Ironic Surrealism v3.0

As many of you are aware ACORN the community organization is back in the news. So I felt this was a good time to re-visit the story behind Barack Obama’s claims he was barely involved with ACORN during his  time as a Chicago community organizer, more specifically as the Executive Director of Project Vote!. First a quote referencing Obama’s campaign strategy. Hard to stomach yes, but enlightening as well. Hope and Change the social movement of the O! An apt description if I ever saw one.

As a presidential candidate, he frequently refers to his community organizing, asking supporters to treat his campaign as a social movement in which he is just “an imperfect vessel of your hopes and dreams.”
- The Nation April 3, 2007

This is a lengthy post, but please bear with me I wanted to gather together all the data I could connecting Obama to ACORN through Project Vote. Trust me it gets better and better as it goes along.

Contrary to his claims. Obama’s website dedicated to fighting the smears, fights the smears with –lies. This is not to say all of the claims on Fight the Smears are incorrect but when it comes to Obama-Project Vote-ACORN I beg to differ with the Obama facts.

• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

• Reality:

ACORN Political Action Committee Endorses Obama -Barack Obama.com
(I have a screenshot)

By Sam Graham-Felsen – Feb 21st, 2008 at 6:36 pm EST
When Obama met with ACORN leaders in November, he reminded them of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as a Project Vote organizer, a nonprofit focused on voter rights and education.

……

I’ve been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when >I ran Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work.”

The MSM doing my work for me, in contradiction of Obama’s ‘Fight the Smears”

Time magazine:

David Leland, national director of Project Vote, a nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)

New York Times – October 20, 2004

Project Vote, the charitable arm of Acorn, will spend at least $16 million in crucial states this year; it spent $1 million in 2000.

New York Times – September 26, 2004

“I get about 30 new voters or changes of address in six hours,” said Ms. Green, who was hired by Project Vote, the nonpartisan arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn. “I used to get 16 in 45 minutes, but now everyone’s registered.”

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 2, 1987

“Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now also has called off its campaign for the city administrator proposal because of the city Board’s commitment to implement the Act 840 plan. ACORN spokesmen said last week that Rev. Helen Fleming of the nonprofit Project Vote organizations at Washington, who came to Little Rock recently to help ACORN with the city administrator campaign, will no longer campaign on the change of government issue but will work with ACORN on other matters.”

Washington Post, February 9, 1984 – “Meanwhile,”

“The Alliance for Justice, a coalition of church, community, labor, women’s and black organiziations, [sic] will hold “Registration Sundays” in 750 churches in 26 cities aimed at registering poor people to vote. The group includes the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the National Congress of Black Churches, Church Women United and Project Vote.

What a coincidence! ACORN.org and Project Vote.org share the same address in both Little Rock Arkansas (Where ACORN began) and Washington DC.

Project Vote
Arkansas Office:
2101 South Main Street
Little Rock, AR  72206
1-800-546-8683

Little Rock ACORN
2101 South Main Street
Little Rock, AR 72206
1-800-546-8683

Project Vote DC
739 8th St SE # 202
Washington, DC 20003-2802
(202) 546-3492

ACORN DC
739 8th St SE
Washington, DC 20003-2802
(202) 547-9292

Hey Obama are Project Vote and ACORN just neighbors like you and Bill Ayers?

I found this on ACORN.org , SEIU and Project Vote–it is a family affair.

ACORN has constantly challenged the traditional notions of what a community organization is, and its family of organizations includes two radio stations, a voter registration network [Project Vote], a housing corporation, and several publications.

(www.seiu100.org and www.seiu880.org are also listed as part of ACORN’s “family of organizations”)
Link at ACORN.org
ACORN.org again lists both SEIU Local’s and Project Vote under “Allied Organizations” here. They are housed in the same building, ACORN refers to Project Vote as –family & allies. Sounds like ACORN and Project share more than a passing acquaintance to me.

Project Vote profile at ACORN.org. Note, Project Vote was founded in 1982. Well before Obama was the Director of Project Vote.

Project Vote is the leading technical assistance and direct service provider to the civic participation community. Since its founding in 1982.

