NEW YORK – The following is a statement from ColorOfChange Executive Director Rashad Robinson:
Today ColorOfChange learned that Intuit, Inc. has also ended its membership in ALEC. The company, which makes Quicken, Turbo Tax and QuickBooks accounting software, decided not to renew its membership after it expired in 2011.
It appears that Intuit has decided that it, too, wants to be on the right side of history. Through our conversations with corporations supporting ALEC, we’ve realized that many of these companies are not educated about the dangerous legislation that ALEC pushes. Now that we’ve succeeded in shining a light on what ALEC is really about, these corporations are severing ties. They know they owe it to their customers to do just that.
We continue to call on all major corporations to stop supporting voter suppression through ALEC. Our members are prepared to hold accountable companies that continue to participate in ALEC’s attack on voting rights.
The tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death – and the law that has prevented his killer from being arrested – is another example of how ALEC’s agenda is dangerous for people of color. The NRA and ALEC exported Florida’s “stand your ground” law to more than 20 states across the country, jeopardizing the safety of Americans nationwide.
We want to thank Intuit for making the right decision, and we want to thank ColorOfChange members and our partners.
More than 85,000 CoC members signed an earlier petition targeting ALEC’s corporate partners for their role in suppressing Black votes. That petition can be found here: https://colorofchange.org/campaign/alec/
In addition, more than 170,000 CoC members have signed the petition calling on the Department of Justice to take over the Trayvon Martin case, arrest Martin’s killer, and launch an independent investigation into the Sanford police department’s mishandling of the case. The petition can be found here: https://colorofchange.org/campaign/trayvon/
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With more than 800,000 members, ColorOfChange.org is the nation’s largest African-American online civil rights organization.