What ACORN Can Teach Americans. Even Now. Seriously.

Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by in Uncategorized

There’s a whole lotta wrong in the videos released last week of the ACORN sting operation.  But I noticed one right.

ACORN_chinchilla

Finding out that a low income community organization encourages tax fraud doesn’t bother me.  Half the country would cheat on their taxes if they could and the wealthiest already are. But encouraging underage prostitution?  (“Train them to keep their mouth shut!”) That scene reminded me that unless you’re Jesus, regular exposure to struggle, meanness and exploitation does not ennoble. So even though I want to tear Shira’s gender membership card (and Shira) in half for her treachery, her moral vacuum makes sense.

But why would low income black women toughened in some of the scrappiest hoods around–Baltimore, Brooklyn, DC–trust a professionally dressed white man and his white bottom b*&ch? It didn’t take me long to figure it out.

The ACORN women in Baltimore, DC and Brooklyn didn’t care about race. And they surely didn’t empathize with their gender (sheesh!).  What they identified with, above all else, was their clients’ class.  They remained loyal, if not to a presumedly shared income bracket then to a shared class attitude.  That’s exactly the kind of spirit–minus the criminality–that needs to sweep this country.

The day after Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!”, the Census Bureau reported that 39.8 million Americans are now living in poverty, meaning a ceiling income of $22,000 to feed, house and clothe a family of four. Unemployment hovers around 10 percent but that figure excludes roughly 26 million under-employed workers.  And 46.3 million Americans do not have health insurance.  All this, while Wall Street plots the next get rich scheme and the NYT reports that “… Mr. Obama’s plan to revamp financial rules faces a diminishing political imperative.”

Funny. The stats above sound like a political imperative to me.  And, they sound that way to ACORN, too.

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One Response to “What ACORN Can Teach Americans. Even Now. Seriously.”

  1. merits

    28. Sep, 2009

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