"! Cracking ACORN

26 TOWNHALL August 2009

F1_ACORN_v3.indd 26 7/10/09 10:45:54 AM Cracking ACORNkicker ! The far-left ACORN, America’s most notorious activist network, is working to bring about radical change by creating chaos.

by Matthew Vadum

In the parallel universe times by ACORN was indicted in June Mart Alliance for Reform Now, which occupied by many left- by a grand jury for fraudulent voting. supports organizing unions in Wal-Mart of-center Americans, the This is signifi cant because ACORN has stores), ACORN Housing Corp. Inc. increasingly controversial long claimed that the illegal casting of (arranges mortgages), Living Wage Association of Community ballots is a myth. The Ohio prosecutor Resource Center (tracks efforts by cities Organizations for Reform Now continues to probe ACORN. and states to raise the minimum wage (ACORN) is a high-minded poor ACORN frequently claims to be a above the federal standard), two “social people’s group similar to crusading victim of GOP persecution but that lie justice” radio stations in and civil rights groups of the 1960s. won’t work this time: All of the offi cials , Project Vote (voter registration They believe ACORN is a public- laying charges in the three states and mobilization), Service Employees spirited organization that registers are Democrats. ACORN also loudly International Union (SEIU) Locals 100 the poor to vote and encourages proclaims its nonpartisan status, but (Arkansas, , Texas) and 880 citizen involvement in morally that’s nonsense. ACORN works for (Illinois, Indiana), Site Fighters (fi ghting uplifting projects and community and endorses only Democrats. During “big box” chains such as Wal-Mart and development. They believe it spurs last year’s primaries, the Obama Target), and American Institute for production of affordable housing, campaign paid $832,598 to Citizens Social Justice (publishes Social Policy protects tenants’ rights, keeps Services Inc., an ACORN affi liate, for magazine with ACORN Institute Inc. unjustly exploited borrowers in get-out-the-vote work. and the Organizers’ Forum). It also their homes and rages against The activities of the ACORN operates a handful of “social justice” predatory lenders. They believe network, a tangled mess of interlocking high schools in and California. it fi ghts for the rights of workers, directorates and upward of 100 affi liated Trying to tell ACORN backers immigrants and utility ratepayers. tax-exempt groups that routinely swap what you really think of the ACORN But it does so much more. seven-fi gure checks, have long cried out network is a surefi re recipe for disaster When the extortion and vote- for a probe under federal racketeering at a fancy Georgetown dinner party. fraud conglomerate ACORN isn’t laws. The network has taken in at least In many cases you can expect to be busing schoolchildren to the nation’s $107 million in donations and $53 vilifi ed as a mean-spirited, anti-social capital to protest proposed tax cuts, million in federal funds since 1993, yet miscreant who hates the poor and fears it’s busy campaigning to expand the it owes millions of dollars in back taxes minority groups. ACORN spokesman size and scope of government, raising and is eligible for up to $8.5 billion in Scott Levenson was booted off Fox the dead from cemeteries and leading federal funding this year. News’ “ Program” for them to the voting booth, and promoting No one knows how big the entire implying during a break that the host the so-called Fairness Doctrine in order ACORN network’s budget is. One of was racist for criticizing ACORN. to bludgeon conservative-dominated talk the reasons is that tracking housing This vitriol is understandable radio. and community development grants because, in the hierarchy of progressive Although congressional Democrats administered by the U.S. Department activist groups, the 39-year-old ACORN refuse to investigate ACORN, so far of Housing and Urban Development sits atop Mount Olympus, unassailable this year alone voter registration fraud (HUD) is diffi cult. HUD often because its motives are viewed as charges have been laid against former distributes the money to states and pure. It may have many fl aws, but ACORN employees in Nevada and localities, which then allot the funds to its admirers, the fact that it is so Pennsylvania. Nevada charges were to many different nonprofi t groups. regularly attacked by conservatives and laid against two former senior ACORN Getting a total fi nancial picture would Republicans means it must be doing executives and against the nonprofi t require enlisting an army of Freedom of something right. entity itself. Information Act requesters. But what gullible liberals such as ACORN is also under investigation The vast ACORN empire includes ACORN donors Roseanne Barr and in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, after a man ACORN Institute Inc. (leadership Barbra Streisand don’t know—or seem who was registered to vote multiple training for activists), W*A*R*N (Wal- unwilling to admit—is that ACORN is a

