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Defund Acorn

Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?

Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?

Was Democrats’ Health Care Strategy Written In Federal Prison?

by Joel B. Pollak

On August 31, I headed to the health care town hall meeting of my congressional representative, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). I suspected that she planned to stack the meeting with paid organizers, after shevowed on Real Time with Bill Maher to bring “millions” of people into the streets to support the so-called “public option.” So I brought a video camera.

A friend and I took turns filming protesters on both sides of the issue. We caught an organizer from the group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) instructing followers to block dissenting views: “So if they stand up and start asking questions, and you’re in that area, simply stand up, and start chanting… ‘Health care now! Health care now!’”

My experience at Rep. Schakowsky’s town hall meeting that night convinced me to challenge her in the 2010 election. I had already stood up to Rep. Barney Frank at Harvard University, when I asked him about his role in the financial crisis. I could not simply watch thugs drown out the people of my own community back home, and do nothing.

The HCAN video became a YouTube sensation, the “smoking gun” in the controversy over which side of the debate was “Astroturfing”—i.e. creating a false image of grass roots support. I have since discovered that the video contains clues about how the entire nationwide health care campaign was planned and executed by congressional Democrats and the White House.

It turns out that the organizer in the video is John Gaudette, the Illinois director of HCAN. Gaudette alsoworks for a left-wing group linked to ACORN called Citizen Action/Illinois. Rep. Schakowsky sits on the Policy Council of the group, which suggests that she may have known about or even coordinated the suppression of her own constituents’ views by HCAN.

The plot thickens.

Rep. Schakowsky’s husband, Robert Creamer, used to be the leader of Citizen Action/Illinois. He also founded its predecessor, Illinois Public Action, in which Ms. Schakowsky served as Program Director. He runs a political consulting firm, the Strategic Consulting Group, which lists ACORN and the SEIU among its clients and which made $541,000 working for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.

Creamer resigned from Citizen Action/Illinois after the FBI began investigating him for bank fraud and tax evasion at Illinois Public Action. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to five months in federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, plus eleven months of house arrest.

While in prison—or “forced sabbatical,” he called it—Creamer wrote a lengthy political manualListen to Your Mother: Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win (Seven Locks Press, 2007).

The book was endorsed by leading Democrats and their allies, including SEIU boss Andy Stern—themost frequent visitor thus far to the Obama White House—and chief Obama strategist David Axelrod, who noted that Creamer’s tome “provides a blueprint for future victories.”

In the book, Creamer draws lessons from decades of experience on the radical left, including the teachings of arch-radical Saul Alinsky, and several episodes from Rep. Schakowsky’s political career. He also lays out a “Progressive Agenda for Structural Change,” which includes a ten-point plan for foisting universal health care on the American people in 2009:

  • “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”
  • “We must create a national consensus that the health care system is in crisis.”
  • “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”
  • “We need to systematically forge relationships with large sectors of the business/employer community.”
  • “We need to convince political leaders that they owe their elections, at least in part, to the groundswell of support of [sic] universal health care, and that they face political peril if they fail to deliver on universal health care in 2009.”
  • “We need not agree in advance on the components of a plan, but we must foster a process that can ultimately yield consensus.”
  • “Over the next two years, we must design and organize a massive national field program.”
  • “We must focus especially on the mobilization of the labor movement and the faith community.”
  • “We must systematically leverage the connections and resources of a massive array of institutions and organizations of all types.”
  • “To be successful, we must put in place commitments for hundreds of millions of dollars to be used to finance paid communications and mobilization once the battle is joined.”

Creamer adds: “To win we must not just generate understanding, but emotion—fear, revulsion, anger, disgust.”

Democrats have followed Creamer’s plan to the letter. They have claimed our health care system is in crisis despite polls showing the overwhelming majority of Americans are happy with the care they receive. They have—with the help of President Obama—circulated false horror stories about Americans dying for lack of health care and health insurance.

They have targeted the health insurance industry, with Rep. Schakowsky herself promising to “put the private insurance industry out of business,” though it is a top employer in Illinois.

