John Atlas's Open Salon Blog

Stop the Vitriol of the Right? A Lesson From the ACORN Trage

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:01:05 -0500

After the horrific Tucson shooting, John McCain and even Roger Ailes, the Fox News president, joined President Obama's call for a more civil discourse. Ailes told his anchors and reporters to "tone it down." McCain agreed with the President's call "...to aspire to a more generous appreciation of one another and a more modest one of ourselves."

But if the recent history of ACORN is a guide to the future, Obama's attempt to jolt the nation into civility, something we desperately need, will fail. And unless Obama fights to protect his base from the upcoming attacks by the Right, he will undermine our chance for a resurgent movement based on respect, equality and democracy.

Imagine how Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News commentators from Sarah Palin to Glenn Beck would have responded to the Tucson violence if we discovered the gunman had some connection to ACORN, the group demonized by conservatives as a dangerous, even criminal organization.

Would they have pushed their current talking points about the assassin being a lone wolf, a paranoid schizophrenic completely unaffected by the political rhetoric of the left? Or would they have assumed as gospel that the left created an atmosphere that led to the assassination? Would they have used the occasion to destroy and vilify ACORN, formally the nation's largest anti-poverty group, as well as its Democratic supporters?

We know the answer. The Fox News/Limbaugh/Palin crowd actually used the conduct of a few employees at ACORN to condemn the entire organization even though the evidence was crystal clear that the leadership of ACORN did not condone any of their activity and the group had a history of being arguably the most effective antipoverty organization in America. No "lone wolf" talking points then. If this shooter had been tied to a left organization, the righties would have used the episode to create a reign of terror for progressives. If you have any doubt about my accusation, "check out the right wing reaction" to Obama's speech.

And now let's consider what President Obama and the Democrats did in 2008 when FOX News and friends falsely blamed ACORN for the manufactured specter of voter fraud, and the pimp incident? Did Obama eloquently counsel moderation in tone? Did he make the point that an entire political organization or movement should not be blamed for the bizarre acts of a few? No. Obama and many Democrats in Congress piled on, and without affording ACORN due process, stripped the organization of all federal funds, thereby destroying its reputation.

Yet with regard to the Tucson attack, Obama's instinct is to eloquently, movingly counsel restraint because we cannot know what was in the mind of Tucson shooter. We should not blame the attack on Palin's "crosshairs" map or her repeated calls to "reload." We should not suggest that Sharon Angle's urging of "Second Amendment remedies" to "take out" her Democratic opponents had any bearing on content of the assassin's delusions.

Since there is no evidence that the Jared Loughner was in fact influenced by right wing atmospherics, Obama's analysis will remain correct. And I do not intend to detract from Obama's almost poetic elegies for the Tucson dead.

My issue is this: Why has Obama been so quick to exercise elegant restraint when it comes to protecting the extreme right, but not when it came to protecting the nation's largest anti-poverty group?

In 2008, neither ACORN nor its employees had been found guilty of, or even charged with, casting fraudulent votes. Yet during the presidential campaign, McCain, on national television, warned that the November 4 election would be marred by ACORN's election activities. ACORN, he said, is "perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history." The day after the McCain made his accusations, several ACORN community organizers received death threats, and the antipoverty group's Boston and Seattle offices were vandalized, acts similar to the threats aimed at Giffords and the smashing of her Tuscan office's front door.

At rallies and press events, McCain and Palin, pushed by the conservative base, described ACORN as a "radical" organization. Indeed, throughout the fall presidential campaign, McCain and Palin frequently accused ACORN of "voter fraud." A Palin fund-raising letter stated: "We've always known the Obama-Biden Democrats will do anything to win this November, but we didn't know how far their allies would go. The Obama-supported, far-left group, ACORN, has been accused of voter-registration fraud in a number of battleground states."

The McCain campaign ran a video that claimed Barack Obama once worked for ACORN, repeated the accusation that ACORN was responsible for widespread voter-registration fraud, and falsely accused ACORN of forcing "...banks to issue risky home loans--the same types of loans that caused the financial crisis we're in today." (McCain's anti-ACORN attack video was almost a word-for-word duplication of comments made by the right wing National Review columnist Stanley Kurtz.)

