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September 13, 2008
Community organizing has a proud record of success
Jennifer Rubin has a carefully researched piece titled Obama and the Woods Fund ("Woods Hole" ought to be the outfit's name, but I guess that name's already taken). The whole piece is a must-read, I want to focus on a seemingly innocuous (and largely obscure) outfit with the gently nutty name of ACORN: Another recipient of the Woods Fund largesse was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an organization infamous for its left wing agenda. Stanley Kurtz who has researched ACORN's far-left agenda described its "in your face tactics":No doubt Obama is very proud of his role as a "community activist" for ACORN.Just think of Code Pink's well-known operations (threatening to occupy congressional offices, interrupting the testimony of General David Petraeus) and you'll get the idea. Acorn protesters have disrupted Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and Acorn has burst into a closed city council meeting there. Acorn protestors in Baltimore disrupted a bankers' dinner and sent four busloads of profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor's home, terrifying his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally supports Acorn said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line.During Obama's time on the Woods Funds ACORN received grants of $45,000 (2000), $30,000 (2001), $45,000 (2001), $30,000 (2002), and $40,000 (2002) from the Woods Fund. (Obama in the early 1990's helped train ACORN organizers and later served as counsel in 1995 for ACORN in a "motor voter" registration lawsuit.) And ACORN certainly appreciated whatever assistance Obama afforded the radical organization over the years. If ACORN were merely another whiny left-wing group that never did anything, it might be something we could all laugh off as cute. But alas, ACORN is neither cute nor laughable; it is a very determined, very powerful outfit which believes in implementing socialism, and works hard to create the right conditions to make socialism inevitable, and ineradicable. I've complained that the people who want socialism know the dirty little secret that socialism does not work. That this is a feature and not a bug. That problems created by socialism create a demand for socialist solutions, and so on. ACORN, as it happens, spent many years working tirelessly to create the conditions that led to the current mortgage crisis. From "Thank ACORN (And Co) For Mortgage Crisis": At the crisis' core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards - no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant's ability to make payments; no down payment.Etc. Sorry for the long quote, but I think this is important, and it's been (and is being) swept under the rug. In light of my background as a Berkeley Police Review Commisioner, it's not difficult for me why they caved so quickly to the community activists. FEAR. It's a very simple concept. People do not like being intimidated. Nor do they want their work and lives disrupted. If demonstrators show up where they work, they usually cave. And if that doesn't work, there's always the tried-and-true tactic of invading their personal spaces, or even threatening their homes and families. (Something which caused Berkeley's rather decent City Manager to flee to the relative safety of New Mexico.) I cannot overstress the effectiveness of these methods. Read Stanley Kurtz again: Acorn protesters have disrupted Federal Reserve hearings, but mostly deploy their aggressive tactics locally. Chicago is home to one of its strongest chapters, and Acorn has burst into a closed city council meeting there. Acorn protestors in Baltimore disrupted a bankers' dinner and sent four busloads of profanity-screaming protestors against the mayor's home, terrifying his wife and kids. Even a Baltimore city council member who generally supports Acorn said their intimidation tactics had crossed the line.Don't think the executives on the Fed board weren't thinking about their homes and families. Noting Obama's ties to ACORN are so deep that he calls him the "Senator from ACORN," Kurtz recites numbing detail after numbing detail: Important as these questions of funding and partisanship are, the larger point is that Obama's ties to Acorn -- arguably the most politically radical large-scale activist group in the country -- are wide, deep, and longstanding. If Acorn is adept at creating a non-partisan, inside-game veneer for what is in fact an intensely radical, leftist, and politically partisan reality, so is Obama himself. This is hardly a coincidence: Obama helped train Acorn's leaders in how to play this game. For the most part, Obama seems to have favored the political-insider strategy, yet it's clear that he knew how to play the in-your-face "direct action" game as well. And surely during his many years of close association with Acorn, Obama had to know what the group was all about.Of course he knew. Read all about the tireless devotion of Obama to ACORN, and ACORN's tireless devotion to destroying the market economy. They've been successful because they have a wide spectrum of tactics, and they know that when they fail to win by playing fair, intimidation works: Do Atlas and Dreier dismiss Stern's catalogue of Acorn's disruptive and intentionally intimidating tactics as a set of regrettable exceptions to Acorn's rule of civility? Not a chance. Atlas and Dreier are at pains to point out that intimidation works. They proudly reel off the increased memberships that follow in the wake of high-profile disruptions, and clearly imply that the same public officials who object most vociferously to intimidation are the ones most likely to cave as a result. What really upsets Atlas and Dreier is that Stern misses the subtle national hand directing Acorn's various local campaigns. This is radicalism unashamed.Read it all. And weep that someone who's been so tight for so long with such people may well become what Kurtz calls the "President from ACORN." (In light of that damning piece alone, little wonder that Team Obama went after Kurtz with both barrels when he dared to look into the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records.) While it is right to focus on Obama's close association for years with Bill Ayers (and I have, in a number of posts), the ACORN connection is more than enough reason not to vote for the man. For that reason alone, I would never, ever even consider voting for him. He might be likeable and articulate, but his background indicates that he's a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who has not just talked the talk, he's walked the walk. (If he had just talked the talk, I wouldn't be as worried.) There's also this crucial difference between ACORN and Ayers: if the Ayers matter ever heats up, Obama can always through the guy under the bus, per his usual pattern. But there's no way he can or would disavow or repudiate ACORN. It's part of his resume, his political heritage -- his living, breathing legacy. His political family tree (if you will) has strong roots in ACORN. Uprooting or cutting down that kind of heritage would be political suicide. He'll have to live with it. The rest of us will have to live with the mortgage mess. (If only so many people didn't see it as a failure of capitalism....) posted by Eric on 09.13.08 at 10:55 AM
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. keep taking and taking . feeling is most important . call yourself progressive USpace · September 14, 2008 02:51 AM Post a comment
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I'm hoping that this election's October Surprise is many people realizing what a truly sleazy, not only socialist, background Obama has.
If he's elected, our best hope may be that his term is ONLY Carter's second.