Democrats have cut deals with the pharmaceutical industry and the American Medical Association, among others. They have brought in the President himself to tell wavering “Blue Dog” Democrats that their re-election chances depend on passing health care reform. They have bused in SEIU members to town hall meetings, and used rabbis and pastors to back health care reform from the pulpit.

They have used a complex, interconnected web of organizations—including HCAN and Organizing For America, the former Obama campaign arm—to whip up support and silence opposition. And they have benefited from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to convince the public to support bills that their representatives have never read themselves.

Creamer wrote his plan in 2006, explicitly proposing that it be carried out in 2009, once a “progressive Democrat is elected President” and once Democrats could count on 60 votes in the Senate. It is curious that Creamer, sitting in prison, could have predicted the details and the timing of President Obama’s legislative agenda so precisely.

The likeliest explanation is that Creamer helped design the Democrats’ health care strategy. That would explain why President Obama made health care an obsession in 2009, when it was only one among many issues he raised on the campaign trail in 2008. It would explain the role of several overlapping left-wing groups, including Creamer’s own Citizen Action/Illinois.

It would explain why HCAN was particularly aggressive at Rep. Schakowsky’s own town hall meeting. And Creamer’s involvement would also explain his high profile after being released from prison. He worked for the Obama campaign, training volunteers at “Camp Obama.” He has continued his work at the Strategic Consulting Group, leading “many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns,” he claims. He was also at the White House state dinner last month—together with Stern, Axelrod, and other cronies—despite the fact that ex-convicts are usually barred from such events.

Creamer’s broader aim, as laid out in his book, is the “democratization of wealth” in America and “progressive control of governments around the world.” As he recently wrote on his blog at the Huffington Post: “If we succeed in winning health insurance reform we will have breached the gates of the status quo. We will demonstrate that fundamental change is possible. Into that breach will flow a wave of progressive change.”

It is a radical agenda, making use of Rep. Schakowsky’s public profile, a network of far-left organizations, and Creamer’s old friends in the White House. It began in federal prison, and has unfolded exactly as intended, over the protests of thousands of ordinary Americans across the nation. It will not end with health care. It will continue until Mr. Creamer’s Alinskyite dream of radical change is realized—or until voters stand up and put a stop to it in 2010.

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REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in ‘Undercover Video Sting’

REVEALED: ACORN, NBC Worked Together in ‘Undercover Video Sting’

by Publius

Since the undercover ACORN videos from James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles first broke, the grand pooh-bahs of journalism have gone into self-absorbed philosopher mode. Rather than report on the ACORN corruption playing out before our eyes, “journalists” have tsk-tsked their way through thousands of words and yards of column inches making certain that everyone understands that what James and Hannah did IS…NOT…JOURNALISM. (As if that is the existential question to make sense of the ACORN videos.) Undercover videos and assuming fake identities are things real journalists do not do…except when they do.

Read the rest of the article at : Big Government

New Site Of The Week: NUTBUSTERZ Launched To Expose Working Families Party/ACORN Scam

As part of the NEW Conservative movement, we here at Townhallmob.com continue to highlight our friends in the battle gainst the Liberal occupation of America.

This week we are highlighting nutbusterz.org as our site of the week.

Here’s a sniplet of their mission:

NUTBUSTERZ

We are a citizen action group committed to exposing the danger that ACORN and the Working Family Party poses to our democracy based on their record of subverting elections through voter fraud, falsifying petitions for Constitutional Amendments and favored candidacies, looting government housing programs, blackmailing corporations and cheating the public campaign finance system.

NUTBUSTERZ

Will serve as a clearinghouse for media coverage of the illegal activities of ACORN. Media reports on ACORN and the New York Working Families Party (WFP) will be updated daily. Candidates and causes that ally themselves with ACORN will be exposed and held to account.

NUTBUSTERZ

Will press for formal investigations of ACORN’s activities at the National, State and County levels. Only by marshaling public demand can ACORN’s political influence be overcome and they be held accountable for their activities.

NUTBUSTERZ

Will establish that the Working Families Party illegally assists the candidates they support through their for-profit arm. The Working Families Party is ACORN.


and here’s another article written up about them:

Exclusive: NUTBUSTERZ Launched To Expose Working Families Party/ACORN Scam.

