The activist organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is best known for its efforts to register poor and minority citizens to vote, has been under a ferocious media and political attack for weeks...
Rather than exposing the obvious political motivation behind the attack on ACORN, the group’s benefactors in the Democratic Party have joined in the operation. Democratic legislators in Washington and Democratic governors in the states have attempted to outdo their Republican counterparts in denouncing ACORN, ordering investigations, and cutting the federal, state and city grants it receives.
On September 14, the Senate voted 83-7 to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from providing community grants to ACORN...The House then voted 345-75 to bar ACORN from receiving any federal funding whatsoever through the “Defund Acorn Act,” and the Senate returned with another lopsided vote forbidding ACORN from receiving money from an Interior Department spending bill...
Speaking on nationally televised Sunday news shows ("This Week"), President Barack Obama called for an investigation into the group’s activities, while meekly claiming it is not the “biggest issue facing the country.”
The Democratic Party has joined in the attack on ACORN in spite of the fact that it is closely linked to the group, both through personal and political ties. Its voter registration efforts among the poor and minorities have overwhelmingly benefited Democratic candidates. ACORN’s leadership are members in good standing of the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party establishment. Sitting on an ACORN advisory panel are John Podesta, a close ally of Obama who organized his transition to the White House, and Andrew Stern, head of the Service Employee’s International Union.
Obama has enjoyed close ties to ACORN and its affiliates for years. He worked for an ACORN affiliate during his days as a “community organizer” in Chicago, and he represented the group in a lawsuit against the state of Illinois in 1995. In the 2008 Democratic primaries, Obama’s campaign gave over $800,000 to an ACORN affiliate to assist with voter registration...
ACORN’s voter registration activity has in fact been relentlessly scrutinized for years by the right, which has nonetheless managed to turn up no significant body of evidence to prove its accusations...in 2006, ACORN was at the center of the infamous purge the Bush administration carried out against US attorneys. The best known firing, that of the US attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, took place because Iglesias had determined not to investigate politically motivated charges of voter fraud levelled against ACORN...
At the heart of the attack on ACORN is the Republican Party’s attempt to limit the vote among the fastest growing sections of the population — minorities, the poor, and the youth — who tend to vote against it...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/acor-s21.shtml
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
