ACORN: Value Of Community Organizing

From ACORN:

ACORN Statement on the Value of Community Organizing

September 04, 2008

ACORN President Maude Hurd issued the following statement after presumptive Republican vice president pick Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuiliani made disparaging comments about community organizing during the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.

“ACORN members, leaders and staff are extremely disappointed that Republican leaders would make such condescending remarks on the great work community organizers accomplish in cities throughout this country. The fact that they marginalize our success in empowering low — and moderate-income people to improve their communities further illustrates their [sic] out-of-touch with ordinary people. Through community organizing, people are empowered to take action to solve their own problems, develop leadership skills and make decisions that improve their lives and their communities.

ACORN has been building organizations and developing leadership among low — and moderate — income residents in neighborhoods throughout the United States  for 38 years. During that time, ACORN chapters have worked individually and collectively to organize innovative grassroots campaigns on a number of critical issues. As the nation’s largest grassroots community organization with more than 400,000 member families, ACORN employs 400 organizers that carry a huge responsibility of helping disenfranchised people in their communities.

In the past 10 years, ACORN has helped more than 30 million American families through our various organizing campaigns: better schools, financial justice, living wages, community improvement, immigration, healthcare, predatory lending, voter engagement and utilities.

The total monetary value of recent victorious ACORN campaigns was quantified in a 2006 report entitled, “ACORN Wins”. Over the last decade, ACORN’s victories amount to $15 billion, an average of $1.5 billion per year going directly into low — and moderate-income communities to help strengthen working families.

Community organizers handling such awesome responsibilities is no laughing matter,” Hurd concluded.

ACORN volunteers help people register to vote in Denver on the eve of the the Democratic National Convention August 24.

Mr. Hurd is right. ACORN is “no laughing matter.”

They are a criminal enterprise bent on destroying our country. Their “organizers” should be in jail.

Or perhaps we should say “back in jail,” since so many of their operatives are ex-cons.

From Discover The Networks:

On June 2, 2008, Wade Rathke stepped down from his role as ACORN’s chief organizer.

Also in 2008, ACORN publicly acknowledged that Dale Rathke — the brother of Wade Rathke — had embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN and affiliated groups in 1999 and 2000. ACORN further admitted that for eight years its executives had kept this information secret from almost all of their organization’s board members and from law-enforcement authorities.

It would be interesting to see where those $15 billion in shakedowns have ended up.

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