Labor union officials and other liberal activists signed a letter of support for ACORN last year that said “partisan attacks” on the organization “greatly exaggerated” existing defects.
Supporters describe ACORN as an “impressive and vital” organization committed to empowering low income people and other underrepresented groups. The letter acknowledges certain “imperfections” in ACORN’s program, but insists the criticism is unfair.
It reads in part as follows:
“We write in part because ACORN’s work is presently under heavy, mainly partisan, attack. We and ACORN acknowledge that their program has had some imperfections, though these have been greatly exaggerated. We recognize ACORN’s commitment to make the election process clean and fair for all Americans, and to make its own program the best that it can be.”
The letter also credits ACORN for working “to make the election process clean and fair for all Americans.”
Top officers with The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the AFL-CIO, the Communication Workers of America (CWA), the United Federation of Teachers, Common Cause, People for the American Way, the Sierra Club and Families USA are among those who signed.
Activists with the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) are now under investigation for voter registration fraud in at least 14 states. Most recently, federal and state officials moved to arrest 11 ACORN workers in Miami, Florida who allegedly falsified hundreds of voter registration applications in the 2008 elections.
ACORN submitted up to 400,000 applications, out of the 1.3 million it turned in, that were fraudulent, duplicate or incomplete, according to on-going investigations. In the past few days, ACORN employees in Washington D.C., Baltimore and Brooklyn, have also been exposed for telling undercover investigators how they could manipulate the tax code and obtained illegal loans to set up a brothel.
The workers told James O’Keefe, an undercover filmmaker, and his partner Hannah Giles how they could falsify documents and obtain benefits for 13 “very young girls” from El Salvador. ACORN has already fired four of the employees but it claims the tapes were “doctored” and “edited.”
Attacks directed against the “good name” of ACORN amount to no less than an attack “against the democratic process itself,” according to the section of the organization’s web site devoted to supporters.
