Tell us what you think.
Do you think ACORN is a Good Organization or a Bad Organization to join?

ACORN is an organization that pays its staff the minimum wage and supports the economic interests of low-income people through pushing legislation, community organizing, and the providing of public services.

It is not a perfect organization, but it has done a great deal of good across the nation for many years.

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Improving government for the average citizen


Thanks for electing me Delegate to the Democratic National Convention From the First Congressional District Supporting Barack Obama. Serving as an Obama delegate was a truly inspiring experience.

http://www.rottenacorn.com/

ACORN Is A Bad Seed
Something’s rotten in the state of New Mexico, and Ohio, and Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and Florida, and…

ACORN says it is a community group, but it is really a multi-million-dollar, multinational conglomerate. Its political agenda is driven by a relative handful of anti-corporate activists. ACORN spends millions of dollars to promote economic policies (like raising the minimum wage), but has admitted that it doesn't always want to abide by them. ACORN advocates for workers' rights and runs two unions, but has in the past fought its own employees' efforts to form a union.

ACORN's history makes for pretty interesting reading. The Clinton Administration found that ACORN was misspending government grants designed to help counsel the poor. Although it seeks minimum wage increases in cities and states across the country -- ACORN sued the state of California to get out of paying its own employees the state minimum wage.

ACORN's practices have corrupted our political process as well. It has engaged in questionable election activities for years—stretching back even to the organization's founding years in Arkansas . In recent years, as its political power has increased, so have instances of fraud.

In the past few years, it has been investigated for election fraud in at least a dozen states. Want examples?

In Florida, ACORN employees filed a false voter registration form for 68-year-old former St. Petersburg Democratic mayor Charles Schuh – amazingly, they registered him as a 30-year-old Republican woman. In Ohio , ACORN and its affiliate Project Vote submitted registration cards that had the highest rate of errors for any voter registration group. In Colorado , two ex-ACORN employees were convicted of turning in false registrations. The list goes on.

Just last year, in an effort to put a wage initiative on the ballot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ACORN employee's forged thousands of fraudulent signatures . The group is involved in initiative efforts in a half-dozen states this year. How many thousands of signatures will they forge to forward their agenda?

It's time to send a message to ACORN. It is time to end the corruption.

The people who put up the anti-ACORN website obviously oppose minimum wage increases and the rest of the ACORN agenda.

Certainly, a person who opposes labor unions, higher wages for low income people, greater governmental and private sector services for low income people, greater consumer and economic protections for low income people, etc. would not feel at home as an ACORN member and should not join ACORN.

It is also worth noting that nothing in the anti-ACORN website makes any allegations about any Pennsylvania chapter of ACORN.

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Improving government for the average citizen


Thanks for electing me Delegate to the Democratic National Convention From the First Congressional District Supporting Barack Obama. Serving as an Obama delegate was a truly inspiring experience.

Hmm ... Rep. Mark B. Cohen is behind an organization that encourages people to reflexively and uncritically vote Democrat. Surprise.

(Full disclosure: I am a registered Democrat, but think ACORN, from what I've read, is probably not a good thing.)

Rep. Cohen, I usually find your posts informative and helpful to the community here on PhillyBlog. Unfortunately a post like that is no different then a pro Iraq war advocate telling someone against the occupation that "Saddam was behind 9-11" and "Terrorists hate freedom".

On paper what ACORN stands for is applaudable. The corruption they have committed is anything but.

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Sarah Palin = Thomas Eagleton

The party that values "absintence only" education and rallies against fornication.

Damn, this is a good topic to bring up....i've always wondered about ACORN....i used to get telemarketing calls from them a few years ago....something about them didn't seem to add up....i also seen them investigated on FOX undercover......keep digging up more info.....separate the fact from fiction.....

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It'd be nice to hear from someone who worked directly for them. They seem to stand for good things, but I would tend to group them with groups like PIRG and Grassroots Campaigns, who I am extremely suspect of and would never directly support or work for.

A group incessantly posting on craigslist for "canvassers" or whatever immediately raises a red flag for me. Maybe it's unfair, but even if they do actually pay their people, the high quotas and unnecessarily stressful work environments don't align with progressive politics, imo.

They may do some good work, but treating employees poorly rightfully diminishes the group's standing.

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