun to speed up. We need to start caring for each
other and stop working against one another. We are all connected. I want to
spread light and love. If you are reading this I want you to know you are
important and you are loved. Thank you for taking the time to read this and if
you feel so inclined I hope you come back and read more.
Last week, Chicago, IL took the
stage when direct action began taking place due to the 40th Annual
ALEC meeting. After hearing of protests against the meeting coming to the hotel
that Monday and of the arrests that occurred, myself, along with 3 of my
comrades, decided we needed to take the 22-hour long trip up to Chicago to
stand in solidarity with them in this fight against corruption.
I was able
to talk to Natalie Wahlberg, one of the six arrested during the sit in that was
part of Moral Monday action that took place to start the week off:
“The main goal of Moral Monday in Chicago was to raise
awareness about ALEC's 40th anniversary conference taking place at the Palmer
House Hotel august 5-7. We chose to develop a Moral Monday theme
protest, complete with civil disobedience and arrests as an homage to the
activists in North Carolina who are protesting the lawmakers' same cuts to
social services, public goods, and personal freedoms. In Chicago, we chose to
protest the same legislation but only this time, we were seeking to illumine
the model-legislation creators: ALEC. One of ALEC's strengths is that it
operates in secrecy and our goal was to expose ALEC's war on the public,
raising public awareness, and letting Palmer House know that ALEC was not
welcome. Chicago doesn’t want ALEC in town to plot and scheme how to best take
away our rights. We want to be free to make our own future, not one that's been
bought and paid for by corporations.”
Chicago Moral Monday Coalition entered the lobby of the
Palmer House Hotel in the late afternoon, spreading out, some even taking to
the stairs to the upper floors over-looking the lobby. Then the chanting began;
“What is America going to be? Corporate greed or democracy?” as banners fell
from the railings reading, “ALEC makes For-Profit Prisons” and “Moral Mondays,
No to ALEC”. Shortly after, Reverend Marilyn
Pagan-Banks began educating the crowd about ALEC. Natalie Wahlberg said the
patron’s reaction and hotel response was, “ Completely
stunned silence. Security began to move in and [tried] to pull us away but we
were not moved.” Ultimately the Chicago
Police Department was called. A group of six then started a sit-in on the lobby
steps, holding their signs reading, “No to ALEC” and chanting, “Money for jobs
and education, not for banks or corporations!” and “Who killed Trayvon? ALEC
killed Trayvon”. When asked why Wahlberg felt civil disobedience was the best
way to go, her response was:
“Being
that Monday's protest was themed around Moral Monday in NC, it was
necessary to be arrested for civil disobedience. In keeping with
Moral Monday, my thought was that if I’m willing to sacrifice my freedom
and put my life in the hands of bastard cops, then it's very clear that I’m
willing to do everything in my power to illumine ALEC's machinations and inform
the public about who is really writing the legislation for Stand Your Ground, privatization
of public education, limiting healthcare, preventing an easier path for
immigrants to become citizens, creating for-profit prisons, the
"ag-gag" criminalization (anti whistleblower laws) and destroying
democracy in the US.”
Wednesday,
a large group of demonstrators wearing black hoodies entered the lobby and
staged a “die-in” referencing ALEC being responsible for the Stand your Ground
legislation.
On
Thursday, a rally was planned outside the hotel. Bill, a concerned citizen, who
asked his last name not be used, describes the scene during the rally:
“There had to be at least 800 or
more, it’s hard to tell when you’re in the middle of the crowd how big it is,
all I know is the entire block was full of people [and] the road was blocked
off. It was solid, shoulder to shoulder with people.”
Patrick Gocek, a fellow journalist and activist described
the police presence the day of the rally and during the lead up:
“Police presence had been around pretty heavy [all day] before
and the day of. Undercover cars parked on the street just sitting around for hours,
marked cars as well. The police were often talking with the security at
the Palmer House. At [one]
point on Wednesday I remember maybe 5-6 of us there [and less than a]
foot [away there were about] 8 officers, CPD made it very obvious the whole
time we would not do anything funny under their watch.”
Rev. Jessie Jackson was among the speakers, along with a
representative from the Chicago Federation of Labor, who at the end asked
people to leave. After discovering there
had been a request to disperse, I was better able to understand the lack of
presence at the hotel once I had arrived.
I was told that after the speakers and media had left, the
police started becoming aggressive and pushing people onto the sidewalk,
pushing the barricades and using their bicycles to edge people back.
Patrick Gocek was on the scene when the police began
arresting protestors, and filmed and recounted the following:
“The
first time I saw anything, the police were getting ready to leave [and] the
protesters were still sticking it out….they had started moving and some of them
pushed the barricade a bit farther into the street and started dancing and
chanting. I believe it was the commander who first moved in to shove a
protester, and quickly things got hot. I'm not sure why they arrested who they
did. The second time they came in was even more confusing; they rushed in out
of nowhere and snatched a few more! [Seemed] like a scare tactic, and
quickly the crowd slimmed, while lots of police were still waiting.”
Six were arrested in total after the rally. The trend of
police violence post-public demonstration has accelerated since Occupy in 2011.
You’ll have demonstrators exercising their rights as free people and once the
police become violent, the issue they’re protesting becomes background. In some
ways I have started to think it’s just another tactic – not only are we
becoming more and more of a police state but if we keep the attention on the
police then the issues that we are fighting against can continue to take
place. I personally have seen this
happening. Police brutality is a huge issue and if it doesn’t get better we are
headed for an uprising, but that’s a topic for another time.
