Over two hundred people gathered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio on Friday for the nation’s first-ever organized mass protest against powerful right-wing think tank ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Chanting slogans about defending democracy and the priority of people over profit, protesters marched peacefully several times around the block where ALEC was holding its “Spring Task Force Summit” at a Hilton hotel.

ALEC is an elite group of state legislators, corporations, and free market advocates who draft and introduce hundreds of pre-packaged right-wing bills into each state legislature yearly, bills restricting government regulation, encouraging privatization, and promoting (according to their mission statement) “Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty.”

Although ALEC was founded over thirty years ago, it only recently began receiving major public scrutiny.  Last March, University of Wisconsin professor Bill Cronon published a “study guide” citing ALEC’s role in recent legislation in Wisconsin that drastically limits the collective bargaining rights of public employees. (The Republican Party of Wisconsin promptly retaliated by filing a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails sent from Cronon’s school office computer, a move that only ended up drawing further public attention to ALEC.)

A year before Cronon’s study guide exposed ALEC’s ties to anti-union legislation in the Midwest, NPR explained that ALEC had drafted Arizona’s infamous immigration law, S.B. 1070, which requires local police to enforce immigration laws through racial profiling; the bill sparked outrage, spawning a nationwide campaign to “Boycott Arizona.”

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This weekend I joined over two thousand people in Washington, DC for Appalachia Rising, a conference and march against mountaintop removal mining. The march paused in front the Environmental Protection Agency and PNC Bank, which helps to finance mountaintop removal, before concluding in front of the White House, where around one hundred activists were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience.

Appalachia Rising will likely prove to be a historically significant event, as this is the first time that a broad coalition of organizations, mostly based in Appalachia, came together to organize a large nationwide march against mountaintop removal.

Mountaintop removal has had devastating consequences for the region, including poisoned drinking water (which frequently comes out of the faucet black, red, or green) and deadly avalanches, flooding, and mudslides. It also puts miners out of work, since mountaintop removal requires only a third of the number of miners required for underground mining. Coalfield residents feel earthquake-like blasts while the mountains are being exploded and endure loud electronic beeping at night. Dust from the blasts can coat houses and roads, sometimes rendering the painted lines on the highway invisible, endangering drivers.

Appalachia Rising was a blue-collar and grassroots event, with most of the organizers and participants hailing from coal mining regions. In an article that offended a number of the protesters, the Associated Press smirked that the march was a “festive” gathering of bearded hippies with facial piercings, chanting “old standbys” like “We Shall Overcome.” What that reporter did not realize, or did not acknowledge, is that many of the beards, red bandanas, bluegrass music, overalls, and the “ho down”-style dancing of protesters awaiting arrest were not counter-cultural fashion statements but everyday expressions of Appalachian culture. I probably learned more about the history and culture of Kentucky in the three days I spent at Appalachia Rising than in the past four years of living there. Read the rest of this article »