'First they came for ACORN.'.... SEIU is next! Prof. Dreier warns Dems about not fighting back!

[sabrina 1]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/first-they-came-for-acorn_b_300941.html

First They Came For ACORN

....... Then they came for the American Association of University Professors, and the Democrats did not speak out -- because they were not the American Association of University Professors

Then Big Business, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, the Religious Right, the Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell, and Karl Rove came for the Democrats -- and there was no one left to speak out for the Democrats.

Excellent reporting on this in the link below, by Rachel Maddow who tells us that they are now after Obama's Director of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard and SEIU. 'He's 'Telegraphing the next witch-hunt we have to look forward to'

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/

The show is well worth watching, and I hope someone in the Democratic Party will pay attention to the warnings before it's too late.


Professor Peter Dreier appearing on that same show, warned Democrats that if they do not stand up for organizaions like ACORN and SEIU and individuals like their latest target, Patrick Gaspard, there will be no one left to vote for them. Many of the organizations on the GOP hit list are, like ACORN, responsible for registering voters who normally would not be registered. These voters traditionally vote for Democrats.

When they went after Van Jones, it was just the beginning, as most observers warned. Foolishly thinking if they gave the tantrum-throwing Rightwingers what they wanted, we could all just 'move on'. So, rather than fight back, the Dems caved!

Emboldened by that victory, as expected by everyone other than Obama's advisers, they moved on to the planned attack on ACORN and Dems caved once again!

Seeing no resistance to their campaign of destroying every organization that helps the poor and minorities to register to vote, to raise the minimum wage, to get health-care coverage and to buy homes, the rightwing smear machine is in full swing.

While SEIU is the next organization on their hit list, they haven't forgotten Obama Administration Officials either. One of those directly in their sights, is Patrick Gaspard, high on their list and the campaign has already begun.

Obama appointed Patrick Gaspard to be his Director of Political Affairs last January.




Yes, he's another Black American targeted by the right. Is anyone surprised?

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/06/28/2008-06-28_haitian_american_labor_leader_patrick_ga.html

Haitian American labor leader Patrick Gaspard in key job with Barack Obama

New York's Haitian community and Barack Obama supporters have something to celebrate - a dynamic local labor leader, Haitian American Patrick Gaspard, has been named national political director of Sen. Obama's presidential campaign.

In this position, Gaspard - who is executive vice president for politics and legislation for the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East labor union - will work to develop relationships with labor unions, elected officials and political groups in the Democrats' battle for the White House.

Here you can read some of the tactics the Rightwing Smear Machine is using to go after Patrick Gaspard:

http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs/remember-this-name-gaspard
Remember this name GASPARD

His crime in the eyes of the rabid rightwing? He worked for SEIU. Their crime is that they 'worked with ACORN'.

SEIU DID work with ACORN. They worked with ACORN on getting a Living Wage for working people and are blamed by the Right for helping to get the one victory Dems had after regaining the majority in 2006 which was the Minimum Wage Bill. Seeing George Bush sign that bill, angered them beyond belief.

The Right are now using their ACORN victory, virtually unopposed, in fact disgracefully aided and abetted by a majority of Democrats in Congress, to fire up their base and to raise funds.

Michelle Backmann is just one Republican using the ACORN issue to further her own interests. She is running an ad, to stop all funding to ACORN:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stopfundingACORN/?e

As Rachel said 'the Democrats are not standing up for these groups' and Prof. Dreier agrees, stating that if Democrats do not stand up for their allies, there will be no one left to vote for them.

Thanks to those who have, like the brilliant Rep. Grayson, calling the Defund ACORN Bill a 'Bill of Attainder' and 'un-Constitutional.

But so far, he isn't getting much support from the Majority Party! They ARE still the Majority Party, aren't they?

[Nikki Stone1]

1. URGENT K & R

:kick:

[zeos3]

2. K&R

[BrklynLiberal]

3. The spineless Dems better pay attention!!!!

[DireStrike]

4. k/r

[mzmolly]

5. Well done Sabrina!

:toast:

[whyverne]

6. But we're peace loving and non-confrontational.

And hate is bad for your health.

They are just a bunch of pansies.
Come on everybody! Let's go and meet the pansies!

[wroberts189]

7. I just do not understand how something so obvious is so "unseen"

The defund Acorn Act... ? What you want to be in the minority again? These are the very people who helped you get elected.

Please do not tell me you are that stupid after watching the pubs pull this type of crap for the past 20 years.

on edit knr

[sabrina 1]

8. It's hard to understand, I agree. They reacted

without even checking out the story, wanting to distance themselves from the 'charges' all of which turned out to be a tempest in a tea-pot.

