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What is community organizing? What does ACORN actually do?
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"Community organizing". It's a nebulous term, undoubtedly understood by few, and the livelihood of even fewer, although gaining in popularity. In light of the new ACORN scandal, as well as their other scandals, I decided to finally find out what these people--ACORN--actually do, and why they do it. They are a "community organizing" type group, much like what Barack Obama did when he lived in Chicago. His campaign is probably the first time many people, including myself, ever heard of a "community organizer". So what does it all mean?
The term "community organizing" is actually surprisingly self-explanatory, I found out. I used to think it just meant an urban planner, but it's quite different. It means organizing groups of people, ideally an entire community, in such a way that it mobilizes them into a lasting concentration of political power. I think "organizing" could be substituted with "mobilizing" in order to make more sense, although the use of the latter in conjunction with this activity was rejected by what I presume was a pro-community organizing ideologue on Wikipedia (go to their community organizing page and read the part that says "what community organizing is not". That portion sounded suspiciously ideologically-motivated to me).
Interestingly, the same Wikipedia article defined community organizing as "a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together in an organization to act in their shared self-interest." It used even more narrow terms in the next sentence: "Unlike other forms of more consensual 'community building,' community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless." What's interesting is that this openly ideological language, with which I'm sure some community organizers would disagree, was not corrected for us by our pro-C.O. ideologue. If I were a frequent contributor to Wikipedia, I would alter the language to make this form of activism sound less intimidating, because I doubt all community organizers view their practice as a way to support class struggle. From other things I read, it seems that community organizers often are just a privatized form of social workers, by which I mean their main motivation is helping people on a more individual basis than what this Wikipedia article allows. But hey, I'm not a community organizer, so I won't speak to something I barely understand.
ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. This umbrella organization fights predatory lending practices, works to raise wages/encourage fair wages, works for improved education and upkeep of educational facilities, and conducts voter registration drives (which, vote fraud was where their most publicized scandals originated). One ACORN website (http://acorn.org/index.php?id=12439&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=22521&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=12387&cHash=5ef36d5092) encouraged residents of foreclosed homes to use "civil disobedience" against home foreclosures. At the same time, I have heard suspicions that ACORN might be partly to blame for the current economic crisis, as they may have counseled people who wanted to buy a home to get a more expensive mortgage than what they could afford.
Now that you know a little more about what ACORN does, you can decide how you feel about them. I encourage you to do more research. I'll be honest, however, I'm not a fan of ACORN. It's cool that they fight predatory lending, which is an unconscionable practice. I'm sure they accomplish other admirable things for people in need, but I've been suspicious of them since the voter fraud scandals of the past presidential election. Now there is this new scandal. The Census Bureau, known for its own prized sense of neutrality, has ejected ACORN from its operations because of the conduct of a handful of ACORN workers.
I have other suspicions about ACORN, but I hesitate to share them due to the sensitivity of the issues involved. I'll leave this here for now, and I may or may not come back to it. I will say that I am offended that of the major television news networks, only Fox news is touching the videotape scandal so far. CNN is a not-so-trusted name in news for me right now. MSNBC, well, I expected that. They are a blatantly ideological network. So's Fox, but at least Fox still reports on conservative shenanigans that are over the line. But that's another article for another time. The last time I posted about a news network or TV personality, I was harangued with a string of ignorant, yet curiously enraged, responses.
My real question to you, the reader, is this: What could possibly motivate the ACORN workers involved in the present scandal to help a would-be pimp & prostitute smuggle in underage sex slaves from El Salvador? Was this really just the product of the timely agreement of two unscrupulous nonprofit workers? You will have to decide for yourself because, if I get my wish, this story won't be going away any time soon.
