Obama had worked briefly as an organizer in Harlem, but, in Chicago, he learned the principles of community organizing from Kellman, Kruglik, and other disciples of Saul Alinsky, a hardscrabble, profane Chicagoan who, in the late 1930s, had organized white ethnic meatpacking workers in the area around the old Chicago Stockyards. Alinsky was heavily influenced by John L. Lewis, the president of the United Mine Workers and founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He wanted to do for working-class communities what Lewis and the CIO had done for workplaces: unite people of different backgrounds around common goals and use their collective strength to wring concessions from the powers that be.
Alinsky had died in 1972, but not before achieving considerable success in Chicago and other cities. And, while some of his opinions--like his derogation of Martin Luther King's abilities as an organizer--were not shared by Kellman and other followers, his general principles would guide groups like the Gamaliel Foundation, which trained people who went on to work for the Developing Communities Project and similar organizations. They became the underpinning of Obama's approach. "His assignment was to operate in the classic style," Kruglik, a stubby, scruffy, intense man who now works for Gamaliel, tells me.
These rules can be reduced, more or less, to a few central ideas. Alinsky believed that humans respond to their own selfinterest rather than conscience or morality. (People are "moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, " he argued, while morality is a "rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest.") As a result, the job of an organizer is to discover what citizens think is in their self-interest and then help them fight for it. Alinsky also instructed that the organizer himself should not become a public leader, but should operate behind the scenes to encourage "natural" or "native" leaders among the people he is organizing. That is, the goal of an organizer is never to create a movement based on his own charisma. ("We're trying to build an organization with staying power, not a movement based on instant power and charisma," Ernesto Cortes Jr., a prominent Alinsky disciple, explained in 1988. ) Finally, Alinsky felt that organizers should draw a clear line between their work and the political world. An organization should forge "no permanent political ties," declared a guide put out by the Industrial Areas Foundation, which Alinsky created. When I asked former community organizer John Kretzmann--who teaches at Northwestern and writes about organizing--whether organizers saw all politicians as "whores," he replied, "Even if you found one that wasn't, it makes no sense to get close to them."
The most powerful community organizing force in the Chicagoland area is ACORN (Assocation for Community Organization for Reform Now). I had my first intimate introduction to ACORN when they attempted to do this in the middle of the mortgage crisis.
Chanting, “Sharks bite, ACORN fights – predatory lenders, you’re notright,” dozens of ACORN members on Sept. 26 stormed the offices of Ocwen Financial, demanding that one of the nation’s largest servicers of subprime mortgages modify those loans to keep families from losing their homes. Ocwen CEO William Erbey had ignored a July letter from Florida ACORN requesting a meeting, so members paid him a visit at work. Among the ACORN members were Olga and Paul Gant of Broward County, who told the Palm Beach Post they are facing foreclosure after their monthly mortgage payments jumped from $2,200 to $3,000 per month.
ACORN is demanding that Ocwen enact a moratorium on foreclosures, modify loans according to borrowers’ ability to repay and lock in interest rates at
pre-adjustment levels.Similar demands were made in San Jose, Calif., at the offices of Countrywide Financial, where scores of ACORN members gathered to protest thatcompany’s failure to work out loan modifications with homeowners. ACORNestimates 1.8 million adjustable rate mortgages worth $900 billion will reset athigher, unaffordable interest rates over the next two years. As many as 2 million families nationwide are in danger of losing their homes.
This piece is a microcosm of not only ACORN's political philosophy but their tactics. ACORN's political philosophy runs just to the left of a group like ANSWER. Here is how they see the world.
ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country. Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter participation. ACORN helps those who have historically been locked out become powerful players in our democratic system.
...
Each ACORN office carries out multiple issue campaigns. ACORN members across the country work to raise the minimum wage or enact living wage policies; eliminate predatory financial practices by mortgage lenders, payday lenders, and tax preparation companies; win the development of affordable housing and community benefits agreements; improve the quality of and funding for urban public schools; rebuild New Orleans; and pass a federal and state ACORN Working Families Agenda, including paid sick leave for all full time workers.
They use terms like social justice and living wage as a euphimism for quasi socialist policies. As in the case of Ocwen Mortgage, they often use confrontational extortion methods to force companies to give in to their demands. Barack Obama's ties to ACORN go back to his days as a community organizer.
What has Barack Obama got to do with all this? Plenty. Let's begin with Obama's pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago. Few people have a clear idea of just what a "community organizer" does. A Los Angeles Times piece on Obama's early Chicago days opens with the touching story of his efforts to build a partnership with Chicago's "Friends of the Parks," so that parents in a blighted neighborhood could have an inviting spot for their kids to play. This is the image of Obama's organizing we're supposed to hold. It's far from the whole story, however. As the L. A. Times puts it, "Obama's task was to help far South Side residents press for improvement" in their communities. Part of Obama's work, it would appear, was to organize demonstrations, much in the mold of radical groups like Acorn.
Although the L. A. Times piece is generally positive, it does press Obama's organizing tales on certain points. Some claim that Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, exaggerates his accomplishments in spearheading an asbestos cleanup at a low-income housing project. Obama, these critics say, denies due credit to Hazel Johnson, an activist who claims she was the one who actually discovered the asbestos problem and led the efforts to resolve it. Read carefully, the L. A. Times story leans toward confirming this complaint against Obama, yet the story's emphasis is to affirm Obama's important role in the battle. Speaking up in defense of Obama on the asbestos issue is Madeleine Talbot, who at the time was a leader at Chicago Acorn. Talbot, we learn, was so impressed by Obama's organizing skills that she invited him to help train her own staff.