Fox News and conservative public officials, enabled by their wealthy donors, threatened, vilified and sued ACORN's members and distorted the group's record, which directly caused ACORN's offices to be vandalized and its leaders to fear for their safety. The Right destroyed ACORN, with little pushback from liberals and progressives, empowering the Right to drive the limits of tolerable talk with each passing "discussion." Yet Obama failed to urge the nation to exercise restraint to protect reputation of the anti-poverty group, and the safety of its members, mostly African-American.

Will Obama's call for civility restrain the newly elected tea party members of Congress? Will Obama's call for civility rein in the Right, now aided by the bombastic Congressman Darrell Issa, the new chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, whose deceptive reports empowered the Congress to defund ACORN? Issa promises a Congressional investigation every week! Will the Right refrain from intimidating liberals and progressives, especially its most effective leaders and groups, as illegitimate and anti-American, a strategy that has been part of a conservative movement's agenda for decades?

Will their wealthy funders and corporate advertising departments who have paid the salaries of Roger Ailes' staff, right wing magazine writers, talk show hosts, and bloggers, withdraw their funding?

We must condemn the violent rhetoric on TV and radio that can lead to vicious acts by deranged extremists. And denounce corporations and public figures that inflame ordinary people in order to achieve concealed corporate political ends and enhance profits. We need to demand that corporations paying the bills stop feeding the violent rhetoric of the hate media.   Obama needs to promote civility, protect his base, and more.

Some Tea Party and other right wing activists will resort to violence in language and action because they feel their very existence is threatened by people of color who are ascending to power, whether it be Obama in the White House or Latinos demanding citizenship. A populist movement on the left to reduce unemployment, promote good jobs, and rein in the power of large corporations will help. But it will probably take a generational change, driven by race blindness in music, workplace integration, and intermarriage, for the children of the Tea Party members to grow up not fearing people of color.

John Atlas is the author of the new book SEEDS OF CHANGE, The Story of Acorn, America's Most Controversial Anti-Poverty Community Group, available at Amazon.com and The Progressive Book and book stores

Fake ACORN Pimp O'Keefe Tries to Seduce CNN Reporter

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 14:09:59 -0400

James O’Keefe, the conservative activist known for manipulating the mainstream media by making undercover videos that helped destroy the progressive community group ACORN, plotted to humiliate CNN and its investigative journalist Abby Boudreau.

He planned to record a meeting using hidden cameras aboard a floating "palace of pleasure" where he would seduce Boudreau and make sexually suggestive comments, according to CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/29/okeefe.cnn.prank/?hpt=T2

O’Keefe, a convicted federal criminal, tried to lure Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the sessions. CNN documents and interviews yesterday suggest that O'Keefe had secretly, and illegally, taped phone calls he had with Boudreau.

The incident, reported by CNN yesterday, occurred last August, when Boudreau agreed to meet O'Keefe to discuss CNN's request to be present on set for a music video shoot in which O'Keefe stars. Boudreau, an attractive blond reporter, had been attempting to interview O'Keefe as part of an upcoming documentary, “Right on the Edge,” covering activities of young, Rightwing activists like O'Keefe. CNN released the story yesterday to promote its documentary.

"I've been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is," O'Keefe planned to say in his undercover video with Boudreau. "They want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort.... Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. ... This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath."

Here’s a real list of props O’Keefe planned to use during his seduction: condom jar, dildos, music (Alicia Keys, 80s romance songs, thing that are typically James, (avoid Marvin Gaye as too cliché), lube, ceiling mirror, posters and paintings of naked women, playboys and pornographic magazines, candles, Viagra and stamina pills, fuzzy handcuffs, and blindfold.

O'Keefe secretly recorded a call, during which he asked Boudreau to meet with him in person and alone, and emailed it to his partner in the plan, Izzy Santa, and two other colleagues under the heading "Getting Closer." O’Keefe’s scheme failed after Boudreau was tipped off to it just prior to her planned rendezvous with O’Keefe on the boat, by Santa who, says Boudreau, decided the scheme was a immoral.

