Exactly 54 days after Lisa B. Nelson, the new CEO of the American Legislative Council (ALEC), started her job, Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, dropped the bomb: Google wanted out of its relationship with ALEC. "That was some sort of mistake," Schmidt said on The Diane Rehm Show when a caller asked why Google was supporting the organization. "We're trying to not do that in the future."

"It's like breaking up via text with your girlfriend when you're 16," said Nelson, presumably before throwing out the mixtapes and Google hoodie Eric gave her and unfriending him on Facebook. Wait a minute, she couldn't do that, because Facebook is also leaving ALEC. Well, then maybe she could post a picture of her trashed hoodie and mixtapes to Yahoo's Flickr site? Nope, Yahoo's ditching ALEC, too.

How about leaving mean reviews of Google, Flickr, and Yahoo on Yelp? Sorry, Yelp already gave ALEC the thumbs down. And before she opens Outlook to send some "actually-I'm the-one-who-broke-up-with-YOU" emails, she might recall that even Microsoft has Ctrl-Z'd its relationship with ALEC.

Any way you look at it, Lisa B. Nelson's first 60 days on the job were, as they say, character building. But, really, she shouldn't take it personally. It's not her -- it's ALEC.

What is it about ALEC that has given so many Big Tech firms cold feet? For that matter, what is ALEC, exactly? It calls itself a nonpartisan organization that focuses on the principles of limited government, free markets, and federalism. Not quite. The New York Times, reporting on Google's defection, described ALEC as "a conservative-leaning group that has urged repeal of state renewable power standards and other pro-renewable policies." And the Times was being kind.

ALEC is actually one of the most brazen attempts to steal our democracy that corporate interests have yet conceived. The "council" is composed of representatives from corporations, along with state legislators. Corporations like Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries pay fees along with other generous financial contributions. The legislators pay nominal dues but are forced to bring their families on all-expenses-paid vacations, where they mingle with their corporate benefactors and receive "model" bills (written by the corporations for the corporations). The rested-and-relaxed lawmakers can then take these Stepford bills home and introduce them in their state houses. The only way to make this easier would be to cut out the middleman and just let the corporations pass the laws themselves.

Because this all happens at the state level, it tends to fly under the national radar. It's also aimed dead at the heart of our absolutely critical local campaigns to develop clean energy and combat climate change.

ALEC exists solely to do the will of the corporations that bankroll it, which is how technology firms got seduced into supporting it in the first place. They hoped ALEC could help them with issues aligned with their own values, such as an open Internet.

What changed? The Climate Movement, which reared its head and roared on September 21 around the world, has made it a lot harder for some companies to keep turning a blind eye to the harm that ALEC does by undermining clean energy and funding climate denial.

Eric Schmidt was blunt: ALEC is "literally lying" about the reality of climate change, he said. "[They] are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people." I can see how that would be a problem for a company whose official corporate motto is still "Don't be evil."

"Our citizens keep marching," said President Obama at the UN Climate Summit last month, one day after hundreds of thousands around the world mobilized to demand climate action. "We cannot pretend we do not hear them."

That is the strength of a movement like this one. It blazes a light that makes it impossible to miss the difference between what is good and what is evil. And here's how strong we have grown: Last week, Occidental Petroleum -- an oil company! -- announced it was leaving ALEC rather than be associated with its positions on climate change and EPA regulations. Other tech (and non-tech) companies that have severed ties with ALEC include Amazon, General Electric, Apple, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Bank of America, and Proctor & Gamble. Many of these companies left a few years ago after Color of Change and other grassroots organizations called out ALEC for its support of voter-suppression and "stand your ground" laws around the country.

Unfortunately, ALEC still has plenty of corporate funders who are willing to ignore the difference between what's good and what's evil. Perhaps Lisa Nelson shouldn't have been so quick to toss that Google hoodie -- she could have sold it on eBay!

That's right: eBay is still supporting an organization that Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Yahoo, and Facebook have all unfriended.  

Send a message to CEO John Donahoe today and tell him that it's about time eBay, too, opened its eyes and saw the light.

Everyone has an occasional bad day at work, but it's tough to top the one that Rep. Eric Cantor had on June 10 in Virginia. Overnight, he went from being one of the most powerful figures in Congress to a trivia question: Name the first House majority leader in history to lose a primary. What made the election upset all the more stunning is that it didn't even appear to be a fair fight. Besides being an incumbent, Cantor outspent his Tea Party opponent, college professor Dave Brat, 26 to 1. Brat spent less than $200,000. His 23-year-old campaign manager only graduated from college last year.

What the heck happened? A lot of words have been put together to explain Cantor's defeat, but his loss should remind us of something that's easily forgotten in an era of Super PACs and billionaire donor networks: Real passion and commitment can't be bought. And despite the relatively recent influx of huge amounts of money into our electoral process, passion and commitment (which Brat's Tea Party supporters had in spades) can still win against any odds.

