If rightwing operatives succeed in bringing down the community group, Democrats and minorities will have lost a valuable ally
By Brad Friedman
Communism is dead. Al-Qaida isn’t as scary as it used to be. But an American rightwing without a bogeyman to fear can’t long survive. Enter Acorn – the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now.
Finally, something for the Republican party to use to stoke fear among its constituency. Acorn is perfect. The nationwide community group is full of scary black and poor people – who tend to support the Democrats. And, most convenient of all, it registers millions of them, legally, to vote in US elections. Spooky.
Stop Acorn, and you can stop the rise of citizen democracy altogether – you know, “government of the people, by the people, for the people“, as we used to like to say here in the US. Or so the Republicans have convinced themselves…
…But now the vilification of Acorn is in full swing again. A couple of rightwing operatives, acting as a prostitute and her pimp, caught a few, dumb, low-level Acorn employees suggesting ways in which they could get around US law and avoid paying taxes on her “business”. Acorn immediately fired the employees, of course, after the videotapes were made public. But that hasn’t stopped Republican opportunists, led by Fox News, from calling for the entire organisation’s destruction…
…It’s funny how when the American government itself – at its absolute highest-levels – was discovered to have tortured and abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, resulting in actual death, the very same wingnut apologists write it off as the act of a few low-level “bad apples”. No accountability for those who actually instituted the policies.
But when a few actual low-level bad apples – who happen to be African-American, and working for a group fighting for the American Dream for all Americans – commit petty stupidity, the entire organisation must be brought down in order to save the country….
Read the full article here.
For more ACORN defense, visit Mr. Friedman’s blog here.
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