Community groups band together to rally in support of ACORN

A coalition of two dozen community organizers, labor leaders and clergy rallied in Watts on Thursday in support of ACORN, the embattled community organizing group. 

ACORN came under national scrutiny last month when secretly recorded videos were aired in which two conservative activists portraying themselves as a pimp and a prostitute appear to receive advice on tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution from ACORN employees in California, Maryland, New York and Washington.

Some speaking at a news conference that coincided with Thursday's rally described the videos as part of a larger scheme by some conservatives to smear progressive groups across the country.

"It’s a witch hunt after a segment of the progressive populations," Paul Zimmerman, director of the California Assn. of Non-Profit Housing, said in a telephone interview after the news conference. "I have McCarthy-era deja vu."

The Rev. Richard Estrada, an associate pastor at our Our Lady Queen of the Angels/La Placita church, said the attacks on ACORN have made other community organizers fear that “one day they may come after us.”

"We feel there’s something larger going on," he said. "Progressive organizations that are being effective and are working to enable the working poor, the immigrant communities and the gay and lesbian communities are being targeted."

Estrada, an immigrant rights advocate, said he thought ACORN, the Assn. of Community Organizations of Reform Now, had allayed concerns that the problems went beyond individuals and affected the entire organization. "We understand that the employees [who were videotaped] were fired and that there was an audit and an attempt to fix the problems," he said.

Other community leaders who attended the Watts event included Father Greg Boyle, the director of Homeboy Industries, Betty Day, the director of the Watts Gang Task Force, and Maria Elena Durazo, of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. They were joined by members of the Los Angeles office of ACORN.

-- Kate Linthicum

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Comments

[Bill]

Is "progressive" a pseudonym for a person or organization who believes civilization is being advanced by picking someone else's pocket?

[Verballistic]

Anyone who has seen any of those videos knows that ACORN doesn't have a leg to stand on...the ACORN staffer who helped the phony pimp and prostitute also bragged about killing her ex-husband and making it look like self-defense!!

ACORN's lack of a legitimate vetting process has allowed the group to become infested with crooked people and corrupt practices...no amount of politicizing this will obscure the embarrassing reality!!

ACORN is losing its government funding and the group's relationship with the U.S. Census Bureau (for whom I work) has been terminated...the best we can do is learn from their painful mistakes so that future community service organizations can avoid ACORN's excesses!!

[steve rodriguez]

ACORN= Obama

[Julian B Duron]

Any one that drank from the poisoned Kool-Aid that ACORN poured these past years will support the pourers (ACORN). I think it is hilarious that this story is reported as community group’s support of an organization that has so many questionable methods. History will tell of the legality.

[not surprised]

The FBI must create a taskforce to investigate all these so called "non-profit organization". Their CEO are thieves with a permit to rob the taxpayers.

[Sanchez]

Only those that drank from the poisoned Kool-Aid that ACORN poured these past years will support the pourers (ACORN)? Progressive pseudonym? ACORN doesn't have a leg to stand? Thieves with a permit to rob the taxpayers?
We are doing good then!!!! Only five out of thousands? That means that political correctness, haters, racial prejudice, white privilege, shared destiny, color blindness and invisible racism is talking today. We are doing well. Wouldn't be disinterring the past to find who we really are? Let me help those that have no idea of who we are..."most of us came here in chains and most of you came here to escape your chains. Your freedom was our slavery, and therein lies the bitter difference in the way we look at life.
ACORN “DOESN’T HAVE A LEG”, ACORN has thousands of legs marching every day for social justice. Thieves? Well, you can call us “Robin Hood” but we are still good nobody has been taken to jail.Instead we fired the wrongdoers and we will survive because we are volunteers, we don't get any money from your package, we pay our memberships SURPRISE! And I’m so sorry, we only sell ATOLE , CHAMPURRADO, JAMAICA AND ORCHATA, and we donate the money to our cause.
God Bless Americans (from Canada to the pampas Argentina and Chile).Oh,Cuba is also in AMERICA

[Jeff]

I have just cancelled by subscription. A new ACORN underage-hooker-gate video has just come out. The LAT's response? Run an oped by an ACORN consultant that is full of selfserving outright lies, and LAT don't tell the readers about this past work. And now this BS story. What a joke the Times is, no wonder they are sinking faster that even the rest of the print media.

[Verballistic]

MEMO TO SANCHEZ:

I guess you could refer to ACORN as "Robin Hood"...but there are those who consider it more a matter of "robbin' the 'hood"!!

[2X4]

Well as for me I am a citizen of the United States. Acorn is a very crooked organization. They proved that by the video's and by all their campaign fraud. I think they are just out to keep a certain race mired down in self pity. From the day we are born we all have the same rights and pricaledges. Only thing that matters is what you do with them. I am white born to poor whites. I am poor and work hard for any money I have. I have no health care and do not expect anyone to pay for mine either. What is wrong with folks now? Slavery is a long gone terrible thing. If you keep looking back you will end up being a slave to the past. Look forward and better yourself. I think we are a nation of very strong people who have shown our best in the past. I sure hope our best days are to come. Have faith in ourselves and stop asking for what we want. Remember John F Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for the country." These are very wise words that have been forgotten. Long live America and all who live here legally.