UnKoch 101

UnKoch My Campus is a Black and queer-led non-profit project working to pull back the curtain on dark money donations in education.

We address the impact of corporatization/privatization’s broader impact on campus safety, climate misinformation, the court and prison systems, and with policy makers. In particular, we seek to highlight how these investments are harmful for Black and brown communities while propagating structural inequity. We ignite and preserve the power of the people in service of protecting institutions intended for the common good. We organize against actors whose expressed intent is to place private interests over the wellbeing of our communities. We are actively building a more just world through collective action, mutual support, and developing ecosystems of solidarity.

Our Topic Areas:

  • HIGHER ED: In April 2015, Charles Koch projected that roughly two-thirds of his political network’s 2016 spending—then estimated at $900 million—would go to “research and education” rather than direct political expenditures. Through our research we have uncovered what Koch has accumulated via his millions in higher ed donations. From influencing curriculum (including textbooks chosen and courses offered), to faculty hires/fires, fellows selected, and more, the Koch network has been able to mold academic departments and centers to his benefit at campuses across the country for years. Our higher ed campaigns cover all fifty states, and are over 9,000 organizers strong. We work with student activists, professors, and local stakeholders, and support the grassroots efforts of campuses working to rid themselves of Koch corporate influence.

      

  • CLIMATE: From funding university-affiliated research centers and state-based think-tanks to making sure climate-denying politicians are seated in legislatures across the country, Koch and his network has been one of the largest driving forces behind climate disinformation in the United States. This has stalled government action on climate change, disrupted efforts by the states to transition to renewable energies, and paved the way for the Trump administration's privatization of public lands.

  • COURTS/JUDICIARY: The Koch network is invested in a coordinated effort to influence the education, nomination, and confirmation/election processes of Judges and Attorneys General across the country. Judges are being educated at Koch-sponsored seminars that seek to train them on how to apply a pro-corporate analysis to their judicial decisions. By manipulating gaps in gift acceptance policies at colleges and universities, the Koch network has been able to facilitate the education of future lawyers and judges in an effort to achieve their goals of privatization, corporate favor, and regulatory rollbacks. Many states also do not have proper ethics rules to combat this form of judicial lobbying. Judges sympathetic to Koch’s agenda are gaining positions of power to enforce this agenda because Koch-backed special-interest groups are able to spend millions of dark money dollars to get them elected and appointed at the state and federal level. These interest groups are able to achieve success because of campaign finance loopholes like Citizens United, laws that allow Supreme Court justices to run for multiple terms, and a lack of public financing laws that would prevent judges from having to raise money from lawyers and corporations that appear before them.

  • FREE SPEECH: Youth organizers, specifically students of color, are being criminalized by the proliferation of a false crisis of campus free speech designed to protect and promote white supremacy. The Campus Free Speech movement, led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (funded in large part by Koch)  is propagating White Supremacy by protecting hate speech, and is yet another manifestation of racist policy that criminalizes Black and brown bodies. At a time when more and more students of color are fighting for their right to access higher education, these bills take away the agency of the most marginalized students to organize for their right to achieve that education free from cultural and direct violence.
    When it comes to the protection of actual freedom of speech, we’ve worked with professors who were targeted for speaking out against Koch funding and influence. When a philosophy professor at Bowling Green University started asking questions and raising objections to Koch spending in his department, he suffered retaliation from a Koch-funded colleague who repeatedly called him a safety threat, simply for asking for more transparency.  

  • K-12: Koch and his network view K-12 education as the ideal arena for promoting ideas that question climate change, attack workers' rights, and defend slavery in order to build long-term support for corporate-favoring policies. The Koch network is manufacturing a false crisis of public education through strategic public relations campaigns and supporting the seating of state legislators who intentionally defund public education. The Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is behind campaigns at the state and federal level to defund and privatize K-12 education.

 

Building Grassroots Power

We believe change is possible. Our mission includes creating accountability through conversation and action. We equip organizers with the skills to do the research to understand the Koch network’s impact on our various topic areas. We help them build people power in their communities to use collective power to achieve goals. Organizers are provided with a diversity of tactics to keep supporters engaged and increase pressure on targets over time. We also help build infrastructure so campaigns are sustained for the long-term.