What To Do About Acorn?

Acorn, the grass-root group organization that helps poor people register to vote and to find housing, has been caught expanding their mission. Several employees were caught on tape as they gave advice on setting up a brothel.

It was incredibly stupid.

Ta-Nehisis Coates writes that as much as we appreciate the great work that this group does, we can't condone their actions.

I am willing to be wrong on this one, but it's very hard to see how that sort of sloppiness aids poor people or progressives. It's equally hard for me to be mad at James O'Keefe. Dude is doing his job. We must do ours. Pointing out the dastardly tactics employed by our adversaries doesn't alter that reality.

While this incident smacks of entrapment, Ta-Nehisis is totally right. We have to clean up our ranks.

Look, Acorn is a great group for the most part. They are filling a huge void by working with people that government and society has abandoned. It is absurd that this one organization should discredit all progressives. And every huge organization will have its bad seeds. It's worth noting that one of the employees in the video looks horrified and is covering her mouth through the entire conversation. This was clearly something that didn't happen every day. Still, we have condemn this insanity.

Actually, I blame the foundation world. Money is routinely given out to the same old groups for decades with little accountability or review. Everybody is friends with each, and their leadership is entrenched. If there was more competition for resources, perhaps these groups would supervise their staff more vigilantly.

Comments

[MH]

While this incident smacks of entrapment...

This doesn't just smack of entrapment. This is to entrapment what the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is to art. Whatever you think of their targets, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles did brilliant work.

[Amy P]

Maybe one problem is that the high-poverty, low-education world that Acorn works in is one that the funders don't want to touch with a ten-foot-pole. So money flows to ACORN without adequate oversight. With regard to helping poor people register to vote and find housing, don't forget that those were both very problematic areas in 2008. ACORN has long been notorious for hiring workers that produce reams of bogus registrations. I don't know the exact details of ACORN's involvement in housing, but for now, I have to say that in the wake of the mortgage meltdown, "helping poor people get housing" gets an automatic red flag. Both housing and ACORN's role in giving tax advice are two areas where I'm hoping for more O'Keefe videos. He's already had one where the tax advice was to put money in a tin can and bury it in the back yard, but it may be possible to show that that was a pattern. There's some stuff on ACORN's so-called "Muscle for Money" activities here:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/EXAMINER-SPECIAL-REPORT-ACORNs-Muscle-for-Money-does-the-bidding-of-SEIU--50090352.html
tax advice.

Back during the 2008 election, a lot of people wondered innocently why on earth "community organizer" was a dirty word. Well, this is why. For background, check out Tom Wolfe's delightful "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers." It's from 1970. It opens like this: "Going downtown to mau-mau the bureaucrats got to be the routine practice in San Francisco. The poverty program encouraged you to go in for mau-mauing. They wouldn't have known what to do without it." We skip down a bit. "They didn't know where to look. They didn't even known who to ask. So what could they do? Well...they used the Ethnic Catering Service...right...They sat back and waited for you to come rolling in with your certified angry militants, your guaranteed frustrated ghetto youth, looking like a bunch of wild men. Then you had your test confrontation." Skip. "They knew you were the right studs to give the poverty grants and community organizing jobs to. Otherwise they wouldn't know."

Plus que change. ACORN was funded in 1970, too.

[Amy P]

Sorry. "ACORN was founded in 1970," not funded.

[MH]

Anyway, whether is is good or bad for foundation governance, I don't know. My suspicious is good, since boards and funders will pay more attention, at least briefly. I guess what I admire is the "Borat meets 60 Minutes" aspect of the whole thing.