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Bertha Lewis and the Campaign to DeFox America

Bertha Lewis and the Campaign to DeFox America.

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‘They Tried to Steal an Election,’ N.Y. Voter Fraud Case Heats Up

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out, according to records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y. Enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the November election to the Democrats.

By Eric Shawn

FOXNews.com

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Brian Suozzo voted with an absentee ballot in the Working Families Party primary on Sept. 15 because, as his application stated, he was “at home recovering from medical procedure.”

Jessica Boomhower’s application said she would be attending a “work conference in Boston.”

Michael Ward couldn’t vote in person because he was “taking care of elderly parent.”

Kimberlee Truell was on a “Bus trip to casino,” as was Miguel Vazques.

The only problem with these absentee ballot records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y., is that they’re phony, voters and investigators say — and they’ve prompted what’s being called an unprecedented investigation of suspected voter fraud.

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out — enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. Candidates would have been able to run both on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines in two weeks, and that could have given the Democrats the general election.

A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were “significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process.”

Among the reasons cited on the fraudulent forms for absentee voting: “traveling to Buffalo,” attending a “screen printing conference in Syracuse,” “working late shift,” “working construction,” and “home — ill.”

“Someone took my signature and voted with it and I felt extremely violated,” Suozzo told Fox News. He is a soft-spoken 28-year-old environmental engineer who says he never saw, let alone signed, the Working Families Party Absentee ballot application that carried his supposed signature. He was flabbergasted that someone would vote for him and submit it.

“The whole thing seems dirty to me,” Suzzo said. “You wonder how often this happens and people don’t get caught.”

He says he did not have any type of medical procedure, adding “I haven’t been to the hospital in years.”

“I feel that I was gypped,” Boomhower said, ruefully. “I didn’t get to cast my vote on my own.”

Boomhower, a 28-year-old home health care worker, says three men came to her door asking her to sign a ballot application. It wasn’t until after the election that a private investigator brought her the news that an absentee ballot indeed showed she had voted, when she actually had not.

“I can’t believe they thought they would get away with this,” she says angrily, noting that the false claim that she was in Boston could have jeopardized her job. “I don’t want to see this get tossed aside,” she told Fox News.

Michael Ward, whose ballot said he was taking care of an elderly parent, said “I got one parent left, and he lives in Albany and takes care of himself.”

“They tried to steal an election,” says Bob Mirch, the majority leader of the Rensselaer County legislature who suspected voter fraud and started the investigation after being alerted to a large number of absentee ballot application requests that were noticed by the Republican Board of Elections commissioner .

“Not only does it undermine the system, but if these people were allowed to do this, we could never have a fair election… I’ve been doing this for 35 years, when I saw this, it sends a chill through my body right now.”

Mirch is a pugnacious veteran of the bruising county politics, a Conservative Party and Republican politician who is also Commissioner of Troy’s Department of Public Works, which is why he relishes his sobriquet, “Bob, the Garbage Man.” He brands local politics “a blood sport,” in a city that in the 19th Century was once one of the country’s wealthiest, has an abundance of elegant townhouses from that era, yet is often overshadowed by its neighbor Albany, the New York State capital. Campaign signs dot many front lawns, and it seems local political maneuvering is followed as closely as the Yankee playoffs. Mirch proudly admits he runs his own candidates in the left-leaning Working Families Party primaries to try and sap strength from the Democrats or gain the line for Republican candidates, but he insists he has never acted unlawfully, and blames his political opponents for doing just that.

“These Democrats and Working Families people couldn’t bear taking another defeat at the hands of the garbage man, as I’m known in Troy, so they went out and took the law in their own hands to claim victory,” he says.

“As soon as I heard it — I was mad, disappointed, frustrated,” says Troy Democratic Chairman Frank LaPosta. He blames what he calls “a rogue group of Democrats,” and says what happened “is beyond comprehension.”

LaPosta stood in his apron in his Italian salumeria, stocked with fresh delicacies and cuts of meat. He once ran for Mayor and appears genuinely wounded by the scandal.

“I believe we could have won without the Working Families Party line,” he says. “To have something like this darken the election, its just an outrage for true Democrats in the city of Troy. This is not what the Democratic party in the city of Troy stands for,” he said. “Some people think you have to have all the lines to win. I believe you have to have the issues to win.”

