As the American Legislative Exchange Council wraps up its summer conference in New Orleans this week, and the group maintains its usual modus operandi: presenting legislators with pre-written bills designed to increase corporate profits – in secret – then sitting back and watching elected officials enact those bills into law.

Earlier this week, PFAW teamed up with other progressive allies to hold a press conference across the street from the ALEC convention and highlight the negative affects that ALEC-sponsored legislation has on real Americans. Yet it would have been nice to have a first-hand account of what was happening inside.

Eric Carlson, a journalist with the Center for Media and Democracy, tried to gain access to ALEC’s events, but was repeatedly kicked out and threatened with arrest, even though the CMD did not violate ALEC’s press guidelines. According to Carlson,

After filling out my registration form to receive press credentials, I was told by an alarmed ALEC intern to wait while she fetched her boss. While I did not think she had ever heard my name, the look on her face made me think that perhaps she had heard of our new project ALEC Exposed.org. A very stern looking gentleman — Ted Wagnon of Vox Global Communications — arrived and told me my application would be denied on the grounds that the Center for Media and Democracy was an "advocacy organization." I asked Wagnon for a written explanation, and he handed me ALEC’s Media Policy, which bears no mention of "advocacy organizations." Instead, news outlets funded by a "think-tank, political party, lobbying organization, trade association, or corporation" are forbidden from registering. CMD complies with this criteria even though most media outlets (owned by major corporations) do not…

Marriott security guards swarmed to where I was standing, demanding again that I leave the hotel or "face arrest." I escaped before they could follow through on their other promise of taking my picture for their permanent records. My only comfort? Al Jazeera English was also denied credentials on the grounds that ALEC was not an “international” conference — even though it has an International Relations Task Force whose priority results in the offshoring of U.S. jobs and even though international politicians were addressing the conference.

You can read the rest of Carlson’s account here.