“Are you state legislators?” Hand outstretched, Arlene Holt Baker approached the group of well-dressed men gathered in the atrium of the Grand Hyatt. The men’s smiles quickly vanished when Diallo Brooks asked them to sign a pledge that they would put their “constituents first – before corporate interests and their lobbies.” State legislators from across the country were gathered at the Hyatt Thursday for the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the “ powerful, secretive organization funded by the Koch brothers and other corporate interests that is famous for drafting conservative legislation that Republican state legislatures adopt down to the last semicolon,” according to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbanks. While dozens of protestors – and a giant inflatable fatcat – rallied outside, Baker, the AFL-CIO’s former Executive Vice President, Brooks, of the People For the American Way, and new APWU president Mark Dimondstein slipped past security guards into the Hyatt in an attempt to buttonhole legislators who quickly hid their name badges and scurried away. “You can run from us, but you can't hide!” thundered Metro Washington Labor Council president Jos Williams in front of the Hyatt, while Baker said that ALEC members “should be ashamed” by their refusal to sign the pledge to uphold democracy, a stark contrast to ALEC’s draft loyalty oath for legislators declaring that they will “act with care and loyalty and put the interests of the organization first.”