ACORN and the Right Wing Assault on Poor People.

[Political Heretic]

http://practical-vision.blogspot.com/2010/03/acorn-and-right-wing-assault-on-poor.html|ACORN and the Right Wing Assault on Poor People>

BRADBLOG is reporting that ACORN has announced it will be “bringing its operations to a close.”

....

This announcement came just one day after the New York Times editor Clark Hoyt publically admitted that the Times had misrepresented the truth in its reporting about ACORN repeatedly over six months.

The announcement came months after a federal judge deemed unconstitutional the congressional effort to block federal funding to the organization without any evidence of guilt or impropriety. "The judge's ruling is a complete rebuke to the right wing's smear tactics that unfortunately Congress fell for," according to Bill Quigley, the legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

....

What Made ACORN a Target?

On the surface, understanding what made ACORN such a target of all out assault reveals some of the greatest ugliness of the conservative agenda. But underneath the surface it also exposes some of the greatest ugliness of capitalism itself, and reminds us once again that it is a system of exploitation and plunder.

ACORN’s primary crime was that it sought to organize and engage poor people (and even more specifically poor people of color) in the political process.....

(MORE)
http://practical-vision.blogspot.com/2010/03/acorn-and-right-wing-assault-on-poor.html

[BlooInBloo]

1. Great job to all of the DUers who chestbeat about how progressive they are...

But the very second the lies about ACORN were put here, they IMMEDIATELY turned against ACORN.

Well done DUers, well done.

[Emit]

3. I do not recall that the majority of DUers turned against ACORN

I recall a few things here and there amongst the threads, but, that's a pretty broad brush to say DUers in general did, imho.

[Political Heretic]

6. Mmm... I guess its all anecdotal now, but I had the same perception as boo

:shrug:

[Emit]

7. Perhaps I was just lost in my own threads about ACORN

and didn't bother with the posts you and boo refer to. :shrug:

[laughingliberal]

21. I saw a lot of that

I was shocked. Just as I'm shocked to see the poor dumped on here. And the unions. In the 80's I was shaking my head asking what the hell happened to America? Now, I shake my head asking what the hell has happened to our party?

[Emit]

23. Well, we can't discount the trolls and what they bring into the mix.

iirc, when the ACORN-O'Keefe-Breitbart stuff hit DU, there were a lot of low count posters slamming ACORN. Same thing happened over at Kos. Many here at DU pointed them out on various threads and called them out on it.

All in all, imho, more DUers supported ACORN than not, and many were involved in delving into investigating O'Keefe's background and his creative editing techniques.

[JVS]

24. I saw it too. A lot of DUers have apparently decided that community organizers are shit now that...

our party is in the white house. Don't want the message discipline to be threatened.

[mzmolly]

13. Many of us fought the lies from the

beginning.

[Emit]

15. Yes, many put great effort into debunking the ACORN lies.

I appreciated all of your ACORN threads, mzmolly. :hi:

[mzmolly]

16. Thanks Emit.

:blush: :pals:

[rfranklin]

2. It is a basic tenet of the blitzkrieg led by the uberwealthy right wingers....

ACORN is dangerous, unions are dangerous, democratic voting is dangerous. They have been working overtime since the 1960's when they saw that so many Americans were making serious strides in income and bnefits and rights and legal representation. It was a challenge to their power and wealth. There were health benefits and paid vacations and pensions. That was all money out of the pocikets of the uberwealthy.

They had to nuture jealousy and infighting amongst the working people, the poor and the middle class. Nixon starting the campaign with the "Silent Majority" and Reagan continued it with his "welfare queens" and rants against "affirmative action." That was it! The blacks and the immigrants were taking all the jobs! (While they were actually being shipped overseas along with entire factories.)

Instead of rising wages, we got credit cards and home equity loans and got mired in credit debt. They are closer than ever to raiding our Social Security funds. (Though they have already spent all the money they collected from us baby boomers when Reagan jacked up the rates.)

They are like a nightmare that never stops.

[Hannah Bell]

4. "An Excess of Democracy" isn't good for the rich. they prefer the masses apathetic, drugged &

beaten down by self-blame.

[Emit]

17. And don't forget, rfranklin, the Heritage Foundation

Dick Armey, Newt Gengrich, etc. (i.e., defunding the left) And those people are still here ~ I get so tired seeing them on my teevee. You are so right, they are like a nightmare that never stops.

[laughingliberal]

20. "There were health benefits and paid vacations and pensions"

The sad thing is citizens in other countries still have all that. Americans are idiots. Why do we settle for this?