O'Keefe may have again violated and conspired to violate Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act with his attempt to "punk CNN." O'Keefe violated the very same law in Maryland when he illegally video taped ACORN’s workers, though law enforcement officials have yet to prosecute him for his previous offense.

O'Keefe is currently on probation after pleading guilty to a federal misdemeanor following his scheme in Louisiana earlier this year.

This latest O’Keefe incident should encourage law enforcement officials to indict O’Keefe, and CNN to investigate its own inaccurate and insufficient reporting of the ACORN story.

As of yesterday CNN still can’t get the story correct. Kyra Phillips, a CNN anchor and Boudreau suggested that last year, when O'Keefe taped ACORN, he entered ACORN’s offices pretending to be a pimp. In fact, O'Keefe never posed as a pimp when he talked to ACORN staffers. He presented himself as a friend, or boyfriend, or a colleague of Giles, who was posing as the prostitute. O'Keefe wore a dress shirt and Khakis when he entered ACORN offices, and later spliced in shots of himself wearing the pimp outfit in the final videos to make it appear that he had worn them in the meetings with ACORN. To sensationalize the tape, O'Keefe dressed up in cartoonish pimp garb for the bumpers shown on television. The outlandish costume aimed to make ACORN's African-American intake staff look like buffoons.

As reported in my recent book, SEEDS OF CHANGE, The Story of Acorn, America's Most Controversial Anti-Poverty Community Group, CNN was one of the mainstream medial outlets that repeatedly ran inaccurate stories about ACORN’s voter registration work, and frequently played O’Keefe’s doctored videos smearing ACORN, without ever making a correction or reporting on the important job ACORN had done fighting poverty. By failing to reveal the deception of the ACORN tapes it was complicit in the tragic destruction of America’s most effective anti-poverty organization, responsible for registering millions of young and low-income and minority voters and increasing the nation’s minimum wage.

The media in the US, including CNN, owes ACORN an apology.

The Missing Katrina Story.How Acorn helped save New Orleans

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:08:20 -0400

A week after Katrina hit New Orleans, Federal Government officials and private relief organizations were still discussing how to send aid to the area. ACORN, which had been organizing low-income and working class residents in the city since the 1978, had already moved into action.

Banks were giving their middle-class, mostly white customers ninety days or more to make their payments, but borrowers who had subprime, high-interest loans (like many black homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward) were given only one month. Three weeks after the storm devastated the city, ACORN released a report, "How the sub prime mortgage industry is sandbagging Katrina-affected homeowners," to expose the industry's double standard. After the media publicized the report, ACORN—along with labor unions and consumer groups—demanded meetings with the banks and sub prime lenders and successfully negotiated plans to prevent foreclosures for dozens of homeowners.

With vast parts of the city's low-income neighborhoods devastated, evacuees, many with just the clothes on their backs, fled to 44 different states, but had no way to know the physical and financial condition of their homes and neighborhoods. Glued to the television news, as well as Google maps, cell phones, and newspapers, they tried to discover how much water had flooded their bedrooms and when they could return.

ACORN’s New Orleans office was in disarray, but with chapters in 100 cities across the country, its member’s homes in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Little Rock, Atlanta, Birmingham, and as far away as Seattle, Vancouver, and New York become refuges for the Katrina diaspora.

From temporary headquarters in Baton Rouge, ACORN sent text messages to members with cell phones and quickly received 200 replies. Joe Stafford, twenty-five, a member from the Uptown New Orleans chapter, whose father had died in the floodwaters, fled to Houston with his girlfriend and their two children, ages ten months and two years. They were staying at a two-bedroom apartment with four other families when he received a message from ACORN organizer Steve Bradberry offering relocation aid. Stafford messaged back: “I watched my father die .â€¯.â€¯. and had to leave his body behind. I don’t know where my mother is eitherâ€¯.â€¯.â€¯. I think she got left in New Orleans. I don’t think she left the house, she loved that house, wouldn’t leave it. ACORN helped her get that house. That’s how we joined ACORN, by getting a house.” In a few days he and his family were safely housed with Houston ACORN member Tarsha Jackson.

