Anti-ALEC Effort: All Hat And No Cattle

As usual, when it comes to the left, you can get more people in a room to tell others what to do and how to do it than you can find on the street doing anything. That’s not to dismiss the danger to America from leftist groups constantly meeting, planning and plotting ways to undermine American liberties.  However, here is an interesting contrast.

As both Breitbart and the Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday, a number of anti-liberty loving groups came together in D.C. on May 10 to plot the future of their ongoing assault on small government advocate the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There were plenty of left tilting hats in the room. Attacking ALEC is a stated priority for them.

Leading progressive organizers met on May 10 to coordinate their attack plan against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), discussing ways to pressure corporations into abandoning the group for its small-government advocacy and turn against what they call the “vast, right-wing conspiracy.”

The participants, including representatives from such far-left groups as Common Cause, Color of Change, and ProgressNow, met for lunch in a conference room at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, D.C.

But this weekend, when it came time to do something besides plot in Charlotte, N.C., although the media seems to be providing some cover by claiming it was “about 50 protesters,” photos from the event don’t appear to quite meet that number. Of course, that didn’t stop them from trying to disrupt a WellPoint meeting in an attempt to shout down others exercising their right to free speech.

Protesters disrupt WellPoint annual meeting

Union representatives and other protesters repeatedly interrupted Chairwoman and CEO Angela Braly after she opened the meeting and introduced proposals for shareholder voting. One person presented a petition she said was signed by 15,000 people asking the Indianapolis company for more disclosure.  

Here’s what all that planning in D.C. and infringing on the rights of others actually produced when it took time for them to hit the street.