The night of the rally, Chicago’s Light Brigade took to the
streets with illuminated signs spelling out “Fight to End ALEC.”
Although Chicago’s actions were
brief, I stand in solidarity with the Chicago protestors who felt it necessary
to go out and demonstrate their disapproval in a public forum, while informing
the masses about ALEC. ALEC’s actions do in some way affect each of us, whether
its their lack of disregard for the environment, desire to end minimum wage or
taking away funding from public schools.
I’ll leave you with Natalie Wahlberg’s words that I feel
close this perfectly:
“ALEC
is the intersection between money and politics. Behind closed doors,
corporations write model legislation to give to their politician members. The
legislation is designed to make the life of a regular person, like you and me,
harder to survive, with fewer social services and freedoms. ALEC politicians
are free to erode basic premises and betray the very constituency who elected
them, without anyone knowing. By protesting ALEC and raising awareness about
who they are, what corporations are involved and which politicians are ALEC
members, we can shine the light on them and watch them scatter like
cockroaches. Then we can step on them.”
You may have
never heard of ALEC before and that is not uncommon. Many people have just
recently had their interest sparked because of recent coverage in the news of
protests occurring in Chicago, IL in response to ALEC’s 40th Annual
meeting that was held at the Palmer House Hotel from August 7th
through the 9th.
ALEC stands for American Legislative Exchange Counsel; it
was founded in the 1970’s and was a way to get corporate industry ideas to
lawmakers. As it grew in momentum by the 90’s the corporate industry was
actually writing laws (model bills). The
way they planned to accomplish getting there bills in place and in changing
laws on a larger scale was by doing it from the state level, getting legislatures
to propose “model bills” and getting them passed in each of their own states.
This method has worked very well.
A few pieces of legislation that have been a result of ALEC include, “stand your ground”, Voter ID restriction, bills for fracking and the Keystone Pipeline. (1)
Close to 98% of
ALEC’s funding comes from corporations.
The funding works like this:
Corporate Members pay annually between 7,000 and 25,000yr
If a corporation participates in any of the 9 task forces
(which they do), additional fees apply. Ranging from 2,500 to 10,000 depending
on the task force.
Corporations can sponsor events or specific projects; they
also give away “scholarships” so that legislatures can come to events.
ALEC also receives grants from corporations:
1.4 million from ExxonMobile 1998-2009
Grants received by:
Charles G. Koch Foundation
Claude R. Lambe Foundation (Koch-managed)
Allegheny Foundation (Scaife family; oil and banking)
Castle Rock Foundation (Coors family)
Less than 2% of
ALEC’s funding comes from “Membership Dues”
Membership dues are
$50 per year paid by state legislators. (2)
Alec is non-profit. Non-profits are generally groups formed
without the intention of making a profit. Being non profit this also means they
are tax exempt.
Alec claims to be non-partisan. The Merriam-Webster
dictionary’s definition of “nonpartisan” is: “Not partisan. Free from party
affiliation, bias, or designation.” As of right now there is one democrat out
of 104 legislators in leadership positions. (3)
The reason there is so much animosity and rejection of ALEC
is because corporations, who are not people, are taking the power that they
have and funding legislature and shaping our economy to fit into a system that
will benefit them more and they are taking actions that directly affect the
people in this country. There are companies like Koch Industries (the Koch
family is one of the wealthiest families in the world), PhaRMA (they represent
pharmaceutical research and biopharmaceutical companies) and the tobacco
industries, among the few who have their hands in shaping new legislation in
their favor. The people suffer, not the corporations.
For a very long time I’ve been writing articles about things going on in the world and different protests I’ve attended and my work has just sat, in my computer, for only my eyes and the few people I occasionally sent my work to. I’ve felt for a very long time that my work wasn’t good enough yet for people to see. I was afraid of being judged and that fear stifled me as a journalist and prevented me from getting out information to people. I’ve just recently let go of that fear. I will not grow as a writer or an activist if I do not allow myself the room to grow and learn from my mistakes.
My goal for this blog is to wake people up about things going on in my local community, the United States and at times the world. I’ll be writing about protests I go to, but also topics of interest I feel are worth writing about. I want my posts to insight questions and get people to think, and think for themselves. I also want to educate and put things in an easy to understand way because I know that getting into politics and other issues can be intimidating because of all the information that comes with getting involved. I want to change that with my writing. I am not an expert on any of the topics I write about but I am a student of the world and I take great pride in the knowledge I gain from reading and researching my articles.
I’m a traveler and since I was born I have never lived in one place for longer than 5 years, and as I’ve gotten older that number has begun to dwindle and is closer to 6 months that I live in a place. Living this lifestyle has opened my eyes to many amazing and beautiful things this world has to offer but just as easily as I’ve seen the beautiful I have seen the ugly and decrepit. I also strive to see why people think the way they do and believe the things they do. I think without this understanding or willingness to at least listen to each other we lose the respect we should have for each other.
In order for things to change in this world it is going to take people standing up and deciding that things need to be different. We can no longer stay quiet and watch idly as our government and the powers at be take away our rights and destroy our planet. It’s up to every person no matter how small the action, to actually take action in this fight, to change our world into a better place and change the direction it is headed.
I feel like this is the right action for me to take in that fight for change.