ACORN is most notorious for their continuous run ins with the law over voter fraud...
and...Four people have been indicted on charges of voter fraud in Kansas City, officials said Wednesday.
Investigators said questionable registration forms for new voters were collected by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that works to improve minority and low-income communities.
The four indicted -- Kwaim A. Stenson, Dale D. Franklin, Stephanie L. Davis and Brian Gardner -- were employed by ACORN as registration recruiters. They were each charged with two counts.
Federal indictments allege the four turned in false voter registration applications. Prosecutors said the indictments are part of a national investigation.
Milwaukee has discovered some more voter fraud with 10 more voter registration workers are being investigated by Wisconsin authorities. Fittingly, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered the story in its paper on August 29. Unfittingly, the Journal Sentinel forgot one, tiny aspect of the story... that the voter fraud was perpetrated by Democrats. In fact, one of the organizations, ACORN,
Not only is ACORN notorious for voter fraud activities like providing illicit drugs to get folks to do door to door voter drives, signing up illegal aliens, and signing up criminals, but furthemore their supposed non partisan voter drive efforts are always in poor areas where the bulk of the potential voters are Democrats.
Barack Obama continued to be tied to ACORN even after his days as a community organizer ended. As a practicing attorney, he once represented ACORN.
Obama sued on behalf of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The League of Women Voters and other public-interest groups joined in.
"He and his client were the ones who filed the original case -- they blazed the trail," said Paul Mollica, who represented the League.
Transcripts show that at court hearings, Obama identified himself, then let Mollica begin speaking. Maria Valdez of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund sometimes spoke. The U.S. Justice Department joined in.
Letting the heavy-hitters at the Justice Department make the arguments appears to have been a sound strategy -- Obama's side won, even without him talking.
"Obama was involved to some extent in the legal work, but he was not the leader in actually litigating the thing -- Paul [Mollica] probably was the leader of the coalition and did most of the legal work," said David Melton, who represented Cook County Clerk David Orr. "Obama did have some expertise in certain constitutional aspects of the case."
What's really troubling though is what ACORN has done on Obama's behalf. When he ran for the State Senate, he sought and received their endorsement.
According to the New York Times, Obama’s memberships on those foundation boards, “allowed him to help direct tens of millions of dollars in grants” to various liberal organizations, including Chicago Acorn, “whose endorsement Obama sought and won in his State Senate race.”
This should come as a surprise to any who reads their website as it clearly states this.
ACORN is a non-profit, non-partisan social justice organization with national headquarters in New York, New Orleans and Washington, D.C. To maintain independence, ACORN does not accept government funding and is not tax exempt
Of course, as Stanley Kurtz continues...
As best as I can tell (and this needs to be checked out more fully), Acorn maintains both political and “non-partisan” arms. Obama not only sought and received the endorsement of Acorn’s political arm in his local campaigns, he recently accepted Acorn’s endorsement for the presidency, in pursuit of which he reminded Acorn officials of his long-standing ties to the group.
So, ACORN maintains they are non partisan because that way they can receive government funding, and yet they also maintain a "political arm" which allows them to endorse candidates like Barack Obama. This sort of netherworld reminds of the Government Sponsored Entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Of course, money they received from Barack Obama, as he funnelled millions to them while in the Illinois State Senate. In fact, Obama's ties to ACORN stem from the beginning of his political career in Illinois all the way to his run for the U.S. Senate.
At least a few news reports have briefly mentioned Obama’s role in training Acorn’s leaders, but none that I know of have said what Foulkes reports next: that Obama’s long service with Acorn led many members to serve as the volunteer shock troops of Obama’s early political campaigns — his initial 1996 State Senate campaign, and his failed bid for Congress in 2000 (Foulkes confuses the dates of these two campaigns.) With Obama having personally helped train a new cadre of Chicago Acorn leaders, by the time of Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, Obama and Acorn were “old friends,” says Foulkes.
So along with the reservoir of political support that came to Obama through his close ties with Jeremiah Wright, Father Michael Pfleger, and other Chicago black churches, Chicago Acorn appears to have played a major role in Obama’s political advance. Sure enough, a bit of digging into Obama’s years in the Illinois State Senate indicates strong concern with Acorn’s signature issues, as well as meetings with Acorn and the
introduction by Obama of Acorn-friendly legislation on the living wage and banking practices. You begin to wonder whether, in his Springfield days, Obama might have best been characterized as “the Senator from Acorn.”
What should really be startling are the ties between the Obama campaign for President and ACORN now. The most troubling connection maybe the activities of the two in this campaign.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign paid more than $800,000 to an offshoot of the liberal Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now for services the Democrat’s campaign says it mistakenly misrepresented in federal reports.
An Obama spokesman said Federal Election Commission reports would be amended to show Citizens Services Inc. — a subsidiary of ACORN — worked in “get-out-the-vote” projects, instead of activities such as polling, advance work and staging major events as stated in FEC finance reports filed during the primary.
So, what we have is a supposed non partisan group that relies on hundreds of millions grants from the government for "community service". This NON PARTISAN'S group's POLITICAL ARM (talk about your boiler plate oxy moron) has been supporting Barack Obama since he entered politics. Their ties go back to the late 1980's. Now, they are alleged to have committed violations of election law together. On top of all this, the group has a far left quasi socialist philosophy, and when they support a candidate it is for a reason.
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