Following calls by a reform group known as the “ACORN 8,” many are rightly worried about the prospect of taxpayer money flowing to the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for the stated purpose of counting Americans in the 2010 U.S. census.
After all, this is the same group that couldn’t count to “1” when registering voters during last year’s election. In Ohio, ACORN’s machine registered one man more than 70 separate times. But the group’s critics don’t face the same mathematical challenges. They have counted to at least 14 – the number of states investigating ACORN for voter registration and potential voter fraud. In the past month alone, the group has been named in complaints by at least two states.
While much criticism is directed at ACORN, though, the problem is more complex. A group intended to better our communities is a thing that should be commended. Unfortunately, a small cadre of powerful but corrupt ACORN executives have warped the organization’s mission into a high-powered, big-money machine that treats its well-intentioned, idealistic staff horribly.
Consider ACORN’s record for its staff: The group has sought minimum wage increases (yay!) but sued to get out of paying its own staff the minimum wage (boo!). ACORN campaigns for seven sick days a year but only gives its staff five.
ACORN short-changed employees, while the founder’s brother embezzled nearly a half-million dollars. ACORN has founded unions but busts unions when its own employees try to organize. And every time the organization’s machine creates voter fraud allegations, the group throws its poorly trained temporary workers under the bus.
Just since starting our “Speaking Truth To Power” campaign to achieve justice for ACORN workers within the last year, I’ve heard firsthand stories of temporary workers – like those who will be hired for the Census project – not getting paid the agreed wage (and some not getting paid at all), being dropped off in locations for 10-14 hours a day with no one answering calls to relieve them or save them from heat exhaustion. Some even say they were misled about why they were gathering signatures.
The plight of ACORN’s full-time staff is hardly better. Most complain of the group’s “crony” management system. And many say they’ve been coerced into lying to ACORN’s low- and moderate-income membership about how their “dues” will be spent.
Meanwhile, most people unfamiliar with ACORN don’t understand how the headline-grabbing fraud keeps happening. Perhaps the least-understood problem is the unofficial “quota” system that ACORN uses for its political canvassers. By encouraging (or, for all intents and purposes, requiring) its foot soldiers to reach a numerical goal for each day, it provides an incentive for corruption during tough times.
In all, the corrupt management of ACORN allegedly forced its part- and full-time employees to stretch or break laws just to meet registration quotas to keep their jobs. That’s because ACORN gets paid by its sponsors and pressures employees to deliver unreasonable goals.
There is no reason to believe the problems of staff mistreatment or systematic fraud will be any different if and when the federal government asks ACORN to take its show on the road to households across the country.
That’s one reason why former ACORN board member Marcel Reid has publicly called for the government to withhold future taxpayer money to the group until a full investigation can be held into the corrupt executive leadership that has led this promising community organization astray.
A note to future ACORN census workers: We are here for you when ACORN management betrays you. To everyone else we say, grab your government by the lapels and demand they help clean up ACORN before sending tens of millions of dollars to an organization that mistreats taxpayers and its own employees alike.
We all want stronger communities. Some of us want a stronger progressive movement. Neither will happen until we clean up ACORN and protect taxpayer money.
Gregory Hall, a former union and ACORN organizer, founded www.SpeakingTruth2Power.org
.
