Dear People For Supporter,
Yesterday McDonald’s announced that it has joined Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kraft Foods and Intuit in cutting ties with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
You’ve already been able to achieve major victories in this campaign. Now we are turning our focus on State Farm Insurance and Johnson & Johnson.
Please call State Farm and Johnson and Johnson today and urge the companies to cut ties with ALEC. The companies should not want their brands associated with the dangerous laws ALEC promotes -- including voter suppression, NRA-backed “stand your ground” laws, extreme racial profiling laws targeting immigrants, privatizing public education and protecting corporate polluters.
Please remember to be cordial and polite with the company representative you speak with. For now, we are working with these companies to give them a chance to do the right thing.
State Farm: Media Contact, Melissa McKinley -- 309-766-0625
Johnson & Johnson: Director of Corporate Media Relations, Al Wasilewski -- 732-524-1130
Much attention has been paid to our petition to ALEC’s member corporations signed by tens of thousands of PFAW members, as well as similar petitions by our allies. Just hours before McDonald’s announced it was ditching ALEC, our affiliate PFAW Foundation, along with Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, CREDO, Color of Change and Progress Now released a statement about the overall effort that specifically called out McDonalds, State Farm and Johnson & Johnson.
We’re already one for three in this phase! Now we need to make sure State Farm and Johnson & Johnson sever ties with ALEC and separate themselves from voter suppression and the other radical right-wing policies ALEC aggressively promotes.
State Farm: Media Contact, Melissa McKinley -- 309-766-0625
Johnson & Johnson: Director of Corporate Media Relations, Al Wasilewski -- 732-524-1130
As late as February, McDonald’s was defending its support of ALEC, but because of the sustained effort, much of it behind the scenes work led by our friends at Color of Change, the company this week is singing a different tune. Persistence pays off.
For years, People For the American Way and our affiliate People For the American Way Foundation have tracked and exposed ALEC’s influence in state legislatures. More recently, PFAW Foundation has worked closely with Common Cause, Center for Media and Democracy and Progress Now to release in-depth state specific reports about ALEC’s grip on legislatures. PFAW Foundation has also worked with these groups to send letters to a broader list of ALEC-supporting companies, which we will be following up with moving forward and you will certainly hear more about.
For now, let’s make State Farm and Johnson & Johnson go the way of Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, Intuit and McDonald’s. Please call the two companies today and ask that they end their relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council.
State Farm: Media Contact, Melissa McKinley -- 309-766-0625
Johnson & Johnson: Director of Corporate Media Relations, Al Wasilewski -- 732-524-1130
We still need to build the petition, so please make sure you are spreading the word about that here, or by telling others to visit www.pfaw.org/DitchALEC.
Thank you for all that you do.
-- Ben Betz, Online Strategy Manager
