This comment brought me back to an article I read in a local paper earlier. I was particularly struck by the location of the ACORN office.
# Frogg1on 17 Sep 2009 at 1:13 pm
From what I’ve been reading, Big County Blog, has a lot more tapes….and it will expand beyond ACORN.
It seems ACORN and Sieu are tied at the hip also. What’s going on with that Louisiana investigation, anyway?
For this American, it isn’t about Enron or ACORN/SIEU. It is about the corruption in our society and how it has tentacles into our government operations and institutions.
I want it all stopped.
I hope Hannah and James have inspired many.
Local ACORN event called off
Amid media coverage of a scandal on the East Coast, the group decided to postpone a planned forum.
By Noah Haglund and Eric Stevick
Herald Writers
Roger Montgomery was angry after he heard on talk radio Thursday about the forum that community-organizing group ACORN was hosting in Everett.
Like much of the nation, Montgomery has been following news stories about ACORN workers in East Coast offices and elsewhere trying to help people posing as criminals get government benefits. Though he lives in Auburn, he wrote to one of the panelists, state Rep. Mike Sells, D-Everett, to express his frustration.
"Most people are a little tired of the Obama clan already," he wrote Sells, referring to President Barack Obama's past work with ACORN as an attorney and volunteer. "You may want to think of changing parties if you want to get reelected. Thank God this is still a free country where I can voice my concerns about our great country."
That e-mail and others are the reason, local ACORN organizers said, they decided to cancel the event the day it was supposed to happen.
ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been in the national spotlight in the past week because of undercover videos that show its workers in other parts of the country helping people posing as a pimp and a prostitute apply for government benefits.
ACORN has fired employees caught in the videos and has said it is launching an internal investigation.
In the aftermath, the U.S. Senate and House voted to cut federal funding to the group, which has received about $53 million in federal tax money since 1994. The Census Bureau announced last week it was ending its relationship with ACORN, which was to help encourage poor and minority participation in the 2010 Census.
ACORN workers in King County were convicted of committing voter fraud in 2006. Similar accusations were made during last year's presidential election, when ACORN volunteers registered an estimated 1.3 million voters. Eleven ACORN employees in Miami were arrested last week and charged with voter registration fraud.
No such accusations have been made against the local ACORN office, which has been in Snohomish County since 2007, where they share an office with the county's Democratic Party and the Snohomish County Labor Council.
The group helps people fight foreclosures, prepare taxes and helps low- and moderate-income families apply for government benefits.
The local event had been scheduled months ago to happen in downtown Everett on Thursday night. Everett's IBEW Local 191 electrical workers union was a sponsor.
Pamela Skerratt, an unpaid ACORN volunteer from Snohomish, said she was told the forum was canceled after elected leaders who were asked to participate received e-mails from people that made them feel unsafe.
"We look at this as postponement, not a cancellation," Skerratt said. "For their safety, they thought it (the forum) would not be a good thing right now."
She said she also received a couple of e-mails from people upset with ACORN workers in other parts of the country, but they were not threatening. On the other hand, she estimated she received about 75 e-mails from people who were unhappy with the event's cancellation.
ACORN members said they feared too much attention was being paid to their organization and that was detracting from the concerns they wanted to discuss at the forum.
Sells said he received two e-mails, including Montgomery's, that criticized ACORN and his decision to listen to the group. He then asked a member of the group if it planned to have security at the event. There were no such plan in place.
Sells said what bothered him was that the writers assumed he sided with ACORN because he agreed to appear at the forum.
"It's either 'You are with me or against me, and anything you do that doesn't fit with my picture, you are wrong,' " Sells said.
Sells said it's his job to listen to different viewpoints, whether or not he agrees with them.
"The thing that disturbs me the most is that somehow if I listen to a group, I must somehow agree with everything they say," he said. "And that really is wrong. That is unfair and un-American."
Montgomery disagreed. He said attending the event was equivalent to endorsing ACORN.
"I'm concerned about the recent developments at ACORN," he said. "In my opinion, it's a criminal organization, akin to the Mafia."
The problems with the community-organizing group, he said, are a symptom of larger problems created by liberal politicians. He said taxes are crippling his small private-investigation firm, and that he's thinking of moving to more conservative Eastern Washington to ease his tax burden.
The invited panelists at the Everett forum included state lawmakers, a Snohomish County PUD commissioner and Snohomish County Council Chairman Mike Cooper, though some said they could not attend because of scheduling conflicts.
All of the guests were Democrats except for PUD Commissioner Dave Aldrich, who holds a nonpartisan office, and Rep. Kirk Pearson, a Republican from Monroe.
ACORN tends to invite policymakers from urban areas, where most of its members live.
The chairman for the Snohomish County Republican Party said he didn't get an invitation, not did he expect one.
"I certainly wasn't contacted," Jim Kellett said.
With recent national media attention, he said he had been tempted to go.
Kellett agreed with Sells that attending the event didn't amount to endorsing ACORN. Like many Democrats, he lamented the tone of the public discourse.
"I wish people would get to debating the issues civilly," he said. "There's too much name-calling going on."
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465 or nhaglund@heraldnet.com. |
