What Exactly Does ACORN Do Anyway?

Beginning with last year’s election and erupting in the last couple of days, ACORN has been a frequent topic in the news. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been for its good deeds.

This lead to the question, “what exactly does ACORN do anyway?”

According to Wikipedia,

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocate for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. ACORN has over 400,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the U.S., as well as in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. ACORN was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado.

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ACORN’s priorities have included: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, and other social justice issues. ACORN pursues these goals through demonstration, negotiation, lobbying for legislation, and voter participation.

Known for unabashedly supporting liberal causes and Democrats, ACORN has been accused of registering false voters and dead people, only registering voters likely to vote for Democrats, and recently, counseling a “pimp” and “prostitute” on how to game the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Familiar now to most on YouTube, the “pimp and prostitute” were anti-ACORN activists who secretly recorded these “counseling” sessions.

MSNBC reports on recent revelations:

Activist group ACORN started in 1970 to help the poor in Arkansas and quickly went national, growing into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate with a mission so far-flung that schools now bear its name, two radio stations are affiliates and a man it backed is the president. Oh yeah, it’s also the unwilling star of a hot Internet video featuring a couple dressed as a hooker and her pimp.

And that last bit is just one of its problems.

The organization praised for its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts and treated by federal, state and local governments as a valuable public resource has had nearly $1 million embezzled by its founder’s brother. The openly Democratic-leaning group has seen its employees accused of voter registration fraud, and taking it down has become a cause celebre for Republican lawmakers, activists and pundits.

As if volunteers allegedly signing up cartoon character Mickey Mouse to vote didn’t give ACORN enough bad publicity, the public is enthralled with new videos appearing on the Internet and TV news shows showing ACORN employees in Brooklyn, N.Y., advising a couple posing as a prostitute and pimp to lie to get housing aid, and employees in other cities counseling the pair on tax, banking and immigration issues.

Formerly the favorite son of Democratic politicians, these revelations overwhelm any positive work ACORN has done over the last 30 years and find the organization increasingly friendless in the halls of Congress.

Many Democrats used to advertise their ACORN connections. Now, however, the Democratic-led Senate has voted to cut off its grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Democrat-dominated House doesn’t want it to get any federal money, period.

The article goes on to provide a detailed narrative of ACORN, its activities, and critics.

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