More snippets from both Project Vote and ACORN linking the two of them.

“The work of Project Vote and ACORN continues a tradition of ensuring that all Americans can vote,” [Project Vote Executive Director] Slater said. – Link at Project Vote.org

After this correspondence, ACORN and Project Vote, ACORN voter registration partner, decide they needs [sic] a meeting at a higher level and work to set one up. – Link at ACORN.org

The 2007-2008 election cycle represented a landmark period in Project Vote’s work. Our Voter Registration Program represented the largest voter registration drive in our history, and one of the largest nonprofit, nonpartisan drives ever conducted in the nation; working with our partner ACORN, Project Vote collected over 1.3 million voter registration applications.. – Link at Project Vote.org

Archives:
2003 Project Vote.org

In 1995 and 1996, Project Vote and ACORN, the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, released investigative reports from their joint NVRA Monitoring and Enforcement Project.

1999 Acorn.org

By 1994, ACORN participation helped Project Vote register 147,000 voters in Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

April 1997 Acorn.org

Making “Motor Voter” work

ACORN’s 1996 campaign to implement and enforce the National Voter Registration Act (”Motor Voter”), conducted in cooperation with Project Vote, directly produced 316,217 new low income registered voters through direct action, advocacy and litigation strategies in Illionois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Michigan, ACORN and Project Vote once again beat Governor John Engler and discovery is underway in ACORN’s suit against the City and State of New York over their refusal to offer voter registration in public assistance agencies. A suit against the State of Louisiana over their discriminatory implementation of Motor Voter was filed last month.

March 1998:

Tearing down barriers to voter participation
The good news: ACORN’s four-year campaign to force Pennsylvania to implement the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or “motor voter”) is nearing a successful conclusion. Settlement negotiations with the state have produced a tentative agreement to affirmatively offer every person applying for state social services the opportunity to register to vote. Also, in Michigan, the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Governor Engler’s final appeal of ACORN’s successful lawsuit requiring the state to register its welfare recipients to vote.

The bad news: Just as ACORN’s multi-state implementation and enforcement campaign, conducted in collaboration with HumanSERVE, Project Vote and the League of Women Voters, is getting the scofflaw states to follow the NVRA law,

Next some background of Barack Obama’s history with Project Vote and the connection between Project Vote and ACORN.

Wanted: New Voters (As published at Project Vote.org)
By: CHRISTOPHER HAYES, THE NATION
August 13, 2008

Four years after Jackson’s second run, a voter-registration organization called Project Vote recruited Barack Obama, just out of Harvard Law School, to spearhead another massive registration drive in Illinois. Founded in 1982 by liberal attorney Sandy Newman, Project Vote was conceived as a way to fight back against Reagan-era policies by registering the victims of those policies to vote as they stood in line at social service agencies. The project quickly grew in scale, registering poor and minority voters wherever they could be found. When Newman called Obama in 1992, Obama had just signed a contract for his first book and was hesitant about missing the deadline for his manuscript. “I didn’t make any bones about the fact that this was sixty-hour-a-week work and we paid a pittance,” recalls Newman. But Obama was sold.

……

No group has quite as much experience navigating this treacherous terrain as Project Vote. Over the past two decades Project Vote, along with its frequent partner ACORN, has added several million people to the rolls. (Because of this work, ACORN has become something of a right-wing bogeyman, and its voter-registration efforts are frequently targeted for investigation, even prosecution, by zealous Republican AGs.) Precisely because registration has grown so difficult and complicated, Slater thinks the Obama campaign is going to have a “challenging time” achieving its ambitious registration goals.

Link

More here:

New Voters, New Voices: Record Turnout a Triumph for Democracy, says Project Vote – [Project Vote.org]
November 04, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC – With long lines seen across the country, all indications suggest that America’s voters, as predicted, will shatter previous records and represent the diverse voices of the country’s populace like no election in recent history. Project Vote, in partnership with the community organization ACORN, helped collect over 1.3 million voter registration applications this year, and has worked to protect the rights of low-income and minority voters to register, vote, and have their votes counted. Today Executive Director Michael Slater issued the following statement in response to this historic Election Day turnout:

……

They are people like Sheila Jones from St. Louis, a 57-year-old black woman who never voted before she registered through Project Vote and ACORN’s drive but feels newly empowered because she understands the resources she has available to her. ‘All of the safeguards in place make me feel like my vote will be counted,’ says Jones.

