ACORN Linked To Occupy Wall Street Protest, Says DC Watchdog – OpEd
By Jim Kouri
A famously corrupt leftist community organization with deep ties to President Barack Obama is largely behind the national movement to “end economic segregation” and social injustice in the United States, according to the blog on a Washington, DC-based watchdog group’s web site, .
Best known as Occupy Wall Street, the rowdy protests have received quite a bit of mainstream media coverage around the world despite the relatively low number of participants. Besides New York, disruptive marches have been held in other major U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami, Chicago and Boston and more are scheduled in the coming days, Judicial Watch’s blogger reported Wednesday.
The protests’ goal is to get major banks to stop preying on the poor and people of color, according to the organizer of a Boston offshoot of an Occupy Wall Street rally.
The event, promoted as Take Back Boston, was organized by dozens of local community groups that claim big banks have a pattern of pushing “bad loans on people of color and the poor.” As a result of the “predatory lending,” foreclosures have skyrocketed in urban communities, the organizers say.
Among the Take Back Boston organizers is a spinoff of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Amid a massive fraud scandal and a series of criminal probes, ACORN supposedly dismantled but the reality is that it simply changed its name. In fact, Judicial Watch recently published a special report about the organization’s transformation into various spinoffs and affiliated groups.
In this particular case, ACORN’s Boston office simply rebranded into New England United 4 Justice. Same questionable group with the same general mission and president, but a different name. Headed by Maude Hurd, the former president of ACORN and ACORN Housing, New England United 4 Justice promotes “social justice” for “low and moderate income families.” The group also seeks to educate the general public about social justice issues and the needs of poor and middle class families.
This sort of rebranding has allowed ACORN to skirt a 2009 congressional ban on federal funding, consequence of its many transgressions. A few months ago a Judicial Watch investigation found the Obama Administration gave an ACORN reincarnation called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) a $79,819 grant to “combat housing and lending discrimination.”
“The ACORN-affiliated groups existing today are ACORN in all but name. These groups tend to occupy ACORN’s former offices, are staffed in many cases with former ACORN employees, and remain committed to ACORN’s mission. Overall, Judicial Watch attorneys have documented 17 ACORN-affiliated organizations in the following states/regions: Arizona, Arkansas, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New England, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington,” according to the Judicial Watch investigative report.
