Sara Jerving's News Articles

The corporate exodus from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is testament to the power of citizen activism in preserving our democracy. Over the past few months, in response to public pressure, 20 corporations and more than 50 legislators have severed ties with the right-wing organization that brings together politicians and corporations to vote, behind closed doors, on controversial "model" bills that are then introduced in statehouses across the land. While a coalition of clean government organizations has been working to drag ALEC out of the shadows, citizens across the country have also been showing up at ALEC meetings with clever protest signs, uploading ALEC-related videos on YouTube and even organizing a national day of occupy protests to draw attention to ALEC's corporate agenda.

According to Democracy Now!, police and private security forces raided a protest encampment of anti-fracking activists in Pennsylvania this week. For two weeks, neighbors and other concerned citizens had been helping to stave off the 
eviction of more than 30 families in the Riverdale Mobile Home Park in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, after residents were told they had to vacate the property and move their homes after the land was sold to the giant private water corporation Aqua America. The company plans to pump million of gallons of water from the nearby river to funnel through a pipeline to other parts of the state to be used in industrial drilling for shale gas, through controversial hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."

In the midst of a scandal over allowing a corporation to skirt punishment for records showing it dumped large amounts of human sewage sludge on land, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has now refused to require the corporation, Herr Environmental, to test for contamination of nearby wells.

Attempts to make Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) more business-friendly by Governor Scott Walker's administration, has landed the agency in a scandal over the handling of the discipline of a suspected polluter. The Wisconsin State Journal broke a story May 6 that exposed a decision by Walker appointee DNR Executive Assistant Scott Gunderson to handle a complaint internally against Herr Environmental Inc., a waste hauler, rather than send the complaint to the Attorney General for prosecution, helping the company skirt what could have been a much heftier punishment. Wisconsin Rep. Joel Kleefisch was also implicated in the effort to get the polluters off the hook.