ACORN: A Case of Selective Prosecution

From town-hall-meeting-bullies shouting down members of Congress to Joe "You Lie" Wilson of South Carolina disrespecting the President at a joint session of Congress, 2009 has been a year of dramatic political theater. A conservative activist with a hidden video camera set out to embarrass ACORN -- and succeeded -- and a chain reaction was set off led by a brand of journalism known as "advocacy journalism" which does not purport to be objective.

I have been impressed by how ACORN has responded. They appointed former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to conduct an independent inquiry into ACORN's delivery of social services, including housing and tax assistance. Harshbarger is now a Senior Counsel to the Firm of Proskauer Rose LLP and is the former President and CEO of Common Cause. ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis has committed to implement the recommendations of the independent inquiry. I would call that swift and responsible action.

ACORN deserves to be scrutinized, but not treated unfairly. The Senate recently passed a measure to deny all federal funding to ACORN, the nation's leading community organizing organization. This strikes me as pandering to the right wing. Low-level employees caught by Fox News giving improper and potentially illegal advice have been used as a pretext to attack the entire organization.

It comes as part of a systematic attempt to muzzle grass-roots organizing of poor and marginalized communities. It includes the attacks on legal aid and riders to countless federal grants, which specifically prohibit nonpartisan voter registration.

What makes the Senate action particularly egregious is the fact that the United States Supreme Court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, is seriously considering doing away with restrictions on corporations and unions, giving unlimited funds to political campaigns based on free speech protections. Numerous political candidates are already avoiding campaign spending limits -- New York's mayor is estimated to be spending nearly $100 million on his own bid for reelection. And the current meltdown in the news media with newspapers serving communities large and small collapsing -- and many of those that remain serving an overtly anti-poor agenda -- endangers the future of a democratic society where the working poor can at least have some leverage at the ballot box.

This is clearly a case of selective prosecution. Many other organizations and institutions -- United Way, the Catholic Church, Covenant House -- have continued to receive both government and private support once they've fired the bad actors and cleaned up their act. The action by the Senate smacks of a cave-in to the political right which has always been suspicious of any organization that aids or represents poor people in this country.

In fact, ACORN immediately fired the employees who behaved inappropriately. All intakes to ACORN service programs were suspended and all frontline staff were ordered to take in-service training within 48 hours. Not one single piece of improper paperwork was completed or filed in any of the incidents portrayed in the recently aired videos. While the guerrilla theater video made for interesting TV it does not accurately portray the work ACORN does. ACORN has a done a tremendous amount of good.

For four decades ACORN has provided a vital service to New York City and to our country. ACORN is the largest membership organization of poor people in the country. It is a place where people make democracy work and where people can work together to get more control over their lives and their communities.

In addition to providing free mortgage counseling and tax preparation services for millions of poor people across the country, ACORN has been a champion of affordable housing, quality neighborhoods, good schools, and good jobs so people can support themselves. All of this supports strengthening families and communities.

There is no place where ACORN has made its mark in New York City like it has on housing. ACORN has been a leader in ensuring that affordable housing is available for low- and moderate-income families, in eliminating housing discrimination and exclusionary zoning, in reducing foreclosures, and stopping risky predatory lending.

ACORN has been very active on education issues as well. The organization's activities have helped to deliver new funding and to stop cuts in funding totaling more than $2 billion for New York City schools. They have founded two successful schools and have consistently involved their members in demanding quality schools for their children and for every child.

ACORN's track record for 40 years is one of working with people across all spectrums to tackle some of our nation's most challenging problems. ACORN's errors don't even register on the scale of mistakes our government has tolerated on Wall Street.

With the economy tanking, unemployment spiking, and corporate money dominating the political landscape in Washington and in many state capitols, this is not the time to declare war on the nation's leading community organizing institution.

Comments

[Jerkyman]

I am glad acorn hired someone to investgate. Wonder what they will find out about themselves? It is always a good idea to hire your own investigator that way you already know the conclusion before the investigation starts.

[Tyler-Durden]

this is an EXCELLENT article. i cannot say more, and there is no need to. YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY ON TARGET with this one. nice work.

[DestinationsUnknown]

Dumb it Down Mr. President! Isn't that what Murdoch citizens asked the POTUS to do?

Dumb it Down!

Too bad- too bad Murdoch students will not get their wish!

ACORN is not over either.

Much to the chagrin of the DO NOTHINGS!

Here is your Murdoch Style - WASTE of TIME!

Days before the big HEALTHCARE Break in August- Guess what GOP did with 7 precious hours of their time on the House Floor days before the August break?

Guess? Go ahead- -C-span for facts.

7-27-09- R-IA King stood for 2 hours on the House floor ranting about Criminal Acorn- anything to do w/healthcare?

Then- to really enforce the WSJ/Murdoch DUMB DOWN- 7-29-09 Guess what R-IA King did for 2 more hours?

Yep! DO NOTHING; DUMB it DOWN Murdoch Style all the way did the exact same thing again.

R-IA King 2 more hours on the House floor ranting about Criminal Acorn have to do w/healthcare?

SWIFTBOAT at its FINEST!

DUMB it DOWN Mr. President, Murdoch style - 7 hours before the Town Halls begin!

Returning to DC after August break and guess who CNN has on –demanding Congressional Hearings for ACORN in early September?

Yep! R-IA King! The EXPERT on Criminal ACORN!

ACORN=CENSUS WORKER

Late September –R (IN) Pence on Murdoch’s Hannity - stating no more funding for ACORN and pushed Obama connection- again!

