Thread: ACORN scaling back or shutting down in many cities

ACORN scaling back or shutting down in many cities

The community activist group is taking no new clients while it investigates its operations, which have been dragged down by the poor economy and recent scandals.

By P.J. Huffstutter and Kate Linthicum
September 19, 2009

Reporting from Los Angeles and Chicago - Stung by the recession and a string of scandals, the ACORN community activist organization has found itself shutting down in many of the communities it once worked to empower.

Brian Kettenring, a spokesman for the national organization, said that no new clients were being signed up while the group did an internal investigation into how business is conducted.

The freeze comes as ACORN has been closing offices across the nation. The organization has shuttered 40% of its centers over the last two years, dropping from its high of 105 offices two years ago, he said.

Dozens of branches, which helped low- and middle-income clients with housing, jobs and navigating government aid programs, have been closed, including those in Chicago, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Omaha, Neb.

Kettenring said that the closures were mostly due to the poor economy and had become more frequent in the last year. "We're seeing the same challenges the entire nonprofit sector is seeing," he said.

But former ACORN members say the scandals that have recently dogged the organization -- including allegations of mismanagement and voter registration fraud -- have been a bigger problem.

In the latest controversy, ACORN workers in several cities, including New York, Baltimore and Washington, were secretly videotaped giving advice to two conservative activists who posed as a prostitute and her pimp and said that they wanted to buy a house and run it as a brothel with teenage girls. Workers were recorded giving advice on how to evade taxes and conceal the nature of their business.

The appearance of the videos last week on a Fox News program set off a furor. The U.S. House voted this week to deny all federal funds for ACORN, while state lawmakers in California, Georgia and Minnesota called for investigations or a cutoff of state funds.

"When you have this big of a mess, it takes time to clean up and your funders drop like flies," said Madeline Talbott, a former head organizer for ACORN's operations in Illinois.

ACORN's Chicago office closed in January 2008, when Talbott -- along with 365 community members, the local ACORN board and at least a dozen paid staff members -- quit the organization over concerns of mismanagement and a lack of financial transparency at the group's national headquarters.

"I feel so torn about what's happening now," said Talbott, who today is an organizer with Action Now, an advocacy group for the poor in Chicago. "I'm so relieved not to be part of the organization any more, and so sad because they are trying to clean things up."

Founded in Arkansas in 1970, ACORN advocates for higher minimum wages, easier access to affordable housing and bolstering voter registration in low-income communities.

It has been a top target for conservatives because of its liberal, grass-roots agenda. President Obama worked as an attorney for the group in the early 1990s.

The organization mobilized a get-out-the-vote to support Obama's presidential bid last year, but the effort was tainted when nearly one-third of the 1.3 million new voters the group registered were rejected.

Last week, authorities in Miami announced the arrests of 11 former registration canvassers who allegedly submitted nearly 200 falsified forms.

Later this month, a preliminary hearing is scheduled in Nevada, where state prosecutors have accused ACORN and two former top officials of using an illegal incentive system to motivate people registering voters just before the heated 2008 presidential election.

ACORN officials blame such woes on a conservative push to force the organization out of business.

Amy Schur, ACORN's head organizer for California, acknowledged that the organization has had a tough year, but said that the state's 12 offices would survive. Membership is up and funding has been stable, she said.

"Our organization is under attack," she said. "But we're going to come out of this just fine."

Schur said that the decentralized nature of ACORN ensures that if an office in one part of the country founders, it won't necessarily affect those in the rest of the country.

Still, Schur said, she has taken steps to quell any public uneasiness. Schur said the organization has hired an independent auditor to review the finances of the state's programs and will require more staff training.

John Atlas, a writer who just completed a book about the history of ACORN, said that the recent scandals had brought "overwhelming bad publicity" to the organization.

"The brand is tainted," Atlas said. "This is going to make it harder for them to recruit new members, to get foundation funding and get funding for voter registration."

But Atlas said ACORN had weathered a lot in its history, and he predicted that the organization would emerge from the scandals smaller but intact.

"They may have to shrink back; they may have to rebrand," he said. "They'll be smaller, but they'll survive."

Latrell Smith, a former ACORN worker in Chicago and now an organizer for Action Now, said the scandals had been sobering and infuriating

In his current job, he is more cautious when talking with families that approach him for help.

