Throwing ACORN under the bus
I HAVE been reading with an intense state of anger how the Democratic Party has betrayed the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
I remember working for ACORN for a very short time frame in 2006, during the election season. At that point, I was at a complete wit's end with the Democratic Party, but sucked myself into volunteering to campaign for one of our senators because it was a paying job.
ACORN works to intervene on behalf of working-class families in numerous ways. For starters, they register people in minority and low-income neighborhoods to vote. They also have done good work in resisting evictions and helping people file taxes without fees.
Unfortunately, they are also heavily tied into the Democratic Party, and during every election season, they make their endorsement for the Democrat who is running.
Now, the strategy of limiting their politics to support for the Democratic Party has backfired. As they have before, the Democratic Party has voted overwhelmingly for a Republican-initiated, McCarthy-like witch-hunt to de-fund and then publicly humiliate the organization over two possibly doctored tapes showing two employees engaged in unprofessional behavior.
The tapes in question seem comical, almost like a high school skit. To say the questionable behavior that's shown is child's play compared to what is legitimized and institutionalized under capitalism is an understatement.
It is appalling and obscene how quickly Congress reacted to this when there has been no investigation of the kind of war crimes directly authorized by the government through Blackwater and Halliburton. There still has been not a single "higher-up" punished in any way for what was allowed to take place in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
To this day, the U.S. commits secret renditions and publicly defends torture and war crimes. "Bipartisan" investigations usually end up turning into shams or pathetic dog-and-pony shows. Liberals seem to justify or ignore such things under their leadership. while criticizing them when they are authorized by someone unpopular--like the former Bush administration.
The crimes committed by the banking industry, which have left people evicted and homeless, is just "everyday" capitalism. The real problem was that ACORN wanted to do good things and got stuck in a deadlock by being close to the Democrats. Then, the group was stabbed in the back. A similar thing happened to MoveOn.org, a group whose politics also are tragically limited to the Democratic Party.
The Republican Party and right wingers are thrilled that ACORN will be forced to close down many offices and lose almost all of its funding, when people need its help the most during a huge recession.
In the end, only six Democrats in the Senate defended ACORN. It will be unconscionable for ACORN to continue to endorse the Democratic Party in 2010. It will also be unconscionable for the Democrats to pretend to have any reason why ACORN should.
Greg Morse, Providence, R.I.