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Lef!: ACORN founder Wade Rathke was accused by two ACORN national board members of an eight-year-long cover-up of his brother Dale’s embezzlement of almost $1 million from ACORN and a! liated charitable organizations. The two members, who were subsequently kicked o" the national board, are hoping ACORN will be investigated by authorities and subjected to a forensic audit. (AP/Bill Haber) Above: Socialist Princeton professor Cornel West, a onetime Obama campaign advisor, is an avid ACORN supporter who shares the group’s radical progressive worldview that calls for greater worker control over the economy. (AP/Rich Schultz)

huge multi-million dollar international be based on social needs” and that jailed and murdered its opponents and conglomerate that is devoted to “public utilities, railroads, mines, and threatened the . West said undermining democracy and the plantations, and other basic economic he visited Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela “to capitalist system itself. institutions should be in the control of see the democratic awakening taking Liberals also seem blissfully ignorant national, not foreign, agencies.” place.” By “democratic awakening,” of the fact that ACORN was founded not It called for greater worker control West meant the transmogrifi cation of to teach self-reliance but to encourage over the economy and so-called Venezuela into a socialist state. In other poor people to get on welfare. By participatory democracy, but on the far words, if radical leftists don’t end up overloading the system, the strategy Left, the word democracy has a very with the political result they want, it held, radical change would come to different meaning than most Americans can’t possibly be real democracy. West America. assign to it. To many of these radicals, has also, incidentally, been a longtime All of this sounds kind of like a kooky democracy is a code word for socialism. supporter of the ACORN-affi liated conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? Perhaps, To this end, some leftists have tried to re- radical New Party. but unlike most farfetched-sounding brand socialism as economic democracy. To further its war on “the system,” theories it happens to be true. Before the Age of Obama, socialist Hayden and his allies created an Princeton professor Cornel West, an organization called Students for a RADICAL ROOTS ACORN ally and advisor on Obama’s Democratic Society (SDS). Although Let’s go back to the beginning. campaign team, wrote “Democracy SDS became perhaps the preeminent Many radical groups trace their Matters: Winning the Fight Against group of the New Left movement, it lineage to the 1962 Port Huron Imperialism,” which holds that the U.S. failed to achieve its goals and splintered Statement, a manifesto of radical is under the control of racist, patriarchal, into factions. students disillusioned with America. authoritarian fundamentalists. One bloc eventually became The declaration, composed largely by West hails democracy as a concept but the violent Weather Underground radical leftist Tom Hayden, asserted also calls himself a “progressive socialist” Organization. The Weathermen the American system was beyond and has written that “Marxist thought is embraced terror as a tool of redemption and reform, hopelessly an indispensable tradition for freedom socioeconomic and political change mired in racism, militarism and fi ghters.” When West visited Venezuela and became especially enamored of nihilistic materialism. It declared that in 2006, he praised its government, explosives. After getting off criminal “[t]he allocation of resources must which has nationalized industries, charges on a legal technicality, two

