ACORN's Real Crime: Saving New Orleans After Katrina

This is what repug election-frauders and fraidy-cat dems destroyed, not for what ACORN did wrong, but for what it did right.

John Atlas in The Nation:

A week after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans—while government officials and charities were still discussing how to send aid to the area—ACORN was already moving into action. ACORN staffers quickly discovered that many displaced African-American homeowners were in danger of losing their homes. Banks were giving their middle-class, mostly white customers ninety days or more to make their payments, but borrowers who had subprime, high-interest loans (like many black homeowners in the Lower Ninth Ward) were given only one month. Three weeks after the storm, ACORN released a report exposing the industry's double standard and demanded meetings with lenders. Along with labor unions and consumer groups, it successfully negotiated plans to prevent foreclosures for dozens of homeowners. This campaign was only one of many victories, large and small, that ACORN achieved by mobilizing Katrina survivors to confront banks, insurance companies and public officials.

SNIP

Since the 2008 presidential election, ACORN has been the victim of a ferocious attack by the GOP, Fox News and Andrew Breitbart, including false accusations of "voter fraud" and the infamous doctored "pimp and prostitute" videos. This storm ACORN couldn't weather. Although the organization was subsequently exonerated of any wrongdoing, it dissolved itself as funders and Democratic allies abandoned the group. ACORN was dismantled, but its legacy—in New Orleans and elsewhere—continues. One group, A Community Voice, led by former ACORN leaders Vanessa Gueringer and Gwen Adams, continues ACORN's mission in New Orleans, regularly confronting local officials over issues like policing and the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward. The group is one of at least a dozen former ACORN affiliates that are now independent—but continuing the work of organizing the poor for power in cities across the country.

This article is adapted from John Atlas's Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America’s Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group.

Read the whole thing.