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Why Don't You Work Together? A note from Steve Workings, ELPAC's Executive Director: Day in and day out, we get the same questions: "why don't all you pro-English organizations work together?" "Why are there so many groups?" "Why don't you join forces with them?" Good questions. We'd love to, and we do work together. All the time. Just look through this newsletter. You'll see several groups cooperating. ELPAC is part of the English Language Working Group, which meets monthly in Washington to bring together the top pro-English groups including ProEnglish, English First, Center for Equal Opportunity, and others with congressional leaders, opinion makers, and other non-language-related groups. We all work together, delegate tasks, divide jobs, and sign on to others' work, like recent letters on Executive Order 13166, and comments to federal agencies. (One exception is U.S.English, the largest pro-English organization, which does not attend these meetings.) Each of these groups does an outstanding job in its special niche in our movement. Pro- English is best at legal action; English First is stellar at lobbying; CEO does research and takes the lead nationally on bilingual education. Each group has its own personalities and celebrities: Linda Chavez heads CEO; Bob Park, who defended the Arizona Official English law before the U.S. Supreme Court, heads ProEnglish; and Jim Boulet heads English First.ELPAC has its own special place in the movement. We are the only pro-English organization which is allowed to intervene directly in political campaigns. But that special place comes with a cost: We are a federal political action committee. Federal law requires us to be independent of the other organizations. That is for their protection, to avoid endangering their federal tax exemptions. So we do work together, as much as we can. But we have our special job to do, and we do it separately, as federal law requires. |
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The
ELPAC Report 