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of society is afraid of them.” Instead of using the state to buy off the poor with government handouts, activists should work to undermine the welfare system in an effort to bring about its collapse, which would spark a political and economic crisis that would shake America to its core. As the poor rebelled, then “the rest of society” would give in to their demands, Cloward reasoned. The Cloward-Piven approach was a smashing “success” “The fl ooding succeeded beyond [NWRO head George] Wiley’s wildest dreams,” according to scholar Sol Stern. “From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly fl ush economic times.” An investigator carries a box of evidence seized from the ACORN o! ce in Las Vegas as part of an NWRO campaigned for a guaranteed investigation of voter fraud. (AP/Jae C. Hong) living income, which in 1968 it deemed to be $5,500 per year for every family with four children, according to David of the group’s leaders, would-be to pack the welfare rolls to spread Horowitz’s online encyclopedia of the mass murderers William Ayers and dependency, bankrupt the government Left, DiscoverTheNetworks.org. Bernardine Dohrn, decided to poison and cause uprisings against the capitalist The group’s leader, George Wiley, who the minds of the young by turning system. They outlined plans for a welfare was handpicked by Cloward and Piven, them against the American system. The rights movement in a 1966 Nation article devised the battle cry, “Fifty-fi ve hundred unrepentant totalitarian leftists became titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy or fi ght!” Somehow it became “Sixty-fi ve members of the faculties of, respectively, to End Poverty.” The essay was a runaway hundred or fi ght!” the next year. University of Illinois at Chicago and success on the Left and the magazine sold Wiley’s supporters took over welfare Northwestern University School of Law. an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. offi ces, held sit-ins and harassed social Ayers, who while on the board of the Many Americans, they noted, were workers across America, but the strategy Woods Fund of Chicago helped steer eligible for welfare but were not receiving was particularly successful in New York grants to ACORN, now teaches students it: “The discrepancy is not an accident City where it helped push the Big Apple how to indoctrinate their future pupils. stemming from bureaucratic ineffi ciency; into bankruptcy in 1975. Authorities Dohrn, his wife, teaches students how rather, it is an integral feature of the there caved in to every demand from the to use the law to achieve the left-wing welfare system which, if challenged, group. “By the early 1970s, one person abstraction known as social justice. would precipitate a profound fi nancial was on the welfare rolls in New York City But not all SDS members embraced and political crisis.” This strategy of for every two working in the city’s private violence. Among those who rejected terror orchestrated crisis they proposed was “a economy,” according to Stern. as an instrument of political persuasion massive drive to recruit the poor onto the During his push to overhaul the city’s was ACORN founder Wade Rathke, who welfare rolls” [italics in original]. welfare system in the mid-1990s, then- was an SDS draft resistance organizer. The pair argued that words were not Mayor Rudy Giuliani said New York Rathke also organized for the National enough to spark an American counter- had been a victim of economic sabotage Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), an revolution. Organized mass protests and and blamed Cloward and Piven. “This organization whose members physically in-your-face confrontations would help wasn’t an accident,” Giuliani said in occupied welfare offi ces, intimidating to remove the stigma associated with 1997. “It wasn’t an atmospheric thing, it social workers and demanding every receiving welfare and motivate the poor wasn’t supernatural. This is the result of government welfare dollar that they to rise up and seize what society owed policies and programs designed to have thought the law entitled them to. them. “Advocacy must be supplemented the maximum number of people get on by organized demonstrations to create a welfare.” CRISIS STRATEGY climate of militancy that will overcome ACORN founder Wade Rathke also NWRO followed the Cloward-Piven the invidious and immobilizing attitudes came to believe in “welfare rights.” Strategy, named after famed Marxist which many potential recipients hold Rathke had been a NWRO activist and sociologists Frances Fox Piven and toward being ‘on welfare,’” they wrote. became the protégé of its founder. Richard A. Cloward. They developed In a New York Times interview in In 1970, Rathke created ACORN a model of political and economic 1970, Cloward said that the poor can to carry out the strategy of upheaval subversion that called upon activists only improve their lot when “the rest and the agenda of welfare entitlement.