Link

A screen cap I saved last year lost the link.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Illinois Times connecting Obama, Project and ACORN.

itONLINE

Among them is Project Vote, Obama’s employer in 1992. Working in partnership with ACORN, the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, Project Vote orchestrates comprehensive drives targeted in low-income urban communities. Organizers are trained to canvass outside locations where residents generally congregate — grocery stores, bus stops, and religious institutions.

This next bit was taken from Project Vote.org.

Project Vote

Voter Registration Program

Since 1982 Project Vote has helped over six million Americans complete applications to register to vote. Working with our field partner, the community organization ACORN, Project Vote in 2007-2008 conducted the largest and most comprehensive voter registration drive in the history of our two organizations, a 21-state community-based operation that succeeded in collecting over 1.3 million voter registration applications. We estimate that the majority of our applicants were from low- to moderate-income families, 60-70 percent were African-American or Latino, and over half were under the age of 30. Link

Now for the other so called smears.

Note: The above screen cap is the original version before scrub/revision, see below.  Such fine tuned …nuance. That’s O for you.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity. (original version cached 2008 Oct 5 18:29 UTC)

• Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee. (second version cached 2008 Oct 14 04:58 UTC)

This is is ACORN’s attempt at erasing the connection between Obama and ACORN. Why should they be left out from all the fun. That just would not be fair.

The Relationship Between Barack Obama And ACORN
Was Obama a trainer for ACORN?
In the early 1990’s, Obama accepted two invitations to be an unpaid guest speaker at trainings for volunteer community leaders organized by Chicago ACORN.  He never worked for ACORN – Link at Acorn.org

On with the debunking.

As published in “Social Policy”, straight from the mouth of “Toni Foulkes” a Chicago ACORN leader and a member of ACORN’s National Association Board.

Social Policy, a quarterly journal covering community and labor organizing, is now published jointly by the ACORN Institute and AISJ in collaboration with the Organizer’s Forum – Link at ACORN.org

Barack Obama Project Vote and ACORN -Case Study the Barack Obama Campaign -  Social Policy.org

Obama started building the base years before. For instance, ACORN noticed him when he was organizing on the far south side of the city with the Developing Communities Project.He was a very good organizer.When he returned from law school, we asked him to help us with a lawsuit to challenge the state of Illinois’ refusal to abide by the National Voting Rights Act, also known as motor voter. Allied only with the state of Mississippi, Illinois had been refusing to allow mass-based voter registration according to the new law. Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5000 of them).

Since then, we [ACORN] have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus, it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends

This post would not be complete without mention of ACORN Votes’ [ACORN's PAC] endorsement of Barack Obama for Pres.

ACORN E-News – ACORN.org

ACORN’s Political Action Committee Endorses Obama

On Wed., Feb. 20, ACORN Votes endorsed Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. ACORN Votes is the national political action committee [PAC] convened by ACORN leadership.

The endorsement followed an extensive process of interviewing each of the major Democratic candidates.

“We have worked with all the leading candidates in the past,” said Maude Hurd, ACORN National President. “ACORN’s members have deep appreciation and respect for Senators Clinton and Edwards and their work on behalf of our communities. What it came down to was that Senator Obama is the candidate who best understands and can effect change on the issues ACORN cares about like stopping foreclosures, enacting fair and comprehensive immigration reform, and building stronger and safer communities across America.”

Sidebar:

ACORN is a non-profit, non-partisan social justice organization with national headquarters in New York, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.

Non-partisan? –LIE– Choosing between Democrat candidates Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama?

ACORN E-News (cont.) More damning evidence concerning the Obama-ACORN connection.

When Sen. Obama met with ACORN Votes leaders in November, he spoke of his history with ACORN and his beginnings in Illinois as an organizer with Project Vote, a nonprofit organization focused on voter rights and education.

