Remember those independent undercover "journalists" who infiltrated ACORN and exposed for what it really was, a criminal organization intent on promoting prostitution and illegal things of that nature.
Remember our intrepid truth seeker dressed all pimperly and his associate dressed all hookerly, catching an ACORN employee "assisting" them in starting up a prostitution ring. Remember that, remember how damning it was and....
It was basically faked.
An ACORN investigation by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Hershberger found that
The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O'Keefe's and Ms. Giles's comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.
Yes, it is quite shocking that a partisan amateur hack would manipulate the video so that it seemed far more damning that it originally was.
Specifics:
Based on our investigation, we offer the following comments:
- Three of the six videos – Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. – involved only ACORN Housing employees, over which ACORN has no control.
- The released videos offer no evidence of a pattern of illegal conduct by ACORN employees. In fact, out of the three videos involving ACORN employees, at least two involve extenuating circumstances.
- The ACORN employees captured on video were members or part-time staff. They were not organizers or supervisory level employees.
- None of the individuals captured on video consented to being video- or audiotaped, ad four of the states where the videos were recorded appear to prohibit such taping without consent.
- In offices where the videographers spoke with organizers, videos were not released.
- Police reports regarding the video incidents were filed in Philadelphia and San Diego.
- The released videos were edited or manipulated by the videographers and/or individual(s) acting on their behalf.
- There is no evidence that any action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by ACORN employees on behalf of the videographers.
- Experienced forensic investigators would be able to determine the extent to which the released videos have been manipulated to distort, rather than merely shape, the facts and the conversations, as ACORN alleges.
Apparently the guy was not even dressed as a pimp when he went to these offices, he was dressed as a college student, then later footage of him dressed as a stereotypical comical pimp were included. Also it was clear some of the people they were talking to were not well versed in English and simply saying "OK" an d nodding their head.
Now ACORN does not come off unscathed in the report, it rightfully points out that ACORN has considerable organizational issues, partly due to growing so fast.
The serious management challenges detailed in our report are the fault of ACORN’s founder and a cadre of leaders who, in their drive for growth, failed to commit the organization to the basic, appropriate standards of governance and accountability. As a result, ACORN not only fell short of living its principles but also left itself vulnerable to public embarrassment.
This hidden camera controversy is an apt example. While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence
that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers. Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN’s longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision.
The report makes eight specific recommendation s all related to core competencies and shoring up the organization:
- ACORN should return its organizational focus to its core competency – community organizing and citizen engagement empowerment, with related services – and transition away from the provision of services that may be provided more effectively and efficiently by others.
- ACORN should consolidate, simplify and centralize its local and national organizational staffing, monitoring and supervision.
- ACORN should develop a simplified national organization and board structure consisting of just two entities – a 501(c)(3) for charitable, non-profit fundraising, advocacy and education with a majority of independent members, and a 501(c)(4) for support of ACORN community organization and political activity, with at least one-third independent members.
- ACORN should continue to implement the comprehensive internal governance program and strategy, including internal controls, compliance and codes of ethics, designed to educate and guide staff, volunteers and board members, that was recommended and has been adopted within the past year.
- ACORN should recruit an independent ethics officer and/or independent inspector general to oversee and implement the governance and compliance program at the national level, and an independent member of the national board should chair a board-level ethics and governance committee.
- ACORN should hire an appropriately qualified and experienced chief operating and financial officer, comptroller and in-house auditing staff.
- ACORN should continue to strengthen its legal capacity to guide its governance reforms, coordinate the dissolution of all extraneous ACORN organizations and represent the organization’s interests in litigation and investigations.
- ACORN should require all of its state and local affiliates to agree to oversight by the national staff and board, and to adhere to appropriate national standards, including financial audits, training and supervision.
- ACORN should formalize a strong, independent national advisory group and charge it with the responsibility to report within six months, and thereafter annually for two years, to the national board on the progress of the reform action plan.
#1 is the key of course, focusing on your main mission, but hopefully ACORN will make the changes recommended here. I have a lot of experience with non-profits and in reality they can be run in a slipshod manner, for various reasons, they focus a lot more on their programs and less on themselves as an organization, money is reluctantly spent on internal staff and other such things, because maintaining a low overhead is good for gathering donations. But the good thing of course is their dedication to the cause and generally ACORN has been very effective. If they can take this advisement and act on it they will emerge much stronger and much more effective.
As for the investigative "reporters" I am reminded of this clip
Yes, I am shocked that these folks are unethical idiots.
Report (pdf)