[billhodges]

Even though ACORN is an enthusiastic supporter of government regulation of the economy, it hates having to obey those same regulations.

In 1995, ACORN sued the state of California seeking an exemption from the law that requires that it pay its own employees a minimum wage. ACORN, which argued that keeping its employees in poverty helps to boost their zeal to help the poor, lost. Even though it supports the continued imposition of equal employment opportunity laws on the rest of America, it argued it shouldn’t have to comply with those same laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had to sue ACORN to force it comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

[pjburke]

Without citations (or links) to cases, your assertion that there was such a case is empty and meaningless.

Until and unless substantiated by specific citation, whatever you may claim about it could very well just be made-up nonsense.

[Soundofthunder]

I keep reading this "fact" but cannot find a link to the case itself. Without seeing that, I must label this a made up story.

SOT

[fallingsky]

ACORN has been under investigation in 17 states BEFORE the videos were made,,, ACORN and SEIU connections are very much an issue,,,, and the governement does not fund Haliburton or Blackwater ,,, The government purchases services from them ...

[billhodges]

Many do not understand the difference between these, and will call you down for trying to show them the difference.

[dsbsh]

"purchases services from them" using no-bid contracts, and yes, receiving substantial government subsidies in the process. Are you suggesting that it's ok for corporations to continue to receive hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars, despite having been found conclusively to have defrauded the government out of billions? this, compared to $53 million for an organization due to allegations?

[Wendy Johnson]

When the services purchased are in the form of no-bid contracts, those differences are pretty small if you ask me. They become even smaller when you factor in the significant ties that existed, between the Bush Administration and Halliburton:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml

And Blackwater:

http://www.bluebloggin.com/2007/10/03/bush-and-his-blackwater-ties/

[DUSAA-1775]

Acorn provides much needed registration of democratic voters.
However, they should not be receiving tax dollars to do this work.

[Soundofthunder]

Their mission to register voters is just that: register voters. They do not have the ability to choose how a person registers, Democrat, Republican, or indep.

SOT

[Nikia McGlothin]

Are democrats concerned about voter registration & turnout due to this blow to a massive voter registration organization?

[hippie chucker]

No one can deny that ACORN is helping people.

But when 5 offices are caught on tape, 15 states are investigating voter fraud, the founders brother steals 5 million according to subpoena documents released yesterday, and stays with the organization for 8 more years, we have a problem.

Which is to say that there are plenty of other charities who help the poor who don't funnel money into politics, and at the same time receive federal and state tax dollars.

[pjburke]

The secret taping was the only ACTUAL crime committed.

Those so-called investigations are all bogus -- most have already been dismissed for lack of evidence -- and all were launched at the direction of Karl Rove. They were launched by those other U.S Attorneys who weren't fired... the ones who kept their jobs because they were willing to break the law and use the criminal justice system for partisan political purposes. The nine who refused to do that were the ones that Rove fired.

[Kaviraj]

Taping a talk is one thing - illegally done to boot. Finding filled in papers as a result is anohter. No illegal papers have been found in any of those cases.

[billhodges]

ACORN began in the early 1970s as the Arkansas Community Organization for Reform Now. Its roots are in the Northeast's National Welfare Rights Organization, where its organizers' mission was to fight for the right for people to rely permanently upon government welfare.

That strategy came about because of a 1966 article in The Nation magazine, "The Weight of the Poor," by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

The discrepancy is not an accident stemming from bureaucratic inefficiency; it is an integral feature of the welfare system, which, if challenged, would precipitate a profound financial and political crisis. The force for that challenge, and the strategy we propose, is a massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls..
Widespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments. These disruptions would generate severe political strains, and deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas. By the internal disruption of local bureaucratic practices, by the furor over public welfare poverty, and by the collapse of current financing arrangements.

[Wendy Johnson]

When you don't cite your source, your information is less than convincing (after you have, well then it depends on the source). What do we have besides your word here, that there is or ever was any connection between ACORN's strategy and an article in The Nation in the 1960's?

[thriftyone]

From your posting "its organizers' mission was to fight for the right for people to rely permanently upon government welfare."

SLIGHT correction
From Wikipedia:
1970 –1975: Founding
ACORN was founded by Wade Rathke when he was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas by the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in 1970 as an organizer.[31] Gary Delgado and George A. Wiley were also instrumental to its founding. ACORN's first campaign was to help welfare recipients attain their basic needs, such as clothing and furniture. This drive, inspired by a clause in the Arkansas welfare laws, began the effort to create and sustain a movement that would grow to become the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, the beginnings of ACORN.[32]

ACORN's goal was to "unite welfare recipients with needy working people around issues such as school lunches, unemployment, Vietnam veterans' rights, and emergency room care."[33]

How did you get from helping welfare recipients attain their basic needs to relying permanently upon government welfare?

When did the US become a county for the wealthy and by the corporation? Seems to me the right should have a bit more compassion for their fellow man if they follow their religious teachings. Aren't you supposed to love thy neighbor? Feed the hungry? House the homeless? WWJD?

[pjburke]

If you're going to quote a source, then use quotation marks to indicate that.

Then link to the original source, instead of copy-n-pasting someone else's quote. You could be -- and probably are -- replicating someone else's error(s) all over the Web.

[ladyvader]

If they are going to defund ACORN, then they have to defund Halliburton, Blackwater, and a few other contractors.

[Jesster]

Yes ladyvader, you would think that common sense and reason would demand at least the pretense of some kind of consistency . But don't hold your breath. Unfortunately in this day and age of non-accountability "they" don't HAVE to do anything and I'm confident they won't.