"I joined ACORN because I wanted to make a difference in my community," Smith said. "Before the videos came out, I could never have imagined something like that happening in ACORN."

Now, he said, "I wonder if we could be next."

p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ashley Powers in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 3518.story

The organization has shuttered 40% of its centers over the last two years, dropping from its high of 105 offices two years ago, he said.

Why haven't we heard anything about this until now?

ACORN and other organizations who were created to help poor Americans citizens have been hijacked & infested in recent years by Anti American Socialist/Communist who consider Taxpayers to be the enemy and to be used to further their agendas. IMO

It's time to clean house !!

Supervisors to call for audit of ACORN efforts

By Eleanor Yang Su
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. September 19, 2009

The embattled ACORN advocacy group might be facing another audit.
On Tuesday, county Supervisors Bill Horn and Pam Slater-Price will ask the county's chief executive officer to audit the local ACORN chapter's 2008 voter-registration efforts. ACORN came under scrutiny last year when it submitted about 26,000 registration cards, some of which were incomplete.
Horn and Price have also added a board agenda item requesting the chief administrative officer to work with the District Attorney's Office and determine whether they should investigate the local ACORN office.
The ACORN chapter was rocked this week by the release of videos showing a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute receiving advice about border crossings from an ACORN community organizer at the group's National City offices. That employee was fired Thursday.
The video was part of a national sting conducted by an activist filmmaker. The videos prompted members of Congress to vote to deny all federal funds for ACORN. Local Republican Party leaders also have called for an audit of ACORN's voter-registration efforts. National ACORN leaders have ordered their own independent audit of the videos.
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is a nonprofit that aims to help low- and moderate-income families on issues ranging from affordable housing to immigration reform.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... ?uniontrib

It has been a top target for conservatives because of its liberal, grass-roots agenda. President Obama worked as an attorney for the group in the early 1990s.

The organization mobilized a get-out-the-vote to support Obama's presidential bid last year, but the effort was tainted when nearly one-third of the 1.3 million new voters the group registered were rejected.

This, right here is the reason I question Obama sitting in the White House right now. Who actually voted for him, and were those votes legitimate, and the votes that tipped the scale, were those votes fraud? If there is ANY question about this, we need to go over this and find out, and fix what has been done.

I do not question because of color, political party, nothing other than his connections and did the connections he had tip his win over the scale with a push for votes, that very well might be fraudulent.

Since no one is willing to do what it takes to be sure, in this administration, then I will continue to believe he simply should not be president, and I do not respect him as president till it is proven he actually won by actual, live popular vote (meaning no "Mickey Mouse" votes, or dead name votes).

I believe someone out there knows the truth.

Florida's voting system (read mess) has always been fun. The debacle of the pregnant and hanging chads on the punch cards. Then there were the machines with no paper trail for the voter to see if their vote was correct (one manufacturer owned by a company in Venzuela). Thousands of votes not counted as they were stashed somewhere only to be found months after the outcome of the election--Palm Beach County made the news for that. All this strangeness was going on when Jeb Bush was governor.
And now with ACORN, is this a plot by psychic mediums for more business so that you can have political discussions with deceased relatives that are registered to vote?

Vortex, and they talk about how our health care system is broke! LOL

No, I think we need to fix our voting system before ANYTHING.

Although Floridas screw-ups were certainly something that should have been looked into long ago, and made sure no hanky-panky business was going on, could you have inagined having Gore for president? Wonder how that would have gone.................

Obama in "Pimpin' Ain't Easy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buSVI5FXn64

Originally Posted by AmericanElizabeth

No, I think we need to fix our voting system before ANYTHING.

E-Verify all voters in every state! I don't care if it's necessary to expand voting to two consecutive days.

If we cannot clean up our voting system, then it will be one bad politician, after another being voted in, and the end of our nation. Look, Obama, are we sure the garbage with Acorn had nothing to do with him getting voted in? No, we just cannot be, and now he is starting to make an absolute ruin if our country with his policies.

Cannot prove who you are to your state voter registration? No? Then no proof of citizenship, no proof or residency, no proof you are, who you say you are, then no voting. We also need to scrutinize ANY and ALL groups that go out and bring new registrants in. ALL, no exceptions, liberal and conservative groups alike.