Jono Shaffer is a 20-year union organizer and was the lead organizer in the “Justice for Janitors” campaign in Los Angeles.
Late last week, the United States Congress unconstitutionally voted to bar ACORN from ever receiving federal funds of any kind in the future. The U.S. Senate did a similar thing. While some of the things that have come out about problems inside ACORN are troubling and in the words of many ACORN leaders despicable and unacceptable, the move by the US Congress is horrifying.
The wholesale removal of progressives and the squashing of progressive ideas from the labor movement, industry, politics, education and virtually all mainstream institutions of American society that occurred as a result of McCarthyism crippled this country and began the spiral that has left this country in the horrendous condition we are in today. This attack on ACORN and the witch hunt against progressives like Van Jones is a return to those destructive times except that this time democrats are in power. It must be stopped.
Below is the list of California Democrats who voted in favor of barring ACORN. I encourage you to denounce their cowardly actions. Just as in the past, first they come for one and if we don’t unite in their defense, they will come for all of us eventually.
–Jono
California Democrats who Voted to Defund ACORN: Baca; Berman; Capps; Cardoza; Chu; Davis; Eshoo; Farr; Harman; Lofgren, Zoe; Matsui; McNerney; Miller, George; Napolitano; Richardson; Sanchez, Loretta; Schiff; Speier; Thompson
Dear California Democratic Congresspeople,
I am a lifelong Democrat and California resident who has walked literally hundreds of precincts to help elect thoughtful Democrats to office at the local, state and federal levels. I have worked as a union organizer for SEIU for more than two decades and as part of my work, I have voluntarily helped direct precinct operations and recruited hundreds of members to work on campaigns for a number of you in the Southern California area.
Today, I am writing to denounce your cowardly, unconstitutional and immoral decision to vote in favor of the motion intending to bar ACORN from receiving federal funds in the future. Your vote contradicts some of the most fundamental principles of our country and sends a message that will serve to squash open discourse and freedom of association in the same despicable way that the acts of the House Un-American Activities Committee led by Joseph McCarthy did in the 1950s.
There is no question that some of the things that have come out about actions taken by a small number of ACORN staff are quite troubling. In fact, the leadership of ACORN itself has been among the most vocal critics of those actions and they have moved swiftly and forcefully to deal with the problems when they were known.
Your vote in favor of the “De-Fund ACORN Act”, however, is indefensible. No one can deny that there has been a concerted effort by the Republican Party and the conservative right to destroy the work of progressive organizations and activists who have helped turn the political tide in this country over the past five years. That effort is attempting to derail essential health care reform, financial industry reform, labor law reform and continue the unacceptable status quo that has put our country in the worst condition it has faced in my lifetime. Your vote is a vote in support of that effort and I am appalled by your decision.
I demand that you publicly rescind your vote and apologize for being complicit in any way with the witch hunt that has been fostered by the Republican Party and the conservative right.
You should be ashamed of yourselves.
Sincerely,
Jono Shaffer
…wants to follow around a bunch of Mormons until they do something offensive and then get Congress to pass a “De-fund Mormon Faith-Based Aid Act.”
Oh, wait, that would never work.
ACORN didn’t help matters much when they demanded the right to be exempt from labor laws and wanted to pay people a below poverty level non-minimum wage, and spent thousands of dollars in legal fees fighting like hell for the right to treat their own workers like shit.
ACORN is not Satan’s army as the right would have us believe, but they are no angels and I’ve seen enough of their shenanigans (including a massive embezzlement by the founder’s brother which they tried to gloss over) to think that they needed to go back to their roots in the anti poverty movement, instead of trying to be the left wing activist version of Wal Mart.
till the Republicans brought them up, so I can’t say I’m surprised Democrats voted the way they did.
And quite honestly, they’re not worth our time as a party fighting to protect them. The brand is tainted. Let the people committed to the good work of this group reform under a new name, and move on.
I am one of those who has been puzzled by ACORN and the way the people are so stridently against them (like the Beck-ers) or for them.
The truth that I have seen is that, like many other organizations, the requirement to raise money, get contributions and keep themselves afloat has led ACORN to sell out in many way.
They don’t have the staff or the controls to be able to police what individual activists do. But the seed is planted at the top where even Bertha Lewis makes sweetheart deals with developers like Bruce Ratner that ruin neighborhoods, raid the public coffers using tax money and eminent domain declarations to fund private development for mega-rich athletic team owners (NY Nets).
I tend to agree with the idea that those interested in continuing the good things that ACORN has done should give the place a good house cleaning, starting with Lewis and replacing them with someone who knows how to run an organization larger than a community center.