ACORN grilled
I don’t know if it makes the Republicans’ point, but Deal Hudson notes that ACORN got more than $1 million in aid from the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Campaign for Human Development last year. Hudson’s attack on ACORN comes as the Republican Party is tarring the community activist organization as part of its campaign to link Barack Obama to radicals. I don’t think Hudson helps the GOP’s case by noting the bishops’ financial support for ACORN projects. But he is taking advantage of the opportunity to urge the bishops to cut off funding for ACORN on grounds that it is too political for a non-profit.
There are some rough edges around ACORN, going back to the days when its members seized abandoned buildings as squatters. Its voter-registration drives are the particular target of Republican ire and are under investigation in various places. But from my own observations, I can also see why ACORN’s community-organizing projects merit funding from the money we throw into the collection basket for the Campaign for Human Development. It organizes the poor the to help themselves.
I observed this as a newspaper reporter in the late 1990s. When workfare was first required for welfare recipients in New York City, I spoke to some of the participants. They were treated horribly – working outdoors in city parks in the winter without coats, appropriate work clothes or boots (they often wore their own sneakers in extremely cold weather). They had no rights whatsoever – they were “fired” – cut off from benefits – if they missed a day of work for whatever reason. Untrained supervisors treated them with contempt; I visited one sanitation garage where the workfare workers’ tools were segregated from the regular city workers’ tools. The bathroom was off-limits to the workfare workers.
Few were paying attention to this at the time. But ACORN stepped in to organize the workers. Their plight improved considerably. The workfare program improved because of it, I think – the whole point was to convey the dignity of work, but instead the Giuliani administration’s approach had been punitive. ACORN recognized the welfare recipients’ human dignity. Detractors like Hudsdon can call this a radical agenda, but to me it sounds quite Catholic.
Whatever comes of the political allegations being made against ACORN in the heat of a nasty campaign, I hope that its legitimate grassroots organizing goes forward.
As someone who has been involved in community activity much along the lines of ACORN I completely agree. Amen.
I really think that some of these Catholic commentators on the right need to be much more cirucmspect and reflective when thinking and talking about these issues. It is a much more complicated weave. They should do so from the context of Catholic tradition and social teaching and not the latest talking points from parties.
Speaking of successful organizing, take a look at this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/the-new-organizers-part-1_b_132782.html
My view as long time poll inspector; The McCain campaign is charging ACORN
with voter fraud. No Votes yet so what they have is bad registration cards. No doubt that many of the ‘forged’ registrations are submitted by lazy workers filling out registrations in a coffee shop. These fake registrations when crossed checked should not appear on voter registrations and even if some slip by and appear on the registration sheet Nov.4 this will not result in a vote as no one will show up saying he/she is ‘Jo Smith’. But this ‘voter fraud’ will be a high pitch cry for this next week.forgetaboutit.
I have seen this “registration fraud” with both the GOP and the Democrats. One sends out voluteers with sheets to fill out and they start competing with each other and some people will just fill in names, as Ed points out. Sometimes, during a primary, the problem is that people get signatures of people who are not registered in the district. The problem can be compounded if people are being paid and paid by the page.
But what I have been seeing is people claiming that ACORN is an organization centered around “voter fraud” coupled with accusations that ACORN is some sort of quasi-socialist organization, liked, for example, to CRA. The idea seems to be to link ACORN to CRA to the meltdown to Obama.
I suppose it is true that the drowning man does grasp at straws.
We’re all radicals now, Paul.
The local news here in NM last night(a close swing state -seeNPR this morning) reports the local director of ACORN is cooperating withj Feds to find those who’ve submitted phony regs.
Of course, Mr. Hudson and those righteous Republicans are anxious to limit voter rights, as we saw in Indiana.
According to MSNBC (either Olbermann or Maddow) a few nights ago, ACORN has been identifying suspicious registration cards and alerting the authorities to the possibility of fraud. I don’t remember where this was happening, but it appears that, at least in some places, ACORN is performing a worthwhile function (registering voters) and looking out for the best interest of the general public as well.
We certainly can’t have “those people” actually qualifying houses that might best be bought up by enterprising slumlords of the Right Sort. And just because “those people” had been redlined for so many years has nothing to do with good old Amurriken capitalism!