Free Republic

This isn't necessarily about welfare. It's about infrastructure - maybe it's sidewalks, transportation, accessibility to after-care, something for the elderly. It's about people that are on the edge. Holding public officials responsible means ensuring they do what they say they will and think about families when they decide how to spend our tax dollars.

The IAF has no ties to ACORN. ACORN has a national agenda it promotes while IAF affiliates are all independent and locally driven. It's a huge difference. Saying they are the same organization or calling them communist or whatever is very misleading.

Look at what other IAF affiliates are doing, and you'll see it's good. Every affiliate contains Catholic parishes and none of them are taking action on issues contrary to Catholic teaching. That's very important.

Here's a recent example: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113931948. This story came out the same day Mark Shannon was cheering the burning of a “ghetto” (his words) apartment complex in Edmond...

Catholics should not be listening to Mark Shannon or aligning themselves with him. He apparently stated on air after hanging up on a priest that the church condoned pedophiles, and last Thursday or Friday he called people receiving welfare “parasites”. (Jesus would've called them human beings.) He also said that children living in homes receiving government assistance should be removed and placed in “orphanages” or up for adoption. Does he not know that 85.5% of Oklahoma City school children live in poverty? (That's according to a 2/2009 report from Sandy Garrett.) So let's get this straight - the government shouldn't be trusted with health care, but we can have them raise people's kids?

And then suggesting that people with-old their tithe - that would be called “extortion” - and the Catechism has a little bit about that, too. He's an embarassment to conservatives like myself.

Oklahomaconservative got it right with “the social unit closest to the problem, and most able to address the problem should be in charge of the problem”. Who's closer to the problem than your church community? That's what the Oklahoma Sponsoring Committee is doing - each church is going to have as many of its members as possible meeting in small groups to talk about pressures their families face. Then, we'll all come together, find a common theme, figure out what we can do and then act. It's called citizenship, and we only intend on tackling LOCAL ISSUES. This isn't like ACORN that (from what I can tell) pushes a national agenda - we only intend on covering local issues that we as Oklahomans decide for ourselves.

It's quite unlikely you'll see us push for more taxes or bigger government because most Oklahomans don't want that.

As far as the IAF is concerned, we've essentially hired them as consultants to train us. The IAF founder, Saul Alinsky, was pretty radical, but he's been dead for 35+ years and the organization was reshaped after his passing. The IAF works with churches all over the U.S. and you'll only find positive stories if you look at their affiliate sites.

I hope this is helpful in explaining what's going on.