The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is a non-profit (but not federally tax-exempt) organization at the center of a vast web of groups run by long-time anti-corporate activist Wade Rathke and a handful of his closest allies. In total, the Employment Policies Institute has documented more than 75 organizations run by the Rathke/ACORN empire—almost all run out of one office at 1024 Elysian Fields in New Orleans.
Its budget is fed by extracting immense resources from unions, government grants, foundations, its members, and “settlements” with targeted businesses.
The Institute’s program, on the other hand, was intended, first, to provide ACORN with a nonprofit, tax-exempt arm, important for securing foundation grants. Second, it would serve as a means of organizer recruitment through both the training sessions and the intern program. Third, it represented ACORN’s attempt to hegemonize the field of community organizing by offering training in “principles and techniques of community organizing, drawing particularly from the ACORN model of neighborhood-based organizing.”
The Rathke Family Business
ACORN portrays itself as a democratic organization whose decisions are made by its thousands of member families. But history indicates that only one family really controls ACORN: the Rathkes. For all of the members it claims to represent, and for all of the organizations it maintains, ACORN is the family business founded by Wade Rathke and run with help from his wife, his brother, and at least one child.
Beth Butler is both Wade Rathke’s wife and Head Organizer of Louisiana ACORN, where the national organization resides. Rathke has also placed his daughter, whom he called “Organizer 5” in one Internet diary entry, into the crucial campaign to attack Wal-Mart.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that former Arkansas ACORN chair Dorothy Perkins stated that the group was “run like a Jim Jones cult” where all the money ended up under Wade Rathke’s control and was “never seen” by the low-income individuals the organization claims to represent.
Follow The Money (If You Can)The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is registered as a non-profit corporation in Arkansas, which does not require public financial disclosure. According to labor activist and scholar Peter Dreier, ACORN’s annual operating budget is around $30 million.11The New York Timessubsequently reported that the figure is closer to $37.5 million, excluding the non-profit research and housing organizations the group runs.12Even this estimate likely does not include the vast resources of the ACORN-run unions or reflect election-year resources given to its ostensibly non-partisan get-out-the-vote efforts.
ACORN And Elections
The popular perception of ACORN as a community organization attempting to use the political realm to further the interests of its members, and of all low-income individuals, is sharply at odds with the historical record.
In reality, ACORN uses politics as a means of building its own power, often prioritizing organizational strength over achieving the stated goal of a given candidate or ballot initiative campaign.
Long-Term Quest For Political Power
ACORN’s no-holds-barred take on politics originates from its philosophy, which is centered on power. An internal ACORN manual instructed organizers to sign up as many residents as possible because “this is a mass organization directed at political power where might makes right.”
ACORN’S Jen Kern“We would like it to become a fact of political life,” Kern says, “where every year the other side has to contend with a minimum-wage law in some state.”“ This is what moves people to the polls now. This is our gay marriage.”
Claims that political work by ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote are non-partisan strain credibility. When ACORN operated its minimum wage campaign in Florida, lifelong Democrat Joe Johnson resigned his position as campaign boss because, he told reporters, “there were efforts to try to inform people that this was nonpartisan, when, in fact, it was not.”
The New York Times reported the month prior to the 2004 election that Project Vote would spend an estimated $16 million to increase voter turnout, compared to its 2000 total of $1 million.81According to a post-election review by Wade Rathke, ACORN and its subsidiary non-profit Project Vote raised nearly $20 million for the election.
Government Grant Fraud
For decades, ACORN has accepted government grants. But like all other resources it obtains, the group uses the public’s money to build the infrastructure of the highly political group. And like the other areas in which ACORN is involved, it has misused that public money.
Pattern and Practice: Denial
The frequency with which ACORN employees are caught turning in fraudulent or erroneous documents indicates the group cares less about obeying laws than pushing its political agenda. When it is periodically forced to answer allegations of fraud, ACORN downplays the harm of its crimes or shifts blame to supposedly rogue employees, whom the organization then fires.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that former Arkansas ACORN chair Dorothy Perkins “contended Acorn was building up a land portfolio that would translate to money and power for the national organization.” Perkins alleged that money raised by the community group was “never seen” by the low-income individuals it claims to serve, “and that all the money ended up” under Wade Rathke’s control (which she said was “run like a Jim Jones cult”)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/clyne200410311142.asp