ACORN’s Seeds Sprout Up Across the Country

[DonViejo]

The left-wing group crushed by the right is gone, but its members never stopped working. After four years of anonymity, the liberal veterans want conservatives to know they’re back.

In 2010, ACORN, the grassroots organizing group, was reeling from a series of scandals, and with most of its funding pulled, shuttered the last of its remaining offices around the country.

For conservatives, it was a triumph. The newly ascendant right-wing blogosphere caught ACORN reps on tape giving their low-income clients advice on how to engage in tax evasion, human smuggling, and child prostitution (the tapes, it was revealed later were heavily and selectively edited). What’s more, the right shut down an organization that was responsible for one quarter of all new voter registrations around the country, and had pushed for low-income housing and living-wage jobs over the past four decades.

Four years later, it appears as if those shouts of celebration from the likes of Sarah Palin, Andrew Breitbart, and Rush Limbaugh may have been premature. That’s because from Florida to California, dozens of entities have sprung up in the wake of ACORN, many of them with the same leadershipand doing the same work that the group did for 40 years.

“These guys created a bunch of organizing Frankensteins around the country,” said Bertha Lewis, who was the ACORN CEO when the organization folded and who now leads The Black Institute, a think tank dedicated to African-American issues. “I had to dismantle ACORN, but nature abhors a vacuum. What were those former ACORN members to do? They were so angry at what they thought was so bogus and unfair that they said we are not going to go away. We have to reorganize.”

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/13/acorn-s-seeds-sprout-up-across-the-country.html

[House of Roberts]

1. Activists from Acorn and labor unions don't evaporate.

They just channel their energies into new entities, which sometimes work better than the old one.

[global1]

6. Reminds Me About How Elizabeth Warren Became....

A Senator.

[BlueStreak]

2. Lots of irony there

Think you killed the beast? Instead you just set loose 100 ACORNs.

[DetlefK]

3. I thought, they would get work as wardens in the FEMA camps.

I think, it's good to keep the name ACORN around. Remember, the republicans loved the term Obamacare as long as it looked like a train-wreck, now they call it the ACA.

[Sunlei]

5. hehehe, get offered voter reg on Obamacares website :)

[Sunlei]

4. always Rs who don't want every American to vote.

Billions of acorn trees=another R fail

[JHB]

7. Actually, they're not crowing at ACORN's dissolution, they're continuing to harp on it...

...lumping the dozens of replacements as a kind of stealth-ACORN.

They have to keep thumping the "ACORN" name, it's what they've invested with name recognition as the nefarious radical-left Democrat party election stealing apparatus/boogeyman.

[1StrongBlackMan]

8. Very encouraging article ...

But let's not get it twisted, ACORN wasn't "crushed by the right", it was crushed by seating Democrats that tucked tail and hid.

[abq e streeter]

10. THANK YOU; I was becoming rather appalled that this had not been pointed out.

I have seen some signs that perhaps the decades old spinelessness of our party's leadership may finally be coming to an end .Too slowly, but maybe...The abandonment of ACORN was one of the worst examples of this phenomenon in recent memory ,among far too many. It does us no good whatsoever to just blame those mean old republicans for doing things which we (the Democratic establishment) meekly allow them to get away with .

[nashville_brook]

12. +1

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Many times after, the Republicans repeatedly RE-defund ACORN. Plays big with their dummies. nt

[Spitfire of ATJ]

11. This time, call it "Phoenix".

[Hestia]

13. .

[jenmito]

14. Good! The Rs demonize them as if they're still in business anyway, so they

might as well!

[denbot]

15. If you strike me down, I will become more powerful then you can possibly imagine..

[quakerboy]

16. What do you mean?

Real activist groups react differently to the dissolution of organizations they participated in than Astroturf groups when the money behind the scenes stops? Who could have foreseen that?

[freshwest]

17. The mighty oak tree has many children. The source is long lived and not extinquished. n/t

[Cha]

20. Nice Oak, fresh! :)

[freshwest]

21. I love those oak trees. Are there any in Hawaii? n/t

[Cha]

22. I love Oaks, too.. but, my source said there were none

growing in Hawai'i.

No Oak Trees Growing in Hawai'i

However, we do have the mighty Koa!..

The Koa tree is one of the tallest trees in Hawai'i, often reaching several hundred feet in height. The reddish-orange and brown wood is prized for many products and was used by the Hawaiians to build canoes - many of which were built from a single, straight Koa trunk. The trees can reach a diameter of over 10 ft and are resistant to salt water, making them perfect for boat building.

Koa leaves are unusual in that the juvenile plants first leaves look totally different than a mature plant. The top Koa picture on this page shows the typical crescent shape leaves of a mature plant, while the picture just under it shows the leaves of a seedling. You can easily see that the immature leaves are not only different but are also compound leaves while the mature leaves are not compound. The mature Koa leaves are flat and strong. Dry leaves can be very slippery to walk on as they tend to resist water.

Koa Trees



link

[freshwest]

23. Very nice tree! Night! n/t

[NCLefty]

18. !FOX BREAKING NEWS ALERT!

*sirens blaring*

[Cha]

19. ACORN got Breitbarted.

This is Such Good News, DonViejo~

“I had to dismantle ACORN, but nature abhors a vacuum.."

Perhaps nowhere has an ACORN spin-off been as successful as one has in New York City. There, New York Communities for Change, operating out of the same offices that once housed the local ACORN chapter, has led massive rallies for car wash and fast food workers, and played an important role in getting Bill de Blasio elected mayor. Last week, the group took partial credit for steering Melissa Mark Viverito, a former labor organizer turned city councilwoman who once got arrested at Occupy Wall Street into the job of city council speaker, the second-highest ranking elected office in New York City

We're talking Resurgence, here!



Liberals Are Cool