White liberals who run the Association of Community Activists for Reform Now (ACORN) have marginalized and exploited their pre-dominantly African-American employees to avoid being questioned about allegations of voter registration fraud and financial mismanagement, according to a former member of the organization.
Instead of protecting its voter registration workers, ACORN leaders foster a climate that encourages fraud, then blame lower level works, said Anita MonCrief, who was with ACORN and its affiliated Project Vote from 2005 to 2008.
The organization is being investigated for voter fraud in at least 14 states, with the most recent charges being filed May 4 in Nevada and on May 7 in Pennsylvania.
MonCrief’s comments came May 14 in a Capitol Hill news conference in which she was joined by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-MN, and Heather Heidelbaugh, vice-president of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA).
The three have joined forces in seeking to block federal funding of ACORN or any of its affiliates. An Examiner investigation recently found at least $53 million in federal funds awarded to ACORN and ACORN affiliates since 1994.
The Examiner also found that ACORN could be eligible for up to $8 billion in federal funding under provisions of President Obama’s $787billion Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and his $3.6 trillion 2010 federal budget.
ACORN leaders encouraged fraud by establishing a quota system for voter registration workers and by threatening to fire those who failed to meet their quotas. The organization also put workers in “over-saturated areas” of key states where fraudulent registrations were produced, MonCrief said.
“There were two groups here. There were convicted criminals, crack heads and people with bad character who were easy to blame,” MonCrief said. “But there was a second group, people who did not have convictions or felony charges before they went to work for ACORN. They certainly didn’t understand the process and certainly didn’t know they were committing crimes.”
ACORN officials would “just throw them under the bus” when allegations of fraudulent registrations were made, a practice MonCrief found “morally repugnant.”
MonCrief’s credibility was challenged during the news conference by an ACORN employee who distributed hand-written questions asking reporters if they knew that she “never worked for ACORN” and that she was “fired by Project Vote.”
The ACORN employee said his organization was not connected with Project Vote, which he said terminated MonCrief for “stealing money from the organization.”
During the news conference, MonCrief acknowledged mis-using an organizational credit card, but claimed it was an ACORN card, not a Project Vote card. She said she used the card for moving expenses because she had to get out of a rat-infested apartment that threatened her baby’s health and had no other means of doing so.
“I used an ACORN credit card for moving expenses and this was a big mistake,” she acknowledged. “At the time, I felt I did not I have any options and I tried to go to my supervisors for help.”
