Posted on 09/27/2009 1:37:41 PM PDT by South40
NATIONAL CITY — San Diego's bare-bones ACORN office was in full damage-control mode last week, fulfilling dozens of interview requests, reaching out to concerned volunteers and staging a media event to get the word out about how the group helps people.
The tiny office in National City has been spun topsy-turvy by the national scandal over an undercover video showing an ACORN employee giving border-crossing advice to a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute trying to set up a ring of underage call girls.
That prompted local Republican leaders to call for investigations into the office's voter-registration drive from a year ago, which resulted in thousands of problematic forms being thrown out.
“It's been overwhelming,” said David Lagstein, 36, who runs the office, now with just one other full-time employee.
Lagstein is hoping to redirect his energies into the organization's lifeblood: community organizing to help poor and moderate-income families on issues ranging from housing to health care and education.
But it's unclear if that will happen anytime soon. The California attorney general is investigating the office over the undercover video. State and county Republican Party leaders continue their drumbeat for a forensic audit into the voter-registration drive, despite San Diego County supervisors' decision last week to not pursue a county investigation.
“It's an organization that has devolved into a highly partisan, corrupt organization,” said Tony Krvaric, chairman of the San Diego County Republican Party. “They've put into question the integrity of the election in San Diego County.”
For his part, Lagstein considers the developments politically driven and representative of the struggles ACORN offices face across the country.
“The problems that happened in the past couple weeks show we haven't perfected our systems,” Lagstein said. “But our mission is more focused now on fewer issues.”
His office runs on a $207,000 budget this year, funded mostly by foundation grants (58 percent), member dues (25 percent) and federal grants (8 percent). Lagstein said the bigger impact comes from his 5,000 members and volunteers, who make calls, knock on doors and join marches and rallies.
ACORN opened its first office in San Diego in 2000, and its presence eventually grew to seven employees in offices in City Heights and Chula Vista.
It closed those offices and in February moved to National City with a smaller crew. Its current size is in part the result of the lack of a full-time office organizer who can raise funds and hire and train employees. Lagstein, who has worked for ACORN in other offices for 12 years, spends most of his time as the group's California political director.
His office has been focused on several campaigns at the state and local level. He is working with San Diego City Council members to restrict payday lending businesses that charge high fees and interest rates. On a broader stage, Lagstein's office is pushing for legislation that would require homeowners in foreclosure to have an opportunity to sit down with their lender and a mediator to work out an alternative. It's also rallying for more education funding in the state budget. Lagstein estimated that his office organizes two to four events a month, typically walking door-to-door in neighborhoods to publicize the efforts and find supporters, or planning marches or rallies.
The office also provided services to residents needing help with loan modifications, tax returns and food stamp forms. Rafael Lopez, 61, a handyman from Encanto, said ACORN officials in San Diego and Chicago helped reduce his monthly mortgage from $2,400 to $1,600 this year.
“We were ready to leave,” said Lopez, who had stopped paying his mortgage for 11 months after being injured on the job. “Thank God ACORN helped me.”
The type of walk-in services Lopez benefited from have been halted in San Diego and all other ACORN offices, as national leaders have called for an independent investigation into the embarrassing video sting that also snared offices in San Bernardino, Baltimore, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Washington, D.C.
Some observers say it will take time to repair the organization's reputation.
“A nonprofit's reputation is its most valuable asset,” said Pat Libby, director of the Institute for Nonprofit Education and Research at the University of San Diego. “And when that asset is harmed, it takes quite a bit of time for the public to regain confidence in that organization.”
That can affect a group's ability to raise money, carry out programs and have effective partnerships, Libby said.
“We're aware of what's been out there in the news,” said Daniel Zingale, senior vice president of the California Endowment, which provided a $50,000 grant to the San Diego ACORN office in 2003. “We hold our grantees to high standards in terms of our expectations for the use of the funds and their reporting requirements. ACORN has met our standards in the past, and going forward, we will continue to be vigilant.”
Why don't they just run ads showing the Giles/O'Keefe tapes. That's an excellent example of how they "help" people.
Foundation grants. We need to go after them.
hope that includes financial disclosures
If the corruption was limited to one single ACORN office - then one could buy the leftist arguments that this was an “isolated incident”. But considering similar disgusting practices were uncovered from coast-to-coast, that dog don’t fly...
The corruption goes all the way to the top -as in the “Community Organizer In Chief”. Yet the media still remains so amazingly quiet on this.
I guess this post is just further evidence that I am a “racist”...
Any chance to pick up a young whore there? ( sarc.)
I got my welfare check to spend.
...so, you think Obama’s making a Pedophile Czar position?
Yeah. That would be their foot firmly in the back of the urban poor.
ACORN is the Democrat "plantation system" in it's most naked form.
I dunno. There might be some conflict with the existing Pederast Czar position.
What’s the matter ACORN? A new shipment of underage girls needs pimpin’?
Get out of my country, you stinking criminals, and take your crime boss 0bama with you.
We need a full fledged Congressional investigation into how much money ACORN got from the taxpayer, and what it was spent on. If crimes were committed, then we need prosecutions.
ACORN +DNC = FRAUD
David Lagstein needs to go home to PA.
A lot of the vote fraud perpretrated by ACORN and its relatives was known from the two GWB elections. These should have been prosecuted to the max. It shouldn't have taken the drama of a fake hooker camera sting to raise ACORN's profile to an actionable level.
I really don't get why the GOP, under GWB, did not do its best to step on vote fraud when they had the power to do so. A few half-hearted investigations were made, but no one bothered to connect the dots that were obvious to anyone who cared.
ACORN was very active in several key “swing” states where Hussein won by narrow margins.
We tried to point out the 2008 election fraud at the time but ....
I would rather see local churches helping people, and acorn gone.
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