Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now

ACORN

739 8th Street, SE

Washington, DC 20003

During the Board meeting on 16 September 2009, a trustee said that he had received an intemperate mailing from Rush Limbaugh attacking ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. There was discussion that if an inflammatory conservative spokesman such as Mr. Limbaugh was attacking an organization, it would be appropriate for the Fund to investigate whether it might be worthy of contributions. The Fund did previously consider a request for contributions from ACORN in September 1993. That report was mixed. It said that ACORN organized the poor, but the report was not sure that this organizing actually benefited the poor. The Fund has not contributed to ACORN.

This is a new report on ACORN.

ACORN describes itself as such: “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 about 75 cities across the country.” (The reference to “moderate-income people” strikes me as indicative of a Marxist outlook that the rich are trying to exploit the middle class, but that is a personal opinion.) It has been active since 1970, and describes itself as working for social justice. It has long had a variety of objectives, but housing rights and voter registration have usually been its primary objectives.

ACORN has been very unpopular with Republican commentators for more than a decade. ACORN is nominally non-partisan, but has in fact been very partisan in the Democratic National Party. Some of the Republican hatred of ACORN has to do with their hidden partisanship.

ACORN has also had a long history of accusations of voter fraud. It appears that, in some areas, local ACORN organizers have been given cash incentives to “get out the vote”, and so have gotten ridiculous vote signatures, such as “Mickey Mouse”, in order to get their performance incentives. I do not know if that is true, but, if there were “performance incentives” to increase the number of registered voters, it would inevitably be true. “Performance incentives” to register votes, if actually used, would be a genuinely terrible idea.

ACORN has, since its inception, focused largely on “housing activism”. Since houses are real property, the laws about houses were defined in medieval England, and are still reasonable. It appears that sometimes ACORN activists have encouraged defaulting tenants or homeowners in default to the mortgages to remain in their houses after eviction or foreclosure. I do not know if this is true, but I think that is more likely true than false.

There was a recent incident in which the brother of one of the founders of ACORN embezzled money from ACORN, and that ACORN apparently chose to negotiate about it to avoid a criminal trial. I do not know if this is true, but it appears to be true.

The most current controversy involves two young conservative “activists”, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who dressed as a pimp and a prostitute. These “activists” then went to several ACORN offices to ask for advice. They said that they wanted to operate a brothel, and asked ACORN for advice. A tape shows that they were given advice on how to address home loan issues, real estate tax issues, and problems with teenage girls that they had trafficked in from El Salvador. If the last claim, human trafficking, is true, then it is damning. The tape appears to show that ACORN people in Baltimore gave advice to the “fake people” played by O’Keefe and Giles about what to do. They were apparently given advice by two ACORN people in Baltimore. (I wonder whether the 20-year-old Giles is only trying to advance her career, possibly as an actress, by showing off that she could be plausibly taken to be an attractive prostitute.)

The response by ACORN has been, first, to fire the two people in Baltimore who gave the advice, and, second, to restate the truth. ACORN says that the audio on the tape has been dubbed in beyond the honest video. If that is true, and it is possible, then ACORN was faultless in this incident, regardless of their conduct in other incidents.

It appears that the O’Keefe and Giles team has a history of trying to entrap “liberal” organizations into giving advice about evading laws. I am not sure about that.

I have no reason to believe that there ever really was any human trafficking. It seems clear enough to me that O’Keefe and Giles were trying to catch ACORN in a web of falsifications. There may indeed have been a web of falsifications by the left before the O’Keefe – Giles incident. There now has been an unquestionable web of fabrications by the right.

However, the real question for the Fund Board is simply whether we can or should contribute to ACORN. We have strict bylaws written largely by a wise man who lived in 1924, and not much has changed since then. Bylaw 3F2 states: “No contributions shall be made from the General Endowment or the Special Endowment for: … illegal activities, except for limited tests of constitutionality.” Bylaw 3G1 states: “any organization which engages in lobbying or attempts to influence legislation.”

I would suggest that the rule that the Board should follow in determining whether an organization is ineligible should be the usual criminal trial rule of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. That is, the organization should not be “ineligible” unless that ineligibility is beyond a reasonable doubt. However, there are two lesser rules of proof that are also used in American courts, “preponderance of the evidence” and “clear and convincing proof”.

ACORN’s own statements indicate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they are attempting to influence legislation. They are clearly ineligible for contributions from the Special Endowment, and should be so categorized. It is not absolutely clear that they are contributing to illegal activities, such as squatting, but that appears to be true. I recommend that the Board categorize ACORN as “not selected for eligibility concerns” from the General Endowment and “ineligible” from the Special Endowment.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert McClenon

17 September 2009