ACORN under attack, labor offers support

[Omaha Steve]

http://ilcaonline.org/content/acorn-under-attack-labor-offers-support

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Despite recent negative news reports, the activist group ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) continues to advocate for poor and working class people in California and around the U.S. The organization took a hit recently when Congress passed the Defund ACORN Act and cut off its federal funding, which makes up about 10 percent of its budget; ACORN has received about $53 million in federal funding over the past fifteen years. The vote came in response to news reports that featured a video secretly made by two conservative filmmakers disguised as a prostitute and a pimp who were given tax and immigration advice by ACORN employees who advised them to disguise the source of their income to get housing aid.

“There’s been tons of negative attention because of the videos shown on Fox News,” said San Mateo County ACORN Organizer David Sharples. “A few of our staff members said and did stupid, indefensible things, but they are not in line with ACORN’s values and what we are about as an organization.” (Other tapes showing ACORN employees ejecting the videographers from other offices were not shown on Fox.)

And, Sharples pointed out, “None of our staff members committed any crime; they may have said stupid things, but the only crime committed was by the videographer, who secretly taped without the permission of the person being taped. In California you can’t videotape without permission.” In September, Gov. Schwarzenegger wrote a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown calling on his office to investigate the videotaping incident. The Attorney General said he would investigate both sides. “It’s clear that the party who committed a crime is the videographer,” Sharples said. “What has been lost in the negative news stories is the good work ACORN is doing in the community.”

A History of Advocacy and Organizing

ACORN has been organizing the unorganized and helping low-income communities fight for justice for nearly 40 years. The organization advocates for improved access to health care, fights against predatory lending and for affordable housing and living wages, registers voters, helps fight foreclosures and works for relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

In San Mateo County, ACORN offered free tax filing assistance to over 750 low-income people this year. “That put over $1 million in refunds back into the pockets of families; and another two hundred thousand dollars through the Earned Income Tax Credit,” Sharples noted. San Mateo County Central Labor Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Shelley Kessler pointed out that, “An analysis of ACORN’s work over the ten year period through 2007 concluded that the organization’s work delivered $15 billion in improvement and investment to communities.”

“ACORN’s goal is to help low-income people to lift themselves out of poverty,” Sharples said. “We do a lot of work helping organize in the community to win neighborhood improvements. In South San Francisco, ACORN worked to get stop signs and stop lights installed; in San Bruno, the City installed speed bumps to slow traffic through residential areas; in East Palo Alto, ACORN fought for and won street paving. It’s about ordinary people coming together to get power in numbers, go to City Councils and get their voices heard to get improvements in the community.”

FULL story at link.

[wroberts189]

1. KNR !

[rfranklin]

2. Country Club Republican says: Help the poor? Unacceptable!

In the Republican Bible, rich, white Jesus says, as ye do unto them, so shall you profit. God meant them to be poor and downtrodden.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. You left out "harrumph". nt

[sabrina 1]

3. “It’s clear that the party who committed a crime is the videographer,”

Absolutely true. Not only in one state, but in two states those two political operatives broke the law.

ACORN has been under attack by the far right for decades. The most reprehensible thing Democrats did over the past several months, was to vote for the bill to defund an organization, probably responsible through their voter registration program, for the dems majority. They did before looking at the evidence of fraud in those videos, not to mention the racist overtones and the lies exposed as soon as people began to look more closely at the heavily edited videos.

And more recently, Mike Stark revealed that the whole 'impression' of 'pimp' going into ACORN offices may itself have been a lie, when he asked the fraudster James O'Keefe if he had actually worn that costume, or had he posed as a Congressional Candidate who was trying to save these women from a pimp. The coward claims he cannot answer questions now because of ACORN'S lawsuit against them.

Shame on the Democrats for not standing up for those who work so hard for the poor and great that they are getting support from people who actually do know what they do.

Hopefully the lawsuit will force these Karl Rove wannabes to hand over all of the edited tapes. Because we know they lied when they said 'no one turned us away'. There are police reports that contradict those lies. Funny how quiet they've been. But they did accomplish their goal. The media dropped the story as soon as their lies began to unfold.

K&R in support of one of the few organizations that actually has and does help the voiceless and to slap the racist, rightwing organizations who have been out to stop them for decades, in their despicable faces.