But once they helped destroy ACORN, they handed the jubilant smear machine the biggest weapon they could have given them.

I'm sure even the GOP operatives themsevles, were surprised at how easy it was.

Before jumping into this trap, they should at least have taken the time to look at the sources, and the tapes themselves and should have come out swinging, as the whole stunt was nothing but a dirty trick.

[wroberts189]

15. Yep ..and the employee they tricked reported it to his detective brother.

Now he is fired.

Its the first time I have ever seen this standard. One or two low level employee's are tricked into a gambit. The whole organization is held responsible... despite firing them on very suspicious grounds and facts. Then congress ..who we voted in ...jumps and in 48 hours votes to de-fund them ...wtf? Its like when they all jumped to slam MOVEON just because they ran an ad saying we were getting duped which... we were.

If that standard was ever applied to any other corporation or Gov. contractor.. Or better yet why is that standard not being applied?

[sabrina 1]

21. True, that was Juan Carlos Vera, a really decent man

who was smeared and lied about and who followed up on them, reported them, and yet, still lost his job.

And don't forget that the Philadelphia office also reported them, after throwing them out.

Also, Tresa Kaelke, a third ACORN worker, taped without her knowledge, wasn't fooled by them at all. So she played back by pretending she had murdered her husband. One month later, without ever having reported this to to the police themselves, they reported it on FOX's Hannity show, with Rove and Greta Van Sustern all expressing outrage that ACORN was hiring murderers. Yet, not one of them reported it.

Iow, Tresa made fools of them, including Rove. But the media has dropped this story as soon as it began to fall apart. They have NOT given the exposure of the lies and the questions about funding, anywhere near the amount of time they gave the 'stunt'. So, with the help of Dems and the media, the Smear Machine gets away with destroying lives and is handed a weapon to use against the Democrats in the next election.

You're right, nothing like this has ever happened before, where a huge organization is held accountable for two low-level employees acting foolishly and Congress rushes, based on lies as we now know, to defund that organization.

[wroberts189]

23. AMEN to that. Rachel Maddow has been on the ball with this.nt

[sabrina 1]

26. Rachel's been great. She said that this whole story

affected in a way she didn't expect. She said she is surprised at how emotional it was for her. But the story is going away as they got what they wanted and once there was negative information about the crowd who orchestrated, questions about their funding etc. the media stopped reporting on it.

Rep. Grayson was great on this story also. That's how I first came to notice him. We need hundreds like him and complete over haul of the media. Otherwise I don't have much hope for this country.

[wroberts189]

27. I woke up very grumpy today. Totally pissed off.. the curse of running your own small business.

I do not know if you have seen "fight club" ... I thought it was one of those tough guy movies... it is not.

I will not spoil the ending but I wish he did to the media the same as he did to the banks/credit card companies.

It was a good movie. The ending will shock you.


on edit:

http://www.watch-movies-links.net/s/fight_club.html

[sabrina 1]

28. No, I hadn't seen it but have been planning to watch it.

Now you got me curious. Just had enough time to watch the first part and I'll watch the rest later tonight. Thanks for the link ~ :-)

[wroberts189]

16. One other thing.. all these "town hall outbursts" were paid for.

There have been many articles about it the most recent in the Rolling stone. Posted on DU.

The top health care lobbyist.. totally admitted they dispatched 50k of their employees to these meetings.

And speaking of these Town halls ...where was the one on IRAQ? All of a sudden politicians are doing "town hall" meetings..since when do they ever do this on a major issue?

[wroberts189]

9. Thank you for showing this to the American people Rachel...kick nt

[Brickbat]

10. O my sweet bippy, am I ever tired of seeing that beautiful poem rewritten to the point of being

meaningless. I just have to say that.

[sabrina 1]

11. Is it meaningless in this case?

45,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford health-care. Every individual and organization that has worked to try to stop this unnecessary death-toll in the richest country in the world, has been targeted by the Rightwing Smear Machine. And when they are, Democrats 'run for the hills'.

I think the quote from the poem is very apt in this case. The Democrats have a bad habit of rushing to distance themselves from those targeted by the right.

Prof. Dreiers is absolutely right to point out that if they do not take a stand, somewhere, there will definitely not be anyone left to stand up for them. Since they are the party who are supposedly the part of the people, the party that should be in the forefront of providing for the least privileged in this country, what will happen? More will die, not just here but as we have already seen, when Republican are in power, millions in other countries.

I think this situation is described perfectly by this poem.