To my thinking, that's good news for the Sierra Club and our allies as we prepare for what looks to be an epic fight over our nation's energy future. At their latest top-secret summit, the billionaire Koch brothers set a goal of raising almost $300 million just this year to roll back progress on clean energy and fighting climate disruption. That might seem like a lot of money. OK, it is a lot of money, but it represents only 0.3 percent of the combined net worth of the Kochs. We are up against some deep, deep pockets.

They're not deep enough to stop us, though. Not if we harness the righteous people power of millions of Americans who aren't willing to stand by while our planet is destroyed. Many of the Sierra Club's most important campaigns, whether it's protecting special places or replacing dirty fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy, have been fought and won at the local, grassroots level. That's not going to change, either.

Of course, that doesn't mean we won't use new tools for grassroots activism -- the Internet and the rise of social media can't be ignored. But the basic principles of organizing people at the local level and winning against much bigger and better-funded opponents are timeless. So, if you're interested in helping us keep winning, I suggest you start by doing three things.

First, if you haven't already, connect with your local Sierra Club chapter. That's where you can find other people right now who want to make a better world. Chances are, they've got at least one local campaign that could use your help.

Second, get some tips and take some inspiration from folks who have already done this stuff successfully. I'm going to suggest three places to get you started, but a rich and diverse literature of grassroots wisdom is out there waiting to be tapped.

• Closing the Cloud Factories: Lessons From the Fight to Shut Down Chicago's Coal Plants, by Kari Lydersen, tells the full story of how Chicago's Little Village neighborhood fought a long and ultimately successful campaign to retire the Fisk and Crawford coal plants. It's a free ebook you can read on your laptop or tablet. The people of Little Village didn't have a lot of political influence, much less money, but thanks to organizers like Kim Wasserman (herself a mom), they never gave up on stopping the air pollution that was making so many of their kids sick.
  
  
• For a concise and practical overview of what it takes to run a grassroots environmental campaign, you can't beat Fight & Win by Brock Evans, who has decades of experience under his belt working on environmental campaigns for the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and others. His "manual for the new eco-warrior" combines both practical advice ("listen hard," "get people over to your place") and killer stories, including the time five people in Camden, NJ, managed to save "two million acres of a beautiful place in Alaska they'd never seen" by answering their phones. This is a book I wish I'd had 20 years ago when I started out as an environmental organizer.
  
  
• And because this is a multigenerational effort, I want to give a shout-out to a book I can't wait to read and give to my kids: Josie and the Fourth Grade Bike Brigade, by Antonia Bruno and her parents, Kenny Bruno and Beth Handman. I read an advanced copy of this book, and it's awesome! Josie and her pals prove that you're never too young to do something about climate change, and show that it's possible to be a do-gooder and have fun, too. If you know any potential elementary school climate activists, they'll be both entertained and inspired by Josie's adventures.

And my final suggestion is a bit of a tease: Watch this space. The Sierra Club is cooking up some new approaches to digital environmental activism that you'll hear more about later this summer. I think you’ll love it. We're going to give regular people even greater access to the power they already have -- power that can change the world. That's a kind of power the Kochs and their pals will never know -- because it's not for sale.

As the shutdown of the federal government drags on, Americans are angry. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is watching with nervous disbelief as we edge toward defaulting on our debts. And with each additional day the shutdown continues, the damage gets worse.

The national parks, of course, have been closed since the beginning, which has meant both bitter disappointment and increasing economic hardship for millions. But the damage doesn't stop there. We're seeing everything from coal-mining accidents to cancellation of this year's polar climate research to delays in implementation of life-saving clean-air standards by the EPA, along with other parts of President Obama's Climate Action Plan.

We have good reason to be angry, frustrated, and worried. But even if the current crisis is resolved, those emotions will have been wasted if we don't find a way to deal with the underlying problems that have led to this chronic governmental dysfunction. Chief among these is that our members of Congress spend more time pleading with wealthy donors for campaign funds than working on problems that affect the rest of us.

At the same time, Congress has come unmoored from basic democratic principles to the point where a minority can hold the government hostage. To do so by threatening something as radical as defaulting on the federal debt is not negotiation -- it's pulling the pin on a grenade.

The mentality of Tea Party Republicans that brought us to this debt crisis is the same one that exacerbates the climate crisis: a rigid ideology devoid of facts, reason, or any desire to identify common ground.

The recklessness and irresponsibility that we're seeing from Republicans in the House are symptoms of a system that demands reform. If nothing else good comes of the current mess, let's hope it raises awareness of that fact. The solutions need not be radical. In Iowa, a Democratic representative and one of his Republican colleagues discussed adopting redistricting reforms that would encourage more-competitive races. President Obama, too, raised the issue of gerrymandered districts during his press conference this week, as well as noting the corrosive effect of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision on campaign spending.

