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This story was first published by Alternet and is being cross-posted by the Center for Media and Democracy's Food Rights Network.

Driving through Ngong Hills, not far from Nairobi, Kenya, the corn on one side of the road is stunted and diseased. The farmer will not harvest a crop this year. On the other side of the road, the farmer gave up growing corn and erected a greenhouse, probably for growing a high-value crop like tomatoes. Though it's an expensive investment, agriculture consultants now recommend them. Just up the road, at a home run by Kenya Children of Hope, an organization that helps rehabilitate street children and reunite them with their families, one finds another failed corn crop and another greenhouse. The director, Charity, is frustrated because the two acres must feed the rescued children and earn money for the organization. After two tomato crops failed in the new greenhouse, her consultant recommended using a banned, toxic pesticide called carbofuran.

Amazon.com General Counsel Michelle Wilson announced at a shareholder meeting in Seattle this morning that Amazon has decided not to renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) this year. Dave Johnson, a Fellow at Campaign for America's Future, is reporting from the shareholder meeting and confirmed to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that he heard the announcement.

Members of ColorOfChange.org, CREDO Mobile, People for the American Way, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, SumOfUs, and Fuse Washington carried a petition to the shareholder meeting containing over 500,000 signatures and calling on Amazon.com and other corporations to stop funding ALEC. According to ColorOfChange.org, organizational representatives tried to deliver the petition signatures to the meeting but were turned away.

Not Dead Yet: New Poll Shows Barrett and Walker in Dead Heat

A new poll sponsored by "We Are Wisconsin" shows a closer race between Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Governor Scott Walker than other recent polls. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research did a survey on behalf of the labor PAC that sampled 472 recall voters from May 19 to 21. In that poll, Walker leads Barrett 50 to 47, but the results remain within the poll's four-point margin of error. Last week's Marquette University Law School poll showed Scott Walker ahead of Tom Barrett, 50 to 44 percent. Recent analysis of the Marquette poll, however, has shown that it "oversampled" conservatives, who were more likely to vote for Walker. John Nichols in the Capital Times describes how this oversampling explains Walker's gain in its entirety:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 22, 2012

CONTACT: Brendan Fischer, brendan@prwatch.org

Lawful Open Records Requests for Their ALEC-Related Records Have Been Disregarded for Months

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is calling on Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald and Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder to follow Wisconsin's open records law and release emails relating to the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Fitzgerald is a long-time ALEC member and Suder is the ALEC Public Sector Co-Chair for Wisconsin, and both legislators are known to have received ALEC-related records in their office and email systems. Yet neither legislator has made these records available to the public, as is required by law.