A Few Bad Acorns Don't Spoil the Whole Oak Tree

The last I heard, this was still America where you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. If the Acorn employees that were seen on that video (edited by a conservative activist) are guilty of something, then, of course, they need to be fired and; if laws were broken, charged accordingly. But, as of yet, I've not heard of any charges being brought or filed.

Acorn is an organization that concentrates on organizing mainly poor people to better their lives through economic opportunity, community formation, and voting rights. The voting rights seems to be the real problem with the squawking heads on Faux News. Voter fraud is what we keep hearing over and over again - like there is a huge army of illegal voters overrunning our elections. What they are purposefully confusing is the difference between voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud.

If any organization, (for example: Acorn) hired hundreds of people to register voters and they were paid for each name registered, then we can figure that there will probably be a number of false names registered (i.e. Mickey Mouse). However, if Mickey Mouse actually showed up to vote, the chances are slim to none that he would actually be allowed to cast a ballot. Allowing Mickey Mouse to register is voter registration fraud. Allowing him to actually vote is voter fraud.

The Bush administration devoted large sums of money and resources to identify and prosecute cases of voter fraud. Now, looking back on the years 2000-2007 we see that the average number of indictments for those years was about 8 per year. That's not convictions just indictments. And not all those cases of alleged fraud are attributed to Acorn. This is hardly the "stuff the ballot box" story that the Republicans would have us believe.

While Acorn may have a few bad employees, the press have charged, tried, and convicted them in the media based solely on the dissertations and smear campaign of the Right Wingers in our country. What this says to me is that Acorn is empowering and informing the people least likely to be included in the information process by other sources. When those people are empowered and registered to vote and actually do so, they pose a threat to the powers that be because this usually lower income class of people are far less likely to vote for their oppressors. The Right Wingers can't openly attack and keep them at bay (not yet anyway) so they attempt to do it by taking down the agency that has been hugely responsible for activating this realm of Americans. As far as the Right Wingers are concerned, ignorance is bliss. So, this smear campaign is not so much aimed at the very few involved in Acorn that made mistakes but at the agency as a whole. Knowledge is power and they want as few people as possible to have that power.

Don't be misled. Acorn as an organization is not the problem. The problem is that certain political factions in this country would take all funding away from this organization so that those who need them most would have no power to fight their greed and oppression. Now that's something I find unAmerican.