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ACORN’s “People’s Platform” reads like leftist who wrote “Rules for Radicals,” think Rathke does not.” a kind of “Communist Manifesto” for the seminal how-to guide for “realistic “Alinsky was trying to empower poor America’s community organizers: radicals” that elevated political agitation people to leverage the only thing they “But we have nothing to show for the to an ugly art form. had, which was their sheer numbers. work of our hand, the tax of our labor. As the father of community Alinsky wanted poor people to lift Our patience has been abused; our organizing, Alinsky urged activists themselves out of poverty; Wade needs experience misused. Our silence has to “rub raw the sores of discontent.” poor people to stay in poverty because been seen as support. Our struggle has In his book, he praised Lucifer as the that allows him to stay paternalistic and been ignored. “fi rst radical” who “rebelled against the it allows him to maintain his power over “Enough is enough. We will wait no establishment and did it so effectively people,” Reid said. “Wade wants to help longer for the crumbs at America’s door. that he at least won his own kingdom.” poor people just enough so that they We will not be meek, but mighty. We will Alinsky said his book was “a step are beholden to him but never capable not starve on past promises, but feast on toward a science of revolution.” He of breaking away from him and never future dreams.” acknowledged, “‘The Prince’ was written completely independent.” The platform is alive and well at by Machiavelli for the Haves on how Reid, who lives in Washington, D.C., ACORN, which created a new kind of to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is and Minnesota-based Karen Inman, tax preparation service based on the written for the Have-nots on how to take were booted off the ACORN national assumption that Americans have a it away.” board last fall after they asked too “right” to welfare. Think of it as H&R Alinsky believed that in political many questions. They fi led a lawsuit Block for subversives. The group and combat almost anything goes: “In war in order to see internal fi nancial its allied entities help people claim the end justifi es almost any means.” documents related to ACORN’s eight- the Earned Income Tax Credit, a He wrote, “The practical revolutionary year-long cover-up of the million-dollar embezzlement by Rathke’s brother Dale. The women maintain their expulsion violates the group’s bylaws, which “Some suggest the actions of ACORN ... helped require state chapters to remove those cause the meltdown on Wall Street. A cheeky delegated to sit on the national board. The two have since created “ACORN 8,” conservative might even argue that the crisis on a group that aims to reform ACORN Wall Street is a kind of Reichstag fi re but that and that is pushing for the group to this time the Communists really be investigated by authorities and subjected to a forensic audit. are the arsonists.” AN ACORN INSIDER’S VIEW Those on the Left, and particularly those on the Right, don’t really “refundable” tax credit that is welfare by will understand … [that] in action, one understand the true nature of ACORN another name. The goal is not primarily does not always enjoy the luxury of a or how it does business, according to help Americans in need but to decision that is consistent both with to Reid, who offers a unique window increase governmental burdens. one’s individual conscience and the good into the operations of America’s most Although there is nothing wrong of mankind.” notorious activist network. with registering poor people to vote, It’s unclear if the charismatic Wade Roughly echoing White House chief ACORN’s focus on registering those Rathke, who has on more than one of staff Rahm Emanuel’s infamous dependent on government programs is occasion been accused of being a kind never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste quip constituency-building that is consistent of cult leader, ever met Alinsky. When earlier this year, Reid said, “ACORN with the Cloward-Piven Strategy. Its she was First Lady, Hillary Clinton, prospers from chaos because chaos voter registration drives in Louisiana, who wrote her college thesis on Alinsky, presents an opportunity for change.” for example, have focused on registering pushed Bill Clinton to prioritize She believes ACORN’s ambitious people at government offi ces that deal ACORN’s “Motor Voter” legislation, record of electoral fraud is part of a with welfare, unemployment benefi ts which opened up new opportunities deliberate strategy of misdirection by and food stamps. for electoral fraud. It was the fi rst bill the group’s leadership. President Clinton signed into law. “What everyone calls voter SAUL ALINSKY Marcel Reid, whom ACORN registration fraud is really funder fraud, ACORN and the Weather Underground, management expelled from its national because these foundations pay for people siblings who took different paths to board last fall, says Rathke is not true to to be registered to vote and for every radical change—one through violence the organizing ideals of Alinsky. “There’s one of these people registered who is and terror, the other through protest and defi nitely a difference between Wade-ism not a real person the funders are being politics—both drew inspiration from and Alinskyism,” she said in an interview. defrauded,” she said. Chicago activist Saul Alinsky. He is the “Alinsky respected poor people, but I It was, of course, the great

