The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States and internationally that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. At its peak ACORN had over 500,000 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.
en.wikipedia.org/…
Social issues like raising the minimum wage, ending predatory lending and access to affordable housing, goals of ACORN, unacceptable to the oligarchy.
After all, ACORN was too successful in democratic people stuff like registering voters — and it had to be taken down. Enter faux journalist James O’Keefe (and ALEC, well-financed adopted child of Charles and David Koch):
ACORN . . . was a target of O'Keefe's so-called "investigative journalism" in large part because it was also highly effective at registering members of poor and minority communities to vote -- voters unlikely to embrace the GOP agenda. ACORN collected 1.3 million voter registration forms in 21 states prior to the 2008 election. A handful of irregularities with voter registration led to charges of election-stealing voter fraud. John McCain, for instance, accused ACORN of "massive voter fraud... that would destroy the fabric of democracy" -- a statement that factcheck.org called "breathtakingly inaccurate."
The 2009 ACORN videos helped O'Keefe rise to fame (or perhaps infamy), and was part of a coordinated right-wing assault that eventually resulted in Congressional Republicans introducing legislation to cut funding for the organization and ACORN going bankrupt. Despite being vindicated by attorneys general in several states, and a report from the Government Accountability Office finding that ACORN did not misuse any federal money, Republicans were successful in cutting off an important funding stream and the organization closed its doors in 2010. . . . O'Keefe's videos were published in 2009, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) joined the right-wing spin machine in attacking ACORN, featuring an initiative entitled "Cracking ACORN" on its website.
www.prwatch.org/…