Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Ilyse Hogue

Why the Right Attacked Unions, ACORN and Planned Parenthood -- Institutions That Help Bridge Politics and Daily Life
Their attacks are all carefully aimed at the same critical juncture: institutions that work for people in their daily lives and in the political arena.

March 1, 2011 |


For the past two weeks, all eyes have been glued to Madison, Wisconsin. The collective and joyful resistance to Governor Scott Walker’s power-grabbing budget bill has inspired the demoralized progressive base and put the corporate-backed assault on working people front and center in the national conversation.

But while it's obvious that the right wing is out to break the back of the progressive movement, it’s easy to miss the strategy that guides their selection of specific targets. Their attacks are all carefully aimed at the same critical juncture: institutions that work for people in their daily lives and in the political arena, those that connect people’s personal struggles across the country to the political struggle in Washington. Once we recognize the critical role these progressive service organizations play in building progressive politics, the right’s broader strategy in Wisconsin and elsewhere becomes clear. Scott Walker is a soldier in the same army as James O’ Keefe and Lila Rose, the right-wing video pranksters who tried to smear ACORN and Planned Parenthood.

Indeed, last month’s attack on Planned Parenthood provoked a sickening sense of déjà vu. Seemingly out of nowhere, undercover activists secretly filmed an employee of a major progressive institution making embarrassing statements. The resulting video makes news and inflames the debate around federal funding of the organization’s services. It was the ACORN attack all over again (see Peter Dreier and John Atlas’s “The GOP’s Blame-ACORN Game”).

ACORN was unique as a national organization that served our nation’s poor people. Wrangling with life’s common but critical challenges like mortgages and housing forms, ACORN employees built trust by offering assistance person-to-person, neighborhood-by-neighborhood. They then leveraged that trust to lobby for federal legislation to address the root causes of the crises facing these communities—predatory lending, lack of community investment and stagnant wages. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150092/why_the_right_attacked_unions%2C_acorn_and_planned_parenthood_--_institutions_that_help_bridge_politics_and_daily_life/

[xchrom]

1. recommend -- you can't say the right doesn't know what it's doing

when it goes about these attacks.

it has the face of Stoopid -- but it isn't.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Since the Right can't compete in the war of ideas, it's only tactic is to destroy

the opposition.

[sellitman]

3. Our enemy is wiley like a fox.

They are the Conservative Califate.

Did I just say that?

Ugggg.

[drm604]

4. I hope I'm not being too cynical.

Somehow, after their other attacks were either largely unnoticed or, in the case of ACORN, actually met with some success, suddenly their attack on unions got a reaction. Not only did it get a reaction, it may be backfiring on them; waking people up, and raising their awareness.

Maybe I'm cynical, but when at look at the three targets - ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and unions - I notice that the one attack that got a large negative reaction from the public was the one that attacked the livelihood of working class white males. (Obviously not just white males, but they were included in this attack while being largely excluded in the other two.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled that people are waking up, I just wish they had woken up when it was the inner city poor, and then women, who were the main targets.

[marmar]

5. I don't disagree at all......Your cynicism is reality-based.

nt

[drm604]

7. I think they intentionally hit the easiest targets first, and they hit them publicly.

Then they tried going after a hard one a little more clandestinely, by a sneak attack, going after it legislatively and trying to ram through a bill without warning or discussion. The problem with this is that it's only one state. Even if it had worked, even if it eventually does, they still have to go through the same process in other states.

Their problem is that people are awake now. There have been a couple of weak attempts to portray unions as violent thugs, but they're not working and I don't think they will work.

So what are they going to try next? We need to out think them and stay a step or two ahead.

One thing that gives me some hope is that they're now going after their most difficult targets. This would seem to indicate that they are in their end-game, and it doesn't seem to be working out as they'd planned.

[dgibby]

6. Bingo! We have a winner! n/t

[Kweli4Real]

9. It's often been said (or, known in "minority" communities) ...

If you want to know what's in store for the larger society (read: white male America), look to what's happening in "minority" communities.

Take disinvestment, for example ... when it happened in the inner-city (read: poor and/or Black), it is/was largely ignored because it didn;t/doesn't affect the larger white/male community. But this disinvestment became off-shoring, and is now a source of outrage. Another example ... the tolerance of drugs in the inner-city (again, read: poor and/or Black), followed by the War on Drugs (read: militarization). This, too, was largely ignored because it didn;t/doesn't affect the larger white/male community. But this militarization turned into the Patriot Acts.

I would hope that the larger communities will reflect on their previously held mindset that what happens in the inner-city/minority communities is largely attributable to some inherent communal dysfunction; and recognize that inner-city/minority communities are actually the "canaries in the coal mine."

[Uncle Joe]

8. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread, marmar.