As I noted in my previous post, the McCutcheon vs. Federal Election Commission case currently before the Supreme Court could make things even worse by removing limitations on individual contributions to political campaigns. That's why the Sierra Club and its partners in The Democracy Initiative were out in force this week to call attention to the issue.

The media like to talk about who's "winning" in the blame game. The real answer is that, without real reform, nobody can win. Only by restoring our democracy, will we be free to tackle the real challenges of this century. Congress needs to get its act together. It can start by ending this shutdown and reopening our national parks. Then let's makes sure it doesn't stop there.

America's best idea is in trouble -- but I don't mean our national parks. Yes, the parks are closed, which is inexcusable. It's not only a crushing disappointment for millions of would-be visitors but also an economic gut punch for neighboring communities -- to the tune of $76 million dollars a day. But what's really under attack is something even older than our national park system: our democracy.

How did we reach a point where a small fraction of one party in one branch of government believes it is entitled to demand everything it wants, or else it will drive our government into the ground? It's like a firefighter standing on the hose to stop the rest of the company from putting out a blaze until he gets a million-dollar raise -- all while the building burns around him.

We didn't reach this nadir in our democracy by accident. It's the result of a systematic attack on the basic democratic principles of justice and equality by a handful of people who have no interest in a healthy, functioning democracy. While there is no excuse, there is an explanation -- with three major elements.

It starts with the money that has corrupted our Congress. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opened the floodgates that have allowed a tidal wave of corrupting corporate money into our political system. But where is the money coming from and where is it going?

Not surprisingly, huge amounts are coming from polluter-backed groups, which promoted a dirty fuels agenda by spending more than $270 million on television ads in the last two months of the 2012 election cycle. The Koch brothers alone reportedly spent $400 million on their political operations in the 2012 election -- that's two people spending more in 2012 than the entire McCain campaign did in 2008.

That influx of cash explains why this Congress has taken more than 300 votes attacking clean air and clean water. The same people who are poisoning our democracy are also determined to poison our air and our water. I know, because we are on the ground fighting them every day.

Not only are they churning out a steady stream of bad legislation but they are also making it impossible to pass solid, bipartisan bills -- such as the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency measure -- that would benefit everyone. Somehow, they have concluded that if everyone wins, they lose. And all this is happening at a time when 80 percent of Americans agree that political money is preventing our most important challenges from being addressed.

Which brings us to the second cause of this dysfunction. Obstructionists don't need to worry about what those 80 percent of Americans think, because gerrymandering -- the process of redrawing congressional districts to favor a particular political party -- has given them "safe" seats.That's why even though more Americans voted for Democratic candidates to the House of Representatives in 2012, the Republicans won their second-biggest majority in 60 years. And redistricting happens only every 10 years.

Finally, big polluters and other special interests are spending millions to keep anyone who disagrees with them away from the polls and out of office. No sooner did the Supreme Court gut a key part of the Voting Rights Act, than state houses across the country with Republican legislatures pushed through suppressive legislation to keep young people, seniors, students, and people of color away from the polls. It's no coincidence that those are the same citizens who have voted against them.

These direct challenges to our democracy have led the Sierra Club to team up with the NAACP, Communications Workers of America, and Greenpeace to form The Democracy Initiative. The goal is bring together labor, civil rights, voting rights, environmental, good government, and other like-minded organizations with broad memberships to build a movement to halt the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, prevent the systemic manipulation and suppression of voters, and address other obstacles to significant reform.

Challenges to our democracy might get even worse. Right now, the Sierra Club and many of our allies are fighting a frightening Supreme Court challenge to campaign finance limits on individual contributions to candidates. And who was it that brought this Supreme Court case on behalf of those who would like to write million dollar checks to buy influence? Shaun McCutcheon -- the climate-change-denying CEO of a coal company in Alabama.

Let's be clear -- only about 1,200 people in America last year even came close to reaching the spending limits that McCutcheon wants to see overturned. We're talking about the one percent of the one percent of the one percent. These campaign-donation limits apply to an amount of people that couldn't even fill a high school gym. And a good number of them are oil, gas, and coal executives. Those sectors directly contributed $40 million to candidates in 2012. Give them free rein to write whatever size of check they want, and we'll see that number double, triple, or quadruple.

The faster that money pours in, the quicker the voices of ordinary Americans will be drowned out. We can't let that happen. And we won't. They may have millions of dollars, but we have millions of people. And, thanks to efforts like the Democracy Initiative, we are organizing and coming together to make sure our voices are heard. We already know we have common foes -- the way to beat them is to recognize that we have common goals.

If we want to see more shutdowns, then we should maintain the status quo. If we want to see more debt crises, then we'd better not rock the boat. If we want more attacks on our air, our water, and our climate, then all we need to do is roll our eyes and turn away in disgust at the political posturing on Capitol Hill. But if we want to restore a democracy that works for Americans and will preserve a healthy planet for future generations, it's time to stand up and fight back. For our people, for our parks, and for our democracy.