The Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities was born almost 30 years ago, in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s crusade for open housing and integration in Chicago.
“We take the gag rule very seriously….The intent is to disable not-for-profit organizations and make us dysfunctional,” says Aurie Pennick, president of the Leadership Council. “It’s aimed at people who can least afford it.”
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The legislation was proposed by three Republicans (David McIntosh of Indiana and freshmen Ernest Istook of Oklahoma and Robert Ehrlich of Maryland). As they see it, not-for-profits have little purpose other than self-preservation, spending what money they get to lobby for more, thus bleeding dry the public coffers. “In essence, our tax dollars are paying lobbyists to walk the halls of Congress,” McIntosh told New York Times reporter Karen Arenson in an interview over the summer.
“The issue becomes one of forcing taxpayers to fund issues with which they disagree,” Marshall Wittman, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Times. “Our view is that they should make a choice whether they are service providers or advocacy organizations.”
“The way it works is that everybody can talk to Congress except for nonprofits,” says Uribe. “Defense contractors can testify on defense issues because they’re ‘experts’ but we can’t ’cause we’re ‘special interest’? That’s nuts and scary.”
Well, on October 6 the case returned to court. “We were waiting for this big showdown,” says Segal, a public school teacher. “We had witnesses there ready to testify and we had our supporters there to, you know, give us support. After all these weeks, I was really curious to see what they had on tape.”