To plan the city's recovery effort, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin asked some of the region's business, real estate, and legal powerbrokers to form a blue-ribbon task force to make recommendations. The task force, which excluded community groups, emerged with a plan to shrink the city’s population sacrificing the hardest hit neighborhoods to protect upscale areas from future flooding. The plans resembled the 1960s federal urban renewal program, which bulldozed many low-income areas in cities across the country to make room for luxury apartments, office towers, convention centers, highways, and sports complexes. The plan called for restoring its tourist attractions—the port, the hotels, the French Quarter, the Garden District, and the Superdome—but paid little attention to the plight of the poor and working class residents, many of them scattered in cities hours away.

Just as many neighborhood activists had mobilized in the 1960s and 1970s to thwart the urban renewal bulldozer, ACORN launched a plan to save these communities by organizing residents to speak out on their own behalf.

After Nagin announced that the city would demolish 50,000 homes in the low-lying areas, ACORN plastered " NO BULLDOZING" signs on homes, trees, and broken fences all over the Lower Ninth Ward. At one point, ACORN activists chased off a backhoe crew preparing to demolish a home.

ACORN also sued the city to stop the demolition, and in January 2006, it won a court settlement requiring that homeowners be notified and given the opportunity to appeal before any action is taken.

ACORN protests pushed officials from FEMA to act when they refused to turn on the electricity so the homeowners could begin to fix their homes. ACORN’s members lobbied the Small Business Administration to provide money for loans to help owners reopen restaurants and stores.

Beginning in December, ACORN crews and volunteers from across the country began working day and night to repair the homes of families in the threatened areas. ACORN's crews tore down moldy drywall, ripped up flooring, and carted ruined possessions to the curb, and put blue tarping on roofs to prevent further water damage making the houses ready for rebuilding. Relying on volunteers and private funding, ACORN's clean-up/house-gutting program saved more that 1,500 homes.

President Bush had tried to rescind the federal law requiring union-level wages on government-funded rebuilding projects, but ACORN joined with the AFL-CIO and the NAACP to pressure Congress and successfully overturned that decision. The same coalition lobbied local and national officials to make sure that government-funded contractors hired local residents on construction jobs.

Evacuees with low-paying jobs were eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a federal program that provides an income supplement to low-wage workers—from a few hundred dollars to $4,000 a year—to help lift them out of poverty. To obtain the benefit, however, people have to know about the credit, and file a tax form. In February 2006, with funding from the William J. Clinton Foundation, ACORN reached out to Katrina survivors in ten southern cities to provided on-the-spot tax preparation and helped direct displaced residents to other much needed federal and state benefits programs for Katrina survivors.

ACORN sued to ensure that New Orleans' displaced, largely black population would have access to out-of-state polling places, especially in Atlanta and Houston, for the New Orleans’ municipal elections in April and May 2006. After a federal judge rejected ACORN’s demand for satellite voting stations outside New Orleans, ACORN’s organizers (along with other groups, like the Metropolitan Organization, a local the Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate) registered over 20,000 absentee voters helping to elect City Council members sympathetic to ACORN’s agenda. This helped to elect City Council members sympathetic to ACORN’s agenda.

Within three months after the storm, ACORN formed the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association (AKSA), the only national grassroots group that represented the evacuees. AKSA drafted a platform and sent delegations of members to Baton Rouge and Washington to demand bolder and quicker action.

They held public protests and press conferences and engaged in regular negotiations with FEMA officials to ensure that the agency provide disaster housing and other assistance to displaced survivors. Mixing confrontation and collaboration, ACORN's tactics only sometimes proved effective against a slow moving, seemingly uncaring bureaucracy.

ACORN brought together experts—including planners, architects, and engineers from New York’s Pratt Institute, LSU, and Cornell, as well as environmentalists, lawyers, and housing developers, to forge an alternative recovery plan to the city’s powerbrokers. Working with the AKSA, and their allies, they inventoried the Ninth Ward’s businesses, public buildings and parks, schools and social agencies, presented their plans at an unending number of official meetings, but if implemented would give families the opportunity to return home to affordable housing, living wage jobs, and good schools.

