PAGE 20 | December 18, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Coalition calls for repeal of Freedom Foundation’s tax exempt status
A broad coalition of community
organizations in Washington and
Oregon announced Dec. 7 that
they have filed a complaint with
the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS) calling for an investigation
and repeal of the ultra-conserva-
tive, anti-union Freedom Foun-
dation’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt
status. “The Freedom Founda-
tion is blatantly ignoring the IRS
rules that prohibit tax-exempt
organizations from engaging in
partisan political activity—and
as a result, they’re getting tax
breaks while taxpayers are foot-
ing the bill for their conservative
attacks,” said Andrew Biviano,
founding board member of the
Northwest Accountability Proj-
ect, a non-profit social welfare
organization. “It’s outrageous
that the Freedom Foundation is
engaging in partisan attacks on
the middle class, the environ-
ment, and the values that we
hold here in the Pacific North-
west, while hiding behind a bo-
gus 501(c)(3) tax exemption.”
As laid out in the complaint,
the coalition alleges that:
● The Freedom Foundation is
participating in political cam-
paign intervention.
● A substantial part of the
Freedom Foundation’s activities
is attempting to influence leg-
islative activity and lobbying.
● The Freedom Foundation is
operated for the private benefit
of the Republican Party and
other conservative and libertar-
ian groups in the states of Wash-
ington and Oregon.
To qualify for exemption un-
der Section 501(c)(3), an organ-
ization may not participate or in-
tervene in (including the pub-
lishing or distributing of state-
ments) any political campaign
on behalf of (or in opposition to)
any candidate for public office.
It must be operated exclusively
for exempt purposes and not for
the benefit of a private individ-
ual or group. And it can under-
take only a limited amount of
lobbying activity.
The coalition filing the com-
plaint includes the Oregon AFL-
CIO, the Washington State La-
bor Council, UFCW Local 555,
Washington State Council of
Firefighters, Oregon Nurses As-
sociation, and other groups.
...Labor at Paris Cimate talks
From Page 16
job. We clearly outnumbered
them by quite a bit, but they
stayed back and there was no at-
tempt to shut down the rally.
Going forward, what role
do you see the union move-
ment playing in addressing
climate change?
What impressed me so much
was this: The level of under-
standing, of knowledge, of com-
mitment to impact this eco-
nomic transformation is so
much higher in the trade union
movement in other parts of the
world than it is here in the
United States. In the United
States, many parts of the trade
union movement are still saying,
“Okay, this is real but it’s not go-
ing to happen for another 40 or
50 years; we’ve got time.”
When you talk to brothers and
sisters internationally, they say,
“No, brother, it’s happening
now, and we may be too late.”
So they get it, in the interna-
tional labor movement, that we
have to pressure our govern-
ments, and in collective bargain-
ing agreements with employers,
to do everything we can to cut
emissions. In our country, we’ve
got to educate our own mem-
bers that this is serious, and it’s
not abstract. It shouldn’t be
looked at as an inconvenience,
but rather, as an opportunity to
restructure the way we do eco-
nomics, and a way to fight in-
equality.
What work do you person-
ally expect to do now that
you’re back home?
I sit on governing board of
the Alliance for Jobs and Clean
Energy in our state, and we’re
contemplating a ballot initiative
next year that would cap carbon
and charge fees for polluters and
then take that money and rein-
vest it in the economy. There are
many steps between now and
actually putting something out
there on the ballot, but that’s
what we’re working on. Should
the decision be made not to go
ahead in 2016, we’ll continue
educating our own membership
and the greater public about re-
ducing carbon emissions. Our
governor also has a proposed
clean air rule which has a cap on
carbon. They want to adopt the
rule by mid-summer.