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“ACORN doesn’t mind being accused of election fraud because it has never attempted to commit election fraud. Fraud allegations are useful because they distract from ACORN’s other, more profi table operations,” she said. Activists from the group “are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party,” according to Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund. Their leaders excel at creating a sense of urgency. “This is why they never call people for actions [i.e. protests, campaigns] more than 48 hours in advance so that there’s always some breathlessness on the other end of the phone,” Reid said. “Sometimes you have people showing up for actions not knowing exactly why they’re there,” she explained. “They know they’re fi ghting some power, but they don’t know which power, because ACORN keeps information on a need- to-know basis right before the action.” “In that aspect they are not different from a military operation, because many soldiers are deployed not knowing where they’re going or why until the last minute,” she said. Some critics of ACORN don’t give its labyrinthine organizational structure the credit it deserves, Reid continued. “They don’t appreciate the prowess that ACORN operates with, that it’s mean and lean, that they keep their operating costs down, and they can strike a number of targets simultaneously with military precision.” Reid also explained how ACORN Chicago activist Saul Alinsky, the father of and author of “Rules for Radicals,” urged activists to “rub raw the sores of discontent.” He praised Lucifer as the “fi rst radical” who targets businesses, which she said “rebelled against the establishment and did it so e! ectively that he at least won his own kingdom.” In follows what’s known as Alinsky’s Alinsky’s world, almost anything was permissible in political combat, as shown by his statement: “The practical revolutionary will understand … [that] in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a Rule 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.” (AP) personalize it, and polarize it.” Alinsky also taught that it is easier to pressure individuals than institutions. Communist revolutionary Vladimir pocketed institutional donors such Reid said before ACORN targets Lenin who once sneered that capitalists as the Marguerite Casey Foundation, a corporation, it fi nds out who on its would “sell us the rope with which to George Soros’ Open Society Institute, board of directors is the weakest. “It’s hang them” and called them “useful and the amazingly easy to fi nd. Go for the idiots” who would gladly work “on the Tides Foundation, and more recently person with the least power and the preparation of their own suicide.” Not the Soros-led Democracy Alliance, a most access to knowledge because surprisingly, ACORN has long relied on club of billionaire leftists devoted to generally corporations treat the lowest- corporate America, especially banks, for turning America into a European-style level employees the worst. You call the money. socialist state. receptionist in the corporation and you Although a major funder, the Catholic Reid has her own theory about start a conversation,” she said. Campaign for Human Development, ACORN and election fraud. “In all corporations the receptionist dropped ACORN last year over fears “It’s not that ACORN actually believes tends to know the most about the related to its partisan political activities, it can infl uence elections by fraud,” corporation and is the least respected, ACORN still can count on deep- said Reid. “It just doesn’t care.” In fact, which means that you can establish