[Emit]

5. Republicans and their ilk have been gunning for ACORN for years

almost at it's very conception. I find it interesting that the Socialist meme that has so dominated the Obama presidency resurrects the 'Cloward Piven Strategy' conspiracy ~ a leftist strategy, they claim, that is intent on destroying Capitalism through orchestrated crisis and redistribution of wealth. Cloward Piven segues directly into their deep hatred of ACORN and all it represents via the National Welfare Rights Organization and George Wiley.

Neoconservatives Sol Stern and David Horowitz revived Cloward and Piven in very recent years, turning up the volume during the primaries, and very effectively capitalizing on the prejudice and ignorance of the right wing by convincing them that ACORN is and has been a long standing strategy of the socialist (sic) left for all these years. The whole conspiracy comes replete with "arrogant" militant black organizers and all.

It is very sad indeed that currently, when one Googles Cloward or Piven, all one finds are Tea 'Bagger websites with 'Don't Tread on Me' banners, antiqued faded backgrounds of the Constitution, flowing American flags, flashy slogans of 'Liberty!' and 'Freedom!,' and wild rantings claiming to know exactly what our Christian (sic) founding fathers intended.

I would have liked to have met Mr. Cloward, and I would love to sit and chat with Ms. Piven. I am certain that Ms. Piven is appalled by this news, and all that has been done to warp her and her late husband's important work ~ work dedicated to poor and low-income women and families ~ into a wild wing nuttery conspiracy.

One of my favorites of Ms. Piven's is a piece she wrote after going up against William F. Buckley on Firing Line:

Don't blame welfare mothers for society's ills, FRANCES FOX PIVEN

Not long ago, I joined a Firing Line debate on the proposition that "Welfare does more harm than good." William Buckley led off with a story about his niece who lives in Paris. She has trouble finding household help, presumably because the help prefers welfare.

Then Buckley moved to his team's central claim: A moral rot is spreading in our society, revealed by rising delinquency, drug use, and dependency. The rot originates in the behavior of poor women who give birth to illegitimate children, encouraged and supported by government benefits. The remedy: Eliminate benefits, thereby forcing women to support themselves through work or marriage.

~snip~

Since Bill Buckley can't do anything about sin, he might reasonably ask what can be done about poverty. But he is too worried about getting good, cheap, household help - an objective he shares with a growing number of low-wage employers.

Buckley is not simply a cultural conservative, anxious to preserve traditional social forms. He is also a political conservative, committed to free-market doctrines that not only justify cutbacks in government social programs, but also justify reckless economic change, including the depletion of our industrial assets, massive layoffs through "streamlining," and declining wages.
Such wrenching economic change always leaves social disorder in its wake, which apologists like Buckley then blame on the immorality of the victims.

Still, after two hours of Firing Line debate leavened with smug male jokes at the expense of poor women, I am struck by how little evidence matters in talk about welfare. Stereotypes about the irresponsible poor are taken for granted, and too deeply etched.

~~~ St. Petersburg Times (Florida), May 8, 1994, retrieved February 6 2010 23:48:37, LexisNexis Academic Results

[Emit]

12. Dear grammar police: 'It's' should be 'its' in the post body above.

Too late to edit but not too late to beat others to it. Hopefully, it will not subtract from my sentiments.

[HippieCowgirl]

8. They will be back, I'm certain

They're disbanding, laying low for a few months, and will come back with a different name, same mission, and mostly the same people.

[Political Heretic]

9. Yes, and while that's comforting - the reich wing takedown was still disgusting.

[Emit]

11. I concur.

Reprehensible.

[Emit]

10. I agree

I have read pieces in the recent past that concurs. "Several of its largest affiliates, including ACORN New York and ACORN California, broke away this year and changed their names": http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gwChs9C8z5xzc-emeL97pt0tnL-wD9EJVG3G0

This attempt to cut off federal funding from liberal groups has been a longstanding plan of folks:
Defunding the left ~ Dick Armey, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Gingrich, the Heritage Foundation, etc.:

From 1995:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-04-23/news/1995113246_1_liberal-hunt-leadership

From earlier this month: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/14/nation/la-na-thomas14-2010mar14

Same people, same thing.

[mzmolly]

14. Pathetic given KNOWN liars are the

cause. :(

[upi402]

18. crooks win, america loses

again and again and again

[GreenTea]

19. Republicans despise poor people always have & their ideology dictates they always will.

Corporations over people is what cold-hearted selfish greedy hateful republican ideology is all about....Money means more to them than caring and helping others in our society, as the rich and corporations have plenty of money so fuck the poor and workers, they just get in the way of making more money and profits....Destroying them is the best policy.

Whom do you ask?

[Emit]

22. It amazes me, too, how people can be so easily swayed to vote against their own best interests

Case in point, the current tea 'baggers.