“I come out of a grassroots organizing background,” Obama told members. “That’s what I did for three and half years before I went to law school. The reason I moved to Chicago was to organize. So this is something that I know personally, the work you do and the importance of it.”

Obama continued to work with ACORN after he was elected to state office in Illinois and then to the U.S. Senate.

Alicia Russell of Arizona, ACORN’s western regional representative, said Obama relates to the issues facing low- and moderate-income people. “I think he will commit himself to providing us the necessary path for low-income and moderate-income families to improve their lives,” Russell said. “He’s on the same level as we are, and sees our issues as we do.”

Link

I found this the other night. Interesting…more clues.  What was that Obama said was a “smear”? This — “Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity”

Hmm…not according to Hank De Zutter of Chicago Reader and Madeline Talbott of ACORN. Which backs up what ‘Toni Foulkes’ had claimed above.

What Makes Obama Run? – Chicago Reader
By Hank De Zutter
December 8, 1995

Lawyer, teacher, philanthropist, and author Barack Obama doesn’t need another career. But he’s entering politics to get back to his true passion–community organization.
…
In 1992 Obama took time off to direct Project Vote, the most successful grass-roots voter-registration campaign in recent city history. Credited with helping elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the U.S. Senate, the registration drive, aimed primarily at African-Americans, added an estimated 125,000 voters to the voter rolls–even more than were registered during Harold Washington’s mayoral campaigns. “It’s a power thing,” said the brochures and radio commercials.

……

Another strong supporter of Obama’s work–as an organizer, as a lawyer, and now as a candidate–is Madeline Talbott, lead organizer of the feisty ACORN community organization, a group that’s a thorn in the side of most elected officials. “I can’t repeat what most ACORN members think and say about politicians. But Barack has proven himself among our members. He is committed to organizing, to building a democracy. Above all else, he is a good listener, and we accept and respect him as a kindred spirit, a fellow organizer.”

Obama continues his organizing work largely through classes for future leaders identified by ACORN and the Centers for New Horizons on the south side. Conducting a session in a New Horizons classroom,

Chicago Magazine – Vote of Confidence

January 1993

For the first time in ten years, more than half a million blacks went to the polls in Chicago. And with gubernatorial and mayoral elections coming up in the next two years, it served notice to every¬one from Jim Edgar to Richard M. Daley that an African-American voting bloc would be a force to be reckoned with in those races.

None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization [ACORN]. “It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics,” says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side’s 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives.

At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama.

……

At SEIU, Obama “Rocked The House”

OBAMA: “I’ve spent my entire adult life working with SEIU. I’m not a newcomer to this,” Obama said. “I didn’t suddenly discover SEIU on the campaign trail.

SEIU’s members are temperamentally suited to Obama; he is a longtime friend of Chicago’s SEIU Local 880 and worked closely with the union as an organizer and later as a state legislator.

With the above in mind –check this out (much more at link) :

ACORN founder Wade Rathke referred to super-union SEIU Local 880 as “one of the pillars of the ACORN Family.”

SEIU Local 880, currently representing approximately 28,000 home care workers and day care workers across Illinois, was founded twenty years ago with the active help and assistance of its self-described sister organization, ACORN.

But while many regular citizens are just now beginning to connect the dots, our elected officials have long been aware of ACORN’s influence over SEIU Local 880 in Illinois.

The relationship has always been there for all to see. Just take a look at the email address SEIU Local 880 lists for itself at the top of its homepage: seiu880@acorn.org.

Now for the biggie:

SEIU Local 880 Executive Board

Keith Kelleher, Recording Secretary, has served as the Head Organizer of Local 880 for over 23 years. Prior to coming to Local 880, Keith worked as a community and union organizer.

Growth of a Modern Union Local: A People’s History of  SEIU Local 880
Keith Kelleher Head Organizer SEIU Local 880

ACORN & SEIU under Obama’s Project Vote umbrella…

Carol Moseley Braun was elected to the United States Senate in 1992. The same time Barack Obama was the Director of Project Vote and when Project Vote joined forces with ACORN

BUSTED!