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It even managed to get some inner-city lenders to use “less traditional income sources such as food stamps.” This sort of radical experimentation was encouraged by the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), which helped to change the way U.S. fi nancial institutions operate. Although it didn’t cover all mortgages, CRA opened the door for community organizers to weaken lending standards. ACORN pressed hard for the legislation that punishes banks for, well, being banks and forced them to take on riskier borrowers. To seek a race-based kind of social justice, CRA prohibited banks from restricting loans to more affl uent, creditworthy markets, a business practice now known by the emotive dysphemism “redlining.” The statute gave federal bureaucrats discretionary authority to make trouble for banks Tosha Alberty talks to her bank in front of her foreclosed home in Oakland, Calif., during an ACORN-led rally to try to stop authorities from foreclosing on her home. ACORN has taken radical steps, including that failed to lend enough money to breaking into homes, to attempt to stop foreclosures. (AP/Paul Sakuma) “underserved” minority communities. After CRA took effect, ACORN and groups with similar goals entered the a rapport with them and that will to the very poor who are allowed to shakedown business. At one ACORN eventually give you the information you pay what they can or nothing at all. conference, Jesse Jackson urged an need,” she said. Provisional members are allowed to aggressive approach: “Why did Jesse “Once you have identifi ed the participate in actions but not to vote in James rob banks? Because that’s where weakest board member use Rule 12 internal elections. They are, however, the money was.” and go to their homes and picket “polled” just as other members are. This megaphone-assisted and do actions, use direct action to Polling is an occasional survey by panhandling intensifi ed when the ostracize the person, which softens up ACORN to ascertain membership Clinton administration put the CRA the corporation for negotiations,” she policy priorities and preferences. on steroids. CRA allowed activists to revealed. blackmail lenders into handing out Reid also made the point that FINANCIAL AFFIRMATIVE ACTION mortgages to people with little regard ACORN uses its mortgage operation, ACORN loves to brag about the success for their ability to keep up payments. ACORN Housing, as a recruitment tool. it has enjoyed in redistributing wealth Banks felt the heat from community Borrowers go to ACORN Housing, get and creating market chaos. organizers and CRA examiners and a credit report and then are brought A 1999 pamphlet from ACORN instead of fi ghting, they made loans to a meeting where the lending Housing called the American Dream they shouldn’t have and paid out program is explained. The explanation a sham and bragged about weakening millions of dollars in protection money includes a pitch to join ACORN. While lenders’ underwriting standards. There to ACORN and its brethren. membership is not mandatory for may be isolated “stories of hope and The advent of Mortgage-Backed borrowers, it is strongly encouraged, success” in some communities, but “they Securities (MBSs) by Fannie Mae and Reid said. also belie the supposition that if you Freddie Mac gave banks an added New members pay a $30 initiation simply work hard, sacrifi ce and save, incentive to write risky loans, because fee, which covers membership for you can easily buy a home of they knew they could dump their three months. After that, membership your own.” dubious mortgages onto Fannie and is $10 per month. Members can also The ACORN affi liate also took Freddie investors who counted on a join ACORN’s legally separate political credit for crafting “several innovative government bailout if things got rough. action committee for an extra $5 a strategies” to avoid traditional lending These MBSs—which should have been month. People can also choose to guidelines, which it called unfair called Mortgage Junk Bonds—helped become “associate” ACORN members because they “were geared to middle- to spread the subprime contagion for just $5 a month, but associate class borrowers.” ACORN talked banks across America and the world. members aren’t allowed to run for into using “more fl exible underwriting MBSs received strong bond ratings offi ce within the organization. criteria that take into account the from credit agencies in part because Provisional membership is given realities of lower-income communities.” Fannie and Freddie, which had been

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ordered to place politics over profi t making, had long enjoyed an implied THE TOWNHALL ON... guarantee from Uncle Sam, so investors bought them with confi dence. Some suggest the actions of ACORN ACORN and other Alinsky-inspired organizations that adhere to the Cloward-Piven Strategy helped cause the meltdown on Wall Street. A cheeky conservative might even argue that “ACORN’s foot soldiers, funded the crisis on Wall Street is a kind of with your tax dollars, will scream, Reichstag fi re but that this time the Communists really are the arsonists. pound their fi sts, chain themselves Cheered on by ACORN, the Obama to buildings, padlock the doors and administration in June proposed making the CRA tougher. It was an engage in illegal behavior until they easy sell to President Obama, who get what they want. It’s a recipe for has long been a strong supporter of the law. As an ACORN benefactor, anarchy.” organizer and trainer, Obama helped Michelle Malkin turn up the heat on lenders when Townhall he represented plaintiffs in the 1995 class action lawsuit Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank. The suit demanded the bank’s mortgage lending be “If you swamp small county o! ces with “[The Obama administration] is having apportioned equally among minority a gazillion registrations a month before ACORN o! cially ‘partner’ with the and non-minority applicants. Citibank the election, you cripple the system, Census to help count the number of settled and reportedly took on riskier you make it impossible to do basic Americans in the country. It’s like Santa borrowers. background checks, and you make it trusting a child to tell him how many Economist Stanley Liebowitz easier for all kinds of monkey business times he or she has been good in the wrote that the current mortgage to go on. This is why giving groups like past year.” market debacle is “a direct result of an ACORN quasi-o! cial status is wrong.” Editorial intentional loosening of underwriting Mark Steyn Washington Times standards—done in the name of ending NRO’s The Corner discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.” Political activism drove the banks to make irresponsible decisions, and it has put taxpayers on the hook for bank and housing bailout packages costing potentially trillions of dollars. Reid defends the CRA and argues that despite ACORN’s many fl aws some of the things that it does are laudable. Most grassroots members want to improve America, but she said ACORN’s leadership is dedicated to its agenda, which seldom mirrors the agenda of its membership who are not terribly ideological. “These people are not radical leftists, but the people at the top of ACORN are,” she said. •

Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy.

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