ACORN’s pressure, protest and planning work resulted in the city designating its group the city’s official neighborhood-planning team for the Lower Ninth and New Orleans East, two of the poorest neighborhoods and helped implement the plans, including building the first new homes in the Lower Ninth.

Since the 2008 presidential elections, ACORN was hit with another disaster-- a ferocious attack by the Republican Party, Fox News and their business allies. It included false accusations of “voter fraud” and an assault orchestrated by right-wing entrepreneur Andrew Breibart. Using the same tactics to he used to try to defame Shirley Sherrod, Breitbart posted doctored videos on his Big Government website. The infamous doctored "pimp and prostitute" videos appeared to entrap several ACORN staffers in providing advice to promote prostitution.

This was a storm ACORN couldn’t weather. The controversy, reported widely and often mistakenly not only by Fox News, but the New York Times and other mainstream media, led many of ACORN’s one-time allies among funders and Democrats to abandon the group. Although ACORN was subsequently exonerated of any wrongdoing, it was too late. All of ACORN’s local chapters closed their doors.

ACORN was dismantled but its legacy—in New Orleans and elsewhere—continues. One group, called A Community Voice, led by former ACORN leaders Vanessa Gueringer and Gwen Adams, continues ACORN’s mission in New Orleans, regularly confronting local officials over issues like policing and the rebuilding of the Ninth Ward. “We must fight for our $91.4 million that the city got for shuttered schools in our community and spent elsewhere,” said Gueringer at a recent community meeting. “We can't afford to let our children down. They deserve schools in our community that they can attend. It is just wrong. We must continue to fight,” she added. The group is one of at least a dozen former ACORN affiliates that are now independent—but continuing the work of organizing the working poor for power in cities across the country.

A shorter version of this article appeared in this weeks Nation.

Both are based on two chapters of John Atlas’s new book Seeds of Change, The Story of ACORN, America’s Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group, Vanderbilt University Press. Available at Amazon and Vanderbilt University Press.

And your local book stores.

My new book on Acorn, “Seeds of Change” is out

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:07:15 -0400

SEEDS OF CHANGE goes beyond the headlines of the 2008 Presidential campaign and today’s controversies to describe the truth behind ACORN’s massive voter registration drives and how it confronted its internal divisions and a prostitution scandal. Because of its success fighting poverty, I show how show how for 40 years ACORN grew into an organization of 400,000 dues paying members, from all walks of life, but mostly African-American and Hispanic, in 38 states. And then suddenly, in one of the most bizarre and disgraceful incidents in recent political history, a story stranger than fiction, it was destroyed by a ferocious two year attack by the right wing of the Republican Party, its allies and Fox News.

“Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America’s Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group” is now available at http://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Change-Controversial-Antipoverty-Organizing/dp/0826517064 http://www.seedsofchangeacorn.com/, Vanderbilt University Press http://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/books/387/seeds-of-change and book stores everywhere.

A central theme is ACORN’s rocky relationship to Obama, who sought ACORN’s endorsement and its get out the vote efforts during the 2008 election. But when Right-Wing Republicans and Fox News first attacked ACORN, he distanced himself from the group. After ACORN was subsequently exonerated from any misdeeds by several independent investigation, including a recent Government Accountability Organization, the Congressional “watchdog,” Obama and every member of his administration failed to come to ACORN's defense contributing to the decline of his powerful ally.

Obama’s treatment of ACORN becomes a symbol of how he detached his presidency from the progressive base that helped get him elected, and how his administration's fear of Fox News and the right wing echo chamber led to the embarrassing firing of Shirley Sherrod. Also, ACORN was one of the few organizations with the capacity to mobilize people not only to vote in elections but also to help pass reform legislation - a counterpart to the right wing Tea Party. Its absence made it harder for Obama to enact his liberal legislative agenda.

The book, five years in the making, dispels the conservative myth that we can only help the poor through private soup kitchens and charity and the liberal myth that the solution rests simply with more government services. SEEDS OF CHANGE, not only provides the inside story of ACORN’s four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a new way of addressing the issue of poverty and a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy.

Based on my own eyewitness original reporting, as the only journalist to have access to ACORN’s staff and board meetings, this book documents the critical transition from founder Wade Rathke, a white New Orleans radical to Bertha Lewis, a Brooklyn African American leader, raised by a former sharecropper.

