by Sara Jerving | PRWatch.org | April 11, 2012 - 10:17am
Topics: Corporations
Projects: ALEC Exposed

Wendy's International, the parent company of Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburger, is the sixth corporation to say that it is no longer a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past week. Wendy's International sent an email to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) this morning stating that the fast food chain had decided not to renew their membership at the end of 2011. CMD
launched ALEC Exposed and named Wendy's as corporate member in July 2011.

This announcement comes in light of a recent controversy surrounding ALEC's link to Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which may protect the killer of 17-year old Trayvon Martin, and ALEC's association with voter ID laws and other extreme legislative proposals. McDonalds, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Intuit have all announced within the past week that they have decided to not renew their membership with ALEC and the Gates Foundation has announced it will not continue to fund ALEC.

Last year the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) launched ALECexposed.org, where it made available over 800 "model" ALEC bills which shed light on a radical right-wing agenda that includes corporate tax breaks, the privatization of public education, voter suppression, anti-immigrant bills, climate change denial, among other initiatives. Since this launch, CMD has been analyzing these bills and targeting the corporate members of ALEC to urge them to end their membership with the organization. Yesterday, CMD, and partner organizations, urged McDonalds, State Farm and Johnson & Johnson to stop funding ALEC. McDonalds publicly announced later that afternoon that they would not continue funding ALEC.

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