Corporate and political officials who defy workplace and community organizers risk being made objects of scorn by bright red-clad protestors in public and private, courtesy of an activist union and its close allies in the nation’s most controversial liberal non-profit advocacy group.
It’s officially called the “Muscle for Money” program within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where it was started, and unofficially by the same name among activists of Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).
ACORN is under investigation in at least 14 states over voter registration fraud allegations stemming from the 2008 presidential campaign. The group endorsed President Barack Obama, despite federal laws barring partisan political activities by tax-exempt groups.
Muscle for Money includes multiple techniques for creating highly aggressive, organized efforts both to pressure businesses and officials to support the activists’ agenda or to discredit and intimidate opponents of their agenda, according to present and former ACORN members.
SEIU has funded Muscle for Money activities in the past and continues to finance corporate shakedown efforts across the country as part of this program. SEIU locals 100 and 880 have been identified as allied organizations on ACORN’s web site.
That information has since been removed from the ACORN web site, but U.S. Department of Labor LM-2 financial disclosure forms
show over $600,000 in transactions between these same locals and ACORN operations in recent years.
Muscle for Money has generated significant opposition within ACORN.
“I don’t mind being up on a soapbox to get someone’s attention but I would much rather talk and negotiate, said Karen Inman, a Minnesota resident and former ACORN national board member. “But I just refuse to go someone’s home, that’s a privacy issue and I think this “Muscle for Money” program really went too far.”
Inman and Marcel Reid, a former board member based in Washington D.C., formed ACORN 8 in October 2008 after the national leadership blocked their lawsuit seeking information about an embezzlement scandal involving top ACORN executives.
The lack of financial transparency and the continued use of Muscle for Money techniques remain top concerns for the whistleblower organization, which has about 30 dues paying members in multiple states, Inman said.
Some of the more prominent Muscle for Money targets to date have included the Carlyle Group, Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, Liberty Tax and Money Mart, according to Anita Moncrief, a former ACORN employee and now an ACORN 8 member.
“The idea is to go to private homes where wives and children are present and stand outside so the family members of a company official could be harassed and subjected to intimidation,” said MonCrief. “Protestors would also go to company functions like banquets where they would be as disruptive as possible.”
ACORN actually had a contract with SEIU to target the Caryle Group, MonCrief said. The most aggressive campaigns directed against this company occurred in the fall of 2007.
“The company was building dental centers in downtown D.C. and SEIU wanted some union arrangement but Carlyle would not back down,” Moncrief said.
Carlyle Group did not respond to an Examiner request for comment on its dealings with SEIU, ACORN and the Muscle for Money program.
The program’s biggest score came against H&R Block, MonCrief said. The company was targeted beginning in January 2004 when ACORN promised demonstrations by its members in front of H&R Block offices protesting “overpriced tax refund loans” in at least 30 cities.
Eventually, H&R Block agreed to pay for the establishment of tax centers for the benefit of ACORN officials and members in exchange for stopping the protests, MonCrief said. H&R Block did not respond to an Examiner request for comment.
Reid, who now chairs ACORN 8, said she became disillusioned with the program when the shakedown campaign targeted Sherwin Williams four years ago. She said an estimated 400 ACORN members dressed in red shirts stormed into a Sherwin Williams meeting held at the Renaissance Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio.
“The people in that room were absolutely terrified and I didn’t realize it was going to be like this,” Reid said. “These tactics were really heavy, many of us became disillusioned. The idea is to isolate the target so they don’t have time to build up sentiment with neighbors and co-workers. We would intrude into a person’s social life.”