The Working Families Party has recently gained strength, and controversy, in New York. Republican and Democratic candidates in the Empire State can also run on third party lines, such as the Working Families Party, as well as the Liberal, Conservative, and Independence parties, among others. The extra line means extra votes that could bring victory.

Hillary Clinton garnered 2.7 percent of her total votes from the WFP line when she first ran for Senate in 2000, which increased to 5 percent of her total vote in 2006. In September, Clinton’s former campaign manager for her 2000 Senate run, New York City Councilman Bill DeBlasio, who has been endorsed by the WFP, beat two long-established politicians in the Democratic primary. Critics also accuse the Working Families Party of having a long association with the troubled activist group, ACORN. Bertha Lewis, ACORN’s CEO, is one of the party’s co-founders. The New York Times reported this month that “Patrick Gaspard, the White House political director, worked with ACORN in New York to set up the Working Families political party and sat on the party’s board with Ms. Lewis.”

The WFP has also endorsed New York Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who was one of only seven Senators who voted against cutting federal housing funds to ACORN in September.

But the jockeying for a candidate to win the Working Families Party line may have crossed the line in Troy.

“We welcome the investigation,” says former Working Families Party County Chair Pat Pafundi. WFP officials would either not return our calls or comment about the investigation, but Pafundi, a current party member, was clear. While she believes the political tactics engaged by Mirch to run candidates on the WFP line undermine the party, she admits “it looks like there has been some kind of fraud” regarding the questionable absentee ballots.

“For six years, we’ve gone door to door to work hard to do this the right way,” she told Fox News. “Good government includes elections held with integrity and that is the way we have conducted ourselves and we hope the Democrats and Republicans would do the same also.”

A lawsuit filed by Working Parties candidate Christian Lambersten, who ran in the primary, led to the suspected ballots being tossed. He is a lifelong friend of  Mirch, who urged him to run in the WFP primary, along with five other Mirch-backed candidates.

“I always thought everything was done above board,” he told Fox News about the absentee ballots. “You hear stories about this or that but I really didn’t belive it until actually this happened,” he said. “These people were taken advantage of — whether they voted for me or not.”

Read More @ Foxnews.com

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New Big Government – Acorn Scandal Video # 5 Philadelphia, PA

This is the first of about 4 video’s form Philadelphia PA, I’ll post the rest later today.

Basically, this series shows everything ACORN has thrown out there about HAnna and James visit to ACORN Philadelphia is not true, but lies to cover their asses. James edited the audio as to comply with the illegal wiretap laws of the state.

Video Part 1

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ACORN Watch: Fight the thugs

By Michelle Malkin  •  October 20, 2009 05:34 PM

Photoshop credit: Leo Alberti

ACORN is a criminal enterprise. It took decades to build up its massive coffers and intricate web of affiliates across the country.

It will take months and years to untangle the entire operation.

And it will take time, money, and and relentless sunshine to dismantle the government-subsidized, partisan racket. It can’t be “reformed.” It is constitutionally corrupt.

The sworn testimony, research, and blogging by former ACORN/Project Vote development associate Anita MonCrief have provided an invaluable amount of fodder for reporters (before their editors “cut bait,” that is) and congressional investigators trying to get to the bottom of ACORN’s tax law-undermining, campaign finance disclosure-evading ways. Most recently, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported this week on how ACORN’s voter drives in Ohio were planned specifically to help Democrat congressional candidates.

The reward for MonCrief’s truth-telling? An intimidation lawsuit to shut her up.

Yesterday, MonCrief’s lawyers filed an answer to the ACORN/Project Vote lawsuit and counterclaims against the racket for its frivolous and bullying attempt to silence her. There is also a new website to help with her legal defense fund here.

These are the legal documents in PDF form:

*Answer to the lawsuit

*Counterclaim

*Motion to Dismiss

*Motion to Dismiss brief

MonCrief’s team has exposed the ACORN/Project Vote alliance’s joint and inseparable speech-stifling tactics and laid bare the legal chicanery. Pay attention. This is what ACORN’s worst enemies have to look forward to — and they will all need support to beat the silencers back.

