Former head of ACORN to start new group

[mfcorey1]

Bertha Lewis on Life After ACORN
The former president of the defunct community-organizing group is back with a new venture. She talks about the video scandal, lambastes Democrats with "no spine and no courage" and explains how the conservative right actually helped her move forward.

One year after the community-organizing group ACORN disbanded -- after an undercover video scandal and a denial of federal funds by Congress -- the organization's former president is back. Today Bertha Lewis is at the helm of the Black Institute, her newly created "action tank" dedicated to immigration reform, environmental justice, education and economic fairness.

While Lewis is optimistic about her latest endeavor, she still can't escape the controversy surrounding ACORN. Once the nation's largest grassroots network for the poor, it provided employment services and advocated for affordable housing. But the organization acquired notoriety during the 2008 campaign when it registered more than 1 million low-income voters but submitted thousands of registration cards with phony names and addresses.

http://www.theroot.com/views/bertha-lewis-life-after-acorn?GT1=38002

[aquart]

1. I'd call it Mighty Oaks.

[blondeatlast]

14. Love it! nt

[rfranklin]

2. Same old shit...they were REQUIRED by law to submit all registration cards...

The fact that some assholes filled out phoney cards is not their fault. And there was never any proven attempt at voter fraud.

[jtrockville]

3. IIRC, they went one step further and identified suspicious cards

Over and above what they're required to do. Imagine an organization taking registration cards and NOT turning them in. Oh wait, we don't have to imagine. Didn't the GOP do that?

[rfranklin]

5. Correct on both counts...

But the MSM and most other "news" outlets just keep repeating the same BS forever.

[hootinholler]

4. Poor reporting...

The registrations with fake names were still required by law to be submitted. ACORN flagged tehm as bogus and complied with the law by submitting them.

-Hoot

[Uncle Joe]

7. I wish it were "poor" reporting but I can't help but believe it was deliberately shoddy

and misleading.

[sabrina 1]

8. I agree, the media knew but did nothing.

Bloggers were able to dig into the story and find eg, O'Keefe's website before he scrubbed it. But the media with all the tools they have, never came close to covering the real story behind what happened to ACORN. The question is why? It was a fascinating story that probably would have had huge ratings as they uncovered it night after night. But they deliberately dropped it as soon as the facts began to emerge. And then went on to 'legitimize' the criminal, James O'Keefe and Breitbart.

Shirley Sherrod is suing Breitbart for the next racist stunt they pulled, not having had any consequences for their ACORN stunts. And Juan Carlos, the ACORN worker who actually did call the police, not once but twice on them, but was smeared and lied about and lost his job over and the media never straightened out his story either, he too is suing them.

I hope these cases will provide some justice for the victims of Breitbart and O'Keefe but I doubt we'll hear about on the US MSM.

[Uncle Joe]

9. I believe it's all tied to the promotion of corporate supremacy over the people.

Momentum was squarely with the Democratic Party and if they took over with too large of a majority both houses of Congress and the Presidency, then corporate supremacist leaning Democrats power would've been reduced, liberal/progressives would've had a much greater majority and mandate.

Anybody that paid attention knew that health care reform would become a if not the major issue, and the best chance of killing universal single payer coverage as most of the Industrial World already has and/or to kill a strong national public option, thereby keeping the American People hostage to the private for profit "health" insurance industry was to snuff out or dampen obvious Democratic momentum after eight years of catastrophic Cheney/Bush rule.

The most effective tool to divide the American People and accomplish this goal was something the corporate media was all too well aware of after having covered it for decades, that being the undercurrent emotional issue of racism.

Edit for P.S. The corporate media's motivation is intricately tied to their inherent conflict of interest in selling commercials or depending on corporate donations as in the case of public T.V. and radio. Universal single payer would've dried much of that up as is the case of most public anything over private for profit corporations buying commercials from the corporate media.

[sabrina 1]

10. Good points. Especially the last one, I had not thought about

that. All I know is when the truth about the ACORN stunts began to emerge I expected to see CNN follow up on their initial coverage, which had turned out to be mostly false. And, they had had O'Keefe and Giles on boasting about their racist stunt without much challenge from CNN. However, once their story began to fall apart, thanks mostly to non-journalists online, rather than cover that aspect of the story, they wanted to 'fair' and invited O'Keefe and Giles back. Both of them refused to return to CNN. At that point I was certain they would start a thorough investigation, as was happening in online forums. But instead, they never mentioned it again.

I think you are probably right. I remember being told 'all we need is the WH and both houses of Congress and then we'll get things done'. But when we did that, the goal posts were moved again and the excuse was 'with all these Blue Dogs we can't get our 'ponies'. Now most of them are gone and we are back to the excuse of 'the Republicans won't let us do it'.

So yes, Congress is bought and paid for for the most part. The only way to fix that is to put all of our efforts into Congressional races to try to increase the number of progressives there. But the Party will continue to support the corporate sponsored candidates and we will be told, again, that we can't risk backing a real progressive because 'they can't win in that district'.

Not falling for it again. Although I suppose it doesn't matter. They have the advantage.

I feel very sad about ACORN. Their fall left an awful lot of people who truly it, without anyone to deal with their problems. Shame on Democrats for that betrayal.

[hootinholler]

11. I meant this article

The prior stuff, I agree with you.

This article it could be sloppy and not deliberate, and I try not to ascribe to malice that which is explained by ignorance.

-Hoot

[Uncle Joe]

12. I feel the same way in that with one instance, maybe even two or three, I would tend to ascribe

this to sloppy coverage, ignorance and not being deliberate.

I was however referring to overall corporate media coverage over a sustained period of time and when the entire if not vast majority of the entire institution that make up the corporate media misreport, and aggrievedly slant the coverage of a critical story toward one direction, when the facts obviously point the other way, logic tells me, that malice and deliberate intent must be involved.

[sabrina 1]

6. The 'scandal' in that story was the way the media covered up

the real scandal, which was the far right's racist, lying, manipulation of what actually happened. Despite several court rulings and investigations clearing ACORN and exposing blatant lies and manupilations by Breitbart/O'Keefe and the destruction of the reputations of ethical, decent people, instead of reporting on THAT part of the scandal, the media simply dropped it.

If we had are real news media, this would have been a major story, finding out who is funding these racist wackos, for one thing. The scrubbing of O'Keefe's website where his racist past was revealed by HIM and so much more.

Also, the lies about election fraud which were thoroughly debunked but which the media let stand, led by Fox News.

And she is absolutely correct, the total betrayal of Democrats except for 75 courageous members of Congress, was pretty shocking as they rushed to pass an unconstitutional bill, and never have apologized even after the revelations of fraud.

ACORN was not around to register voters for the last election. They registered over one million in 2008, one more reason for the Right to try to destroy them. But the Democrats did themselves in by NOT standing up for an organization that had done so much for them in the past.

The Anti-Acorn agenda of the right going back decades, since their inception, was nothing but pure racism, as ACORN's goal when it started was to make sure that the Community Rehabilitation Act, a bill hated by the Rightwing racists with a passion, was not violated. That Act was meant to eliminate prejudice against minority home buyers and it was ACORN's goal to make sure it worked. For that they became a target of the right almost from their inception.

Shame on the Democrats for, as she says, not having the spine to stand up to the right and in the end, it may have cost them in the last election.

[bobbolink]

13. So, no more focus on low-income housing, and now it is race-based?

:cry: