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My View on the 2009 ACORN Scandal.
By Lynda Appell of Chestnut Place Advocacy
My take on the 2009 ACORN scandal from a disability advocate perspective.
First I am writing on the September 2009 scandal and no other ACORN issues.
I became intrigued with the ACORN scandal, not only since its sexy. It does deal with a young man who pretended he was a pimp and his woman friend who pretended to be a prostitute. But much more importantly because I am involved with disability advocacy. One of the issues is housing. Plus the fact is a rather large proportion of the disabled, especially psychiatric diagnosed are poor. ACORN consists mostly of low income people, workers. There are at least 400,000 members of the organization and 1,200 offices in the US Source Wikipedia.org It is the largest in terms of members and offices of its kind in the US. ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Their issues include helping people not be evicted from their homes and to protect their members , most low and moderate income people, from predatory lenders. Bertha Lewis is the executive director. Here are the facts. I can verify them. There is a scandal concerning several ACORN offices. These include an office in Brooklyn, borough of New York City. Offices in Baltimore MD, Washington DC, San Bernardino CA were effected too. The same scam was played out at these branches. Below is more detail of what happened.
What basically happened was a young woman,, Hannah Giles and her cohort, James Okeefe presented themselves as a prostitute and he, her pimp. My source is the September sixteen edition of the New York Post. I am only reporting the objective facts. While the Post is quite slanted against ACORN there was some straight info This was a hidden camera sting operation. The couple's doings were being videotaped by a hidden video camera. In so many words, Ms Hannah Giles and Mr James OKeefe tried to ruin the social service agency What happened specifically some ACORN workers were given illegal information from Ms. Giles and Mr.Okeefe dealing with setting up a brothel. Plus there was discussions on obtaining home loans, evading taxes and the trafficking of underage brothel female workers from El Salvador. In other words Giles and Okeefe solititied the ACORN workers. Last I checked what they did is illegal. The community organization said it will sue the video makers for false, defamatory damages. The ACORN workers who were part of this were immediately fired. One of the workers Teresa Kaelke thought the woman and man presenting themselves as working girl and her pimp weren't real and were playing a joke on her. She figured she'd play along.with them. Little did she suspect she was a victim of a sting. I am definitely not condoning prostitution and pimping. However I think there is much more than catching people in illegal, immoral acts. The fact is James OKeefe said "exposing hypocrises and moral lapses of liberals." What about the moral lapse of destroying an agency that helps people keep their homes? Plus the organization protects their clients from predatory lenders? Personally I find what this young duo did was quite nefarious. It was essentially toppling a major social service agency that aids the most financially vulnerable in US society with chapters throughout the US for a few workers. I know there were ACORN offices that refused to talk to the young man and young woman. One of them was the ACORN office of my hometown, Philadelphia, PA.
The truth is Republicans's been criticizing, even condemning ACORN for some time now. In 2008 there was the voter fraud controversy. www.factcheck.org , an impartial source, independent of ACORN says the so called voter fraud was in reality a case of laziness not fraud. What happened was the ACORN workers made up names just to finish the quota of votes needed to be paid. Besides once the lists came to the voter registration office, the officials would simply cross of the obviously false names. ACORN was not given automatic funding from Obama's recovery initiative program. They need to compete for it, like every other social service organization. Source www.factcheck.org, U. of Penn. edu. In a political cartoon in the NY post, ACORN members were depicted with donkey heads. The donkey is the symbol for Democrats. Or the cartoonist perhaps was showing the group's members to be asses. Or saying that Democrats are asses. Bertha Lewis promised a complete, absolutely independent investigation. I hope she keeps her word. She condemned the actions of the ACORN employees who were involved. There are 10s of 1000 of workers. It seems to me that the community organization is being greatly harmed for only a few workers in some offices. There were many offices where the young man and young woman were thrown out and even the police were called.
I remember seeing a cardiologist who later lost his license due to insurance fraud. Should one condemn every cardiologist? To use the old cliche one, or even several bad apples do not spoil the whole bunch. Each office of ACORN is independent of each other in terms of their administruation of their duties. I can't help but notice the major complaints regarding ACORN is from conservative Republicans. They complain that ACORN is really a political organization. They don't like the way most ACORN members are Democrats. With former president Bush who constantly cut social programs, who can blame them. Being the nature of their clients are low and moderate income workers, they are much more likely to vote for the Democrats. Its the demographics. I distinctly recall than Governor Rudy Guliano NY R at the 2008 Republican convention, smirked when he mentioned Barack Obama was a community organizer. The message to me, and most likely quite a few others , that being in such a profession was something to be ridiculed. It was work to be looked down on. It was as if helping low income people is somehow something somebody should feel shame in doing. Its to be discredited from real work. As if helping low income people organize not worthy of one's time. Being that the US Congress voted not to fund ACORN, my gut feeling is this incident with Giles and Okeefe was a way to ruin ACORN once and for all. At the very minimum, ACORN must make absolutely certain they hire responsible employees. Perhaps their main fault is not hiring men and women who act responsibly.
Then again with so many thousands of people working for the group there are bound to be a number of irresponsible persons. ACORN officials are pleading for funding from individuals and foundations. Personally I think it is a quite worthy cause. They would truly be grateful for donations.
I stand by what I write on this topic.
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Contributor's Note
I thin the destruction of ACORN is a very sad, tragic day for everybody in the US who relies on their services.
ACORN is not the cause of the mortgage crisis. They help people who are homeowners keep their homes.
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This intel was contributed by mugwort
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