Read The Rest @ Michelle’s website – http://michellemalkin.com

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Bet on it: ACORN will be back

ACORN may be down, but don’t count it out.

The elaborate propaganda apparatus erected to support the Obama agenda is already at work spinning the downfall of the community organization into a vicious right-wing plot to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, who sprouted from ACORN.

The group was cut off from some of its taxpayer dollars after conservative bloggers duped ACORN staffers into offering advice on setting up a child prostitution ring. ACORN had no defense — it was caught on tape and posted on the Web.

But ACORN is too important to Democrats and Obama in particular to allow it to wither away. Much of the taxpayer money that funds ACORN’s activism ends up benefiting Democratic interests.

Stories are showing up about ACORN’s diligent efforts to purge itself of bad apples. News reports document how ACORN’s ability to help foreclosure victims has been hamstrung by the misdeeds of a few gullible staffers.

University of Northern Iowa professors substantiate the right-wing conspiracy by noting a flurry of negative stories about the group prior to the 2008 election. (It doesn’t occur to the profs that this was when ACORN was caught registering cartoon characters and dead people to vote, which tends to make news.)

Expect soon a major national publication to go in-depth on ACORN’s rehab. It’s the pattern the Obama machine follows to push his major issues and marginalize his critics.

It starts with a barrage of e-mails from local residents who coincidentally get worked up about the same thing on the same day — Rush Limbaugh is a racist, for example. Next comes op-ed pieces from left-wing opiners decrying Limbaugh’s divisiveness. Then Limbaugh’s face hits the cover of Newsweek as the personification of the right’s evil intent.

Obama’s conversion of his election team to a permanent network of campaign offices to advocate for his policies — the latest opened in Detroit on Saturday — is unprecedented.

The administration gets away with such ruthless manipulation of public opinion because the media are derelict in watch-dogging this White House and its backers.

Googling ACORN comes up with a lot of hits about how Republicans are trying to use the scandal to derail housing aid programs, and almost none about the inner workings of the group. ACORN’s foibles didn’t trigger anywhere near the frenzy of investigative reporting that Joe the Plumber did.

Similarly, you’ll find a ton of stories debunking claims that health care reform will lead to death panels and rationing. But there’s little critical analysis of Obama’s assertion that the bill will save money.

This is more than a honeymoon with a new president. It’s a torrid love affair that is eroding the media’s credibility.

So of course ACORN can come back. With the press cozily tucked into bed at the White House, what’s to stop it?

Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The News. Reach him at nfinley@detnews.com.

Read More over at The Detroit News

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Is ACORN DOA?: Blame The Board!

by Michael McCray

A pimp, prostitute, underage human trafficking and now a self-professed murderer; what could be next for the embattled Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now?!?

Margaret Williams, Maryland ACORN board member and Sonja Merchant-Jones, Baltimore ACORN President both reported that the low level ACORN employees caught on tape in the Baltimore office were immediately terminated for behaving unprofessionally; but yet, senior staff members who assisted and concealed a million dollar Rathke embezzlement remain employed.

img-cs---acorn_191739618016

The ACORN 8 commends these board members’s decisive action, but find it extremely ironic since the board of directors do not actually control ACORN employees. According to ACORN’s by-laws that authority is exclusively exercised by the “Chief Organizer,” formerly Wade Rathke and now Bertha Lewis. This fundamental disconnect between an actual functioning board of directors and senior management is the true problem and real scandal within ACORN. It causes low-income members and staff to become mere pawns of senior management.

Ultimately, ACORN’s low-income workers are simply trying to meet and fulfill unreasonable membership quotas set by senior staff. This undue management pressure results in fraudulent voter registrations, tax assistance for “pimps and prostitutes” or worse. Poor governance and lack of accountability are the real problems. Voter fraud or rather voter registration fraud are just symptoms of a far greater problem. And that is the lack of meaningful control and accountability by the membership. So don’t fault poor workers – blame the board!

If ACORN hopes to survive then the know-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing board of directors must by replaced by individuals with the strength and capabilities to fulfill their fiduciary obligations and the courage to reign in corruption by ACORN’s senior management. If they fail, it is the low income communities which ACORN serves which will suffer the loss.

