The Silver Lining

In an Op-Ed Column today in the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote about what he sees may be the “silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing.” According to Krugman, who relies heavily on a report by the Center for Media and Democracy, the Florida Stand Your Ground statute is nearly identical to a model statute drafted by the NRA and unanimously approved by the board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which provides copies of its templates to legislators across the United States. The silver lining to Martin’s tragic death, Krugman maintains, is that the subsequent obsession over the Florida statute and others like it in this country will finally open the public’s eyes to the devastating effect ALEC’s influence has on our democracy and society.

What ALEC Is

ALEC proclaims to be a “nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public” formed with the purpose of “advancing the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty.” However, these claims can be very misleading. ALEC in fact pursues far-right policies including the privatization (by existing corporations) of many current government responsibilities.

Who ALEC Is

ALEC is a conglomeration of what Krugman refers to as the “usual suspects.” Its Corporate Board alone includes representatives from AT&T, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil? , Johnson & Johnson, Koch Companies, Pfizer, PhRMA? , and Wal-Mart. Its public-sector alumni include John Boehner, Dennis Hastert, Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Delay, and Andrew Card.

What ALEC Does

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC enables “global corporations and state politicians [to] vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights” by drafting template bills that directly benefit the corporations, organizations, and politicians doing the drafting. For example, representatives of the National Rifle Association were present in closed-door meetings with ALEC members to draft the model “Castle Doctrine” bill, based on the format of Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute, with the desired effect of encouraging more states to adopt similar statutes. The inquisitive reader might ask, “Who serves to benefit from the passing of similar laws?” The answer stares back at that reader from the list of ALEC’s corporate board membership, which includes Maggie Sans, the VP of Public Affairs and Government Relations for Wal-Mart, which just so happens to be the nation’s leading seller of firearms and ammunition for personal use.

Where Trayvon Martin Fits In

According to Krugman, ALEC’s supporters serve to benefit from the scandal surrounding Martin’s death and the subsequent non-arrest of George Zimmerman because it is strategically organized and operated to manipulate future policy through the “long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda.” By encouraging the adoption of Castle Doctrine statutes across the U.S., ALEC can foster an environment of fear and uncertainty that will create a society that is more open to adopting its future policy recommendations by electing politicians who will enact its template bills in their advertised format.

Why This Is Important To Our Class Discourse

Early in the course, we were introduced to the concept that the law is a weak form of social control. This is a prime example of other forms of social control (namely corporate wealth and political lobbies) exerting their powerful influence to manipulate the weaker form of social control, the law, to further entrench their position of power in American society.

If the law can be so easily manipulated to attend to the desires and needs of other social actors, how can it still be effective in serving its primary, legitimate purposes such as protecting the public from harmful or criminal activity by individual actors?

If it takes something like the tragic death of an innocent teen to expose the far-reaching influence of an organization like ALEC, what other forces of social control are operating their influence on the public without arousing our suspicions? What tragedy must occur to expose their influence as well?

-- DavidFrydman - 26 Mar 2012