Too dangerous to ignore
This article concludes my study of the Employment Policies Institute’s (EPI) report “Rotten ACORN: America’s Bad Seed.” Click here if you wish to view parts ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR or FIVE of this article series.
We’ve seen that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) speaks out of one side of its mouth about rights of the worker to unionize and earn a living wage. The two-faced organization has very different theories in practice, however. Out of the other side of its mouth comes suppression of all union-like activities by its employees (activities that go against ACORN’s interests) and not only the denial of a living wage, but the denial of minimum wage for its employees. Likely, they also deny easy loans. ACORN boss Wade Rathke is completely unapologetic about this. In fact, he thinks it’s bad business for him to pay employees more, as doing so would “force” him to cut hours and staff.
We also know from past coverage that ACORN has close connections with Martin Eakes and his own empire (Self-Help Credit Union, the Center For Responsible Lending, et al) through the window of the Community Reinvestment Act. If so much money had not already been spent by ACORN, Self-Help and the CRL in lobbying and advertising, one might wonder why the other shoe hasn’t fallen for them. Money has a way of bending the rules us normal Hush Puppies are forced to follow.
Wait, wait, one more thing
Watch your nightly news for more on the ACORN voter fraud scandal. Or better yet, check out a blogger with the inside stuff. I won’t say anything more about that, but I would like to say that ACORN is too dangerous to ignore.
What do I mean by danger? I mean that ACORN places its workers in unsafe conditions, to begin with. According to the EPI, ACORN has expressed a commitment toward ensuring that American workers retain their “fundamental right” to employment “which does not endanger health or safety.” Unfortunately, the rotten nut routinely places its employees in dangerous situations. Female employees have been sexually assaulted and workers who have been forbidden to work in pairs for inner city projects have been robbed at gunpoint. One female ACORN employee who was attacked in the home of a male community member was concerned for both her safety and her job:
The man grabbed my head and kissed me. I pushed him away, contradicting themes dancing in my head. “Protect yourself, get out of here” on the one hand. On the other hand, I needed to get members to join (ACORN). If I didn’t get enough members to join, would I have a job?
Danger to employees, danger to others
That’s a choice that ACORN forced some female employees to make because they refused employees the simple safety precaution of working in pairs. But the danger of ACORN isn’t limited to its employees. They have endangered the health and safety of others as well. According to the EPI, they’ve endangered medical patients. Via Wade Rathke’s union connections (SEIU), ACORN and SEIU fought non-profit hospital labor disagreements in Illinois by busing in “patients” by the vanload simply to harass the healthcare providers on staff in an emergency room. Here’s an account that appeared in Chicago’s The Business Ledger newspaper:
A bus with eight patients and several community organizers, all members of or affiliated with ACORN, pulled up and “demanded” to be seen in Good Samaritan’s ER, according to numerous hospital officials… Lucrecia Balgemann, a Spanish-speaking shift coordinator in the ER the day of the occurrence, said it was clear to her that many of the Spanish-speaking patients were being “coached” by ACORN organizers and were “following a script.”
This must end
This is heinously irresponsible behavior on the part of ACORN. They do not stand for American interests; they support their own at the temple of the almighty dollar. ACORN and associate organizations (Self-Help, Inc. and the Center For Responsible Lending) who implicitly support the rotten nut’s actions against the good people of America should not be allowed to operate as they please in this country. It is simply too dangerous to allow their reign to continue. Wade Rathke and Martin Eakes, for all the good they claim to do, cannot be trusted until they own up to the full measure of their organizations’ misdeeds.
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Who is responsible for making this end?
ACORN is robbing their members, there is no such thing as cancelling the membership, the member can call 100 times to request cancellation and the receiver hungs up and ignores the caller. If the member goes to the local office to sign a cancellation, it goes in file 13. Results: these poor people that are most on fixed income, very ill, seniors; are paying $35.00 to the bank for overdrown checks due to the bank draft of $10.00 + for the ACORN membership they requested to be cancelled and never happened. Low and moderate income people of this country PLEASE WAKE UP AND PUT AN END TO ACORN, they have lied to you, used you and abused you, don’t let them get away, talk to your District Attorney, press charges, you have the right to be heard!