Bonus: The majority –four out of seven (present day as retrieved this morning Sept 18 2009) ‘Project Vote’ board members are directly connected with ‘ACORN’.

Project Vote Board

Our Board

Note: I am only listing the Project Vote Board members who are DIRECTLY involved with ACORN

Donna Massey, President of the Board of Directors, is a life-long resident of Arkansas, residing for the past 20 in Little Rock. An employee at a FedEx shipping center, she is also a member of the Pulaski County Quorum Court and Justice of the Peace for the 6th District. She uses these elected positions to advocate for greater investment in youth programs. A grandmother with four children of her own, she is the Co-Chair of her local ACORN chapter, the Oak Forest Community Organization. She worked her way through her local community college and is currently pursuing an MBA. In her free time she is a singer with the local group “Blue-Eyed Soul”.

Maxine Nelson, Vice-President of the Board, is a registered nurse in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She has over 35 years of experience as a leader for social justice and civil rights in Arkansas and the United States. She has served as a member of the school board and City Board of Directors in Pine Bluff. She serves as Secretary of the national board of directors of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). She is also a long-time board member at KABF radio, a community radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Julie Smith, Secretary of the Board, was a leader in recent efforts to increase Ohio’s minimum wage. A former single mother, like other Project Vote Board Members she has firsthand knowledge of what it takes to motivate people to take action at the polls. In 2006 she trained as a Precinct Voter Action Network Leader, taking responsibility for registering voters on her block and building a list of people committed to voting and moving them to the polls on Election Day. Now a nationally recognized leader on the minimum wage issue, she is also a member of Ohio ACORN’s Board of Directors

Sunday Alabi, Board Treasurer, has been working in community organizing for more than 20 years. For twenty-five years an employee of the University of Minnesota, Mr. Alabi has served as chair and treasurer of his local ACORN chapter, liaison with the ACORN charter school, chair of the political action committee, and has helped train countless community organizers. A naturalized citizen, Mr. Alabi has spent his career as a community activist working on a variety of campaigns, including fighting against predatory lending and helping to start the Minnesota living wage initiative, which became a model for national action on the issue. Mr. Alabi lives in Minnesota.

Link

ACORN and Project Vote thick as thieves… two sides of the same coin.  With Obama (to use his words) “smack dab in the middle”.

Update:

Taxpayer Funded Serve.gov Filtering Activists to ACORN

Update 2:

REDSTATE EXCLUSIVE: A Review of ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis’s Rolodex Suggests Strong White House Ties

————————————————————————-
This post contains content from a previously published article:
Obama’s ACORN Doesn’t Fall Far From The Project Vote Tree
Oct 9, 2008 @ 23:12

Previously:
ACORN’s Extreme Left ‘Social Policy’
Breaking: Roll Call – House Vote to Deny All Funding To ACORN Passes 345-7
Video: Four of the Notorious ‘ACORN Seven’ Explain Why They Voted Against De-Funding ACORN
Video: ACORN San Diego Child Prostitution Smuggling
Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia Jessamy Should Look Before She Leaps.
Senate Passes Amendment to Defund ACORN 83-7 – The ACORN Seven
Child Prostitution Scandal Continues! ACORN Brooklyn NY Caught on Tape Advising a Pimp [video]
Caught on Tape: Baltimore ACORN Enabling Pimp’s and Ho’s [video]
Another ACORN Exposed! D.C. ACORN (also) Enabling Pimp’s and Ho’s [video]
Statement in Regards to FOX News by Margaret Williams Maryland ACORN
Cracking ACORN: Census Bureau Severs Ties

Related docs:
ACORN’s Core: Principles and Foundations of Acorn
Census Bureau Severs Ties With ACORN
ACORN’s Extended Network
Letter sent to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service from Rep. Jon Boehner, Rep. Eric Cantor and Rep. Dave Camp encouraging the IRS to sever all ties with ACORN
ACORN’s Hypocritical House of Cards
ACORN President Maude Hurd received this letter from the Director of the Census.