The damage to the ACORN brand and its overall effectiveness has been immeasurable due to poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within senior management. Consequently, the board of director’s missed the last best chance to save ACORN through reform. It seems apparent to all, except the most ardent and the culpable, that ACORN has been mortally wounded; and the only question now is who goes down with the ship?

But it may already be too late; ACORN had its chance to do the right thing following the million dollar Rathke embezzlement. There was a glimmer of hope when the board of directors appointed an interim management committee tasked to investigate the embezzlement and reorganize ACORN. But they were terminated for seeking a forensic audit.

From the very beginning, the ACORN 8 have always sought to reform – not destroy – the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now. But now find it impossible to imagine that even this once venerable association can withstand the latest onslaught of negative publicity.

The Census Bureau and IRS recently severed ties with ACORN, and the U.S. Senate voted 83 to 7 to cut off funding for the embattled group. The House followed suit by a vote of 345 to 75. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of poor governance, mismanagement and corruption within the once venerable organization. ACORN cannot survive if it can’t raise any more money.

No More Charitable Donations: No tax exempt 501(c )(3) organization will donate money to ACORN under the present circumstances. Since they cannot prove that the 501(c )(3) funding was not commingled with partisan activities.

No More Federal Contracts: Likewise, the federal government has already begun to sever ties to ACORN and could not fund the association through CCI a registered lobbying organization.

No More Negotiated Settlements: ACORN no longer possesses the necessary moral authority to pressure corporations or any organization through public demonstrations or protests. Thus, even this revenue stream will be unavailable to ACORN.

ACORN has been hijacked by senior staff and executive leadership who are acting in their own personal interest and not the best interest of the association or its membership. Only one question remains. Is ACORN now dead on arrival?!?

ACORN has survived in the past as a surprisingly well funded, politically well connected, dictatorial operation which flew under the public’s radar. Ironically, the election of President Barack Obama was actually the worst thing that could happen to ACORN. The attention that the election of the first African-American and community organizer to the highest office in the land has made it impossible for ACORN to avoid real scrutiny as it has in the past. Ironically, President Obama’s ascent has turned into ACORN’s demise.

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Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website

Rathke’s Reach: Critical ACORN Doc Found on Asian Website

by Kyle Olson

If one wonders or doubts Wade Rathke’s reach around the world, consider the following document found on a community organizing website in Asia and published on ACORNcracked.com.

It has been well-documented that last year Rathke “left” ACORN U.S. to head over to ACORN International and export ACORN’s brand of organizing and tactics.  He has since changed the group’s name to Community Organizations International.

ACORN Community Organizing Model is not the type of document ACORN would wish to have on the Internet.  For ACORN, is tantamount to Eisenhower’s plan for D-Day being printed on the front page of the Washington Post.  Not a good thing for the ultra-secretive group.

Consider this frank section of “SETTING UP THE ORGANIZING DRIVE:”

2.  Contacts:  The whole process of making contacts is built on a pyramid theory.  Make one that leads to others.  The purpose of contacts is to gather information and resources, and to build power.  There are three types:  hot, warm, cold.  The hot contacts are people we have met before at some point in the organization’s history.  Check the biographical file in the state office.  Warm contacts are those we have not met but know something about in order to build an edge, i.e. we have an opener or a handle for the conversation – something they did, someone they know who we know, some reason to believe we can hit the core.  The cold contacts are those people we must meet for some reason, yet we have no lead to them.  The only edge there is simply an organizer’s skill in prying information and setting up his/her ego in order to loosen her/his tongue in person or on the phone.  It’s a skill to be perfected, if you’re greasy, you are in the hole.

Groups such as Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia clearly didn’t nor don’t understand the pressure and scrutiny ACORN has faced over the last several months.  But their foolishness or naivete is the ACORN’s researcher’s gain.

For whatever reason, the LOCOA site doesn’t create a direct link to the individual page.  If you wish to see it for yourself on the LOCOA site, go here, then click on Program in the menu bar.  Then, go to the second page of documents and click on ACORN Community Organizing Model.  Or, to save yourself time (not to mention if and when the document disappears from the website), you can click here for a PDF.

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