I reveal what really happened when the videotapes of two activists, who entered ACORN’s offices, allegedly posing as a pimp and a prostitute seeking advice to set up brothel.

The story begins in the 1970s, when a small group of young men and women, led by a charismatic college dropout, began a quest to help the powerless help themselves. In a tale full of unusual characters and dramatic conflicts, the book follows the ups and downs of ACORN’s organizers and members as they confront big corporations and unresponsive government officials in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Little Rock, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities.

My narrative follows the course of local and national campaigns to organize unions, fight the subprime mortgage crisis, promote living wages for working people, struggle for affordable housing and against gentrification, and help Hurricane Katrina’s survivors return to New Orleans.

ACORN story is still alive.

ACORN’s work is provoking readers of the book, who are active locally or involved in politics to think about change on a national level and ways to organize outside the political parties.

The US Court of Appeals heard arguments recently about overturning the Congressional Act that defunded ACORN.

The federal government watchdog agency reported that ACORN never misused federal funds or engaged in voter fraud.

As I predicted ACORN is re-organizing under different names.

The Shirley Sherrod matter informed the public that the same conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the misleading video excerpts of Sherrod's address, posted the distorted videos about ACORN that led to its demise. The Sherrod incident also raised the question why the Obama administration, the US Congress, many of ACORN’s supporters, as well as editorials in the mainstream media, which were quick to condemn ACORN for its alleged misdeeds, have failed to report or comment on independent investigations that have exonerated the organization.

ACORN Vindicated of Wrongdoing by the Congressional Watchdog

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:06:56 -0400

On Monday, June 14, a preliminary probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)of ACORN has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years.

A review of grants by nine federal agencies found no problems with ACORN's grants. In my book Seeds of Change I document how ACORN, the largest most successful national anti poverty organization in America, was forced to close its door.

The GAO interviewed and obtained documentation from grant program managers and staff from nine agencies; NeighborWorks, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Department of Homeland Security and (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Most of the grants were for housing-related purposes during fiscal years 2005 through 2009.

The GAO, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, is often called the "congressional watchdog." It investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.

Nearly two dozen members of Congress requested an investigation after a series of complaints against ACORN and its affiliates. The complaints included an embezzlement matter, several cases of voter registration fraud, and the release of edited and misleading videotapes, secretly made by conservative activists that appeared to implicate ACORN workers in several offices facilitating prostitution. In fact the staff in most of ACORN's offices turned the pair away, reported the couple to the police, refused to provide them any aid, and in one case tried to convince the phony prostitute to get counseling. In no ACORN office did employees file any paperwork or do anything illegal on the duo's behalf.

But Fox News broadcasted the deceptive tapes nearly around the clock for several days defaming ACORN.

While Republicans in Congress, who for years had accused ACORN of corruption, used the phony tapes to lead an effort to successfully strip the group of federal funding in 2009. Months later the group was exonerated from any wrongdoing by every official and independent investigation.

After the broadcast of the videotapes on Fox and CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post inaccurately reported that the ACORN workers in several offices facilitated prostitution. The papers also reported that O'Keefe was dressed up in a cartoonish pimp garb when he entered the ACORN offices, when he actually wore a dress shirt and slacks and identified himself as a student or friend of the young woman who posed as a prostitute. As a result of the conservative's smear campaign and the media's erroneous reporting of the smears as true, the U. S. Congress defunded ACORN, which led to many of its funders and allies to withdraw their support.

An independent investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney's office and the Attorney General of California vindicated ACORN of any wrongdoing. A federal judge ruled that the law barring the group's receipt of federal funds was unconstitutional. I capture the story of this incident as well as the history ACORN, in my new book, Seeds of Change, The Story of ACORN, America's most controversial anti-poverty community organizing group.

One of the activists, James O'Keefe recently pleaded guilty to charges of entering federal property under false pretenses when he attempted to embarrass Senator Mary Landrieu because of her support for national health care legislation. Acorn has never been convicted of a crime, but the right wing activist, who successfully duped the MSM and defamed Acorn, turns out to be a criminal.