[Brickbat]

17. In the original, "come for" means "take to a prison or labor camp and probably kill." In the other,

it means "smear." I think there's a difference. Also, "Then they came for the American Association of University Professors" just isn't very poetic.

It's possible to say "if you do not take a stand, who will stand up for you?" without wrecking a moving poem.

[sabrina 1]

20. Famous quotes are used all the time to

express an author's point of view. It is assumed that the reader's will see the point. I doubt anyone reading Prof. Breier's post will think that people are going to jail at this point in time. But they weren't going to jail in Germany when it all began either. First the population has to be properly indoctrinated into seeing these groups as enemies of the people and that takes time.

That is what the rightwing is doing. My interpretation of the poem was always that people should have spoken up BEFORE anyone went to prison. It is a warning. He wrote the poem after what happened, yes, but I believe he wanted people in the future to learn from the past and to take action whenever they see signs of what happened in history. And that is what I took from the Prof's use of the poem.

[mmonk]

12. My email to the editor (personal, not a piece by me) sent tonight

concerning a Kathleen Parker op-ed.

Now that Republicans feel vindicated in attacking ACORN, their next attack, vilification, and smear campaign is going to be the SEIU and in particular, Patrick Gaspard who is Obama’s Director of Political Affairs. My question is do you want The News & Observer to be a part of it by running Parker’s drivel? The hatred in this country is growing by the exaggerations, lies, and hate speech that is running in this country 24/7 and is leading to instances of attacks and violence. Again, does your paper want to advance the next strategy in all of this?

[sabrina 1]

13. Omg, drivel is not the word. They are well on their way

with the targeting of SEIU. Thank you for writing to them. But where are the Democrats? If they succeed in taking down this organization too, there will be no stopping them.

I see also, they have added Rep. Grayson to their hit list. He is being inundated with calls from the rabid right.

He needs to hear from those who support him ~ going to find his contact numbers. Thanks again for doing what you do.

As Rachel said 'are they going to be left to fight this on their own'? It sure looks like it as I don't see any Dems coming forward to say 'enough is enough'.

[mmonk]

18. It's time to ask and I'm going to start tomorrow.

Thanks for your post. My head has been swimming lately with all that has been going on. I still feel totally UNRELAXED even though the dems won handily in the past election.

[sabrina 1]

22. I know how you feel

I was so relieved when Obama won, but I guess it was inevitable that that would only energize the far right. I did expect it, but I also thought the Dems had enough power to handle them.

[izquierdista]

14. I think the Niemoller quote is appropriate here

[sabrina 1]

19. Thank you I think so too ~

[Turborama]

24. K&R! Sabrina, you hit the nail on the head!!

Thanks for posting this. What is now the Democratic Government should have taken notice of the attacks on ACORN during the election and be forewarned. If what happened to Van Jones et al since hasn't woken them up, what will?

I keep wondering, who is running the far right's agenda Faux news (Murdoch) or the Republicans. I know they are colluding with each other but I can't make my mind up about who is actually calling the shots.

PS have you seen my PMs about the blog? Do you have a WordPress account already?

UPDATE

Glenn BecKKK has started to attack Valerie Jarrett now, but the White House is fighting back this time: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x380875

[sabrina 1]

25. Turborama, I don't know who's running it either, but the Republicans

in Congress do go along with the agenda which seems, on the surface, to be set by Fox, Hannity, Beck, Rush et all. I think they are just the spokes-people though.

So, they have their propaganda media, talk-radio, Fox, blogs (Breitbart eg) to spread the smears and they have the bought-and-paid-for members of Congress who propose legislation, or vote against anything that is even remotely progressive. But who are they?

I've been reading a lot about the early days (late 60s and 70s) after the Civil Rights Bill was passed. ACORN was founded in the '70s. The Community Reinvestment Act was passed in the 70s also. That bill infuriated the Banks as it forced them to lend money to poor working class Americans which they had refused to do before. It made 'red-lining' illegal, ie, keeping minorities out of white suburbia even when they could afford it.

ACORN became a champion of the poor and made enemies of the right and the Banks right from the beginning.

From all I'm learning, imo, I think there are huge financial forces behind the 'frontmen', Congress and the rightwing media. It would be interesting to be able to identify them and to follow the money going from them to Congress (Open secrets helps but I wonder how much we cannot track).

Re your PS ~ I pm'd you yesterday. Let me know if you got it. I think I have an old WordPress acct which is causing a problem with a new registration. Will probably have to use a new user name or something, but I'm trying! :-)

[xchrom]

29. kick