ACORN Stays the Course

The Bush administration’s hit job didn’t work. Despite all the Republican efforts to stop the liberal grass-roots organization ACORN, its workers continue to trudge the streets of urban America, signing up voters in places where the Bush people never venture.

The Republicans were never interested in ACORN’s goal of expanding the vote among the economically disadvantaged. Instead, the GOP wants to prevent the poor, especially African-Americans and Latinos, from registering or voting. That’s the Republican way. They know how unlikely it would be for these people to vote Republican.

That is why Republican officials demanded voter fraud prosecutions from U.S. attorneys in states where ACORN registered enough voters to worry the Republicans. Two of the U.S. attorneys found no grounds for prosecution and became part of the eight fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

I wondered what impact all this would have on ACORN.

Did Gonzales slow you down? I asked. “No,” said Alvivon “Bon Bon” Hurd, an ACORN volunteer. “It just makes us stronger.”

Hurd is an African-American woman who lives in the Pico Gardens housing project in Boyle Heights, a working-class, largely Latino section of Los Angeles east of the corporate high-rises and the new lofts of downtown.

I talked to her and Peter Kuhns, a staff organizer who was recruited by ACORN when he was a student at Pomona College.

Wouldn't it be neat to see the poor and disadvantaged turning out in DROVES to vote the Republicans out of office in 2008...from governorships to the White House? It could be done...but then I think of the Democrats and how they've behaved since they were voted into a Congressional majority and then I wonder if it would really make a difference.....

Thank the creator for grass roots organizers that see the value that each person's vote really has. It is the one thing that makes us all equal- one vote. You can counter any rich person's vote many times over- IF you vote!!! There really isn't another defining moment when people stand shoulder to shoulder equal in power- if it weren't for those damn Diebold machines!!

I like that idea of course. I guess we have to inform them that their vote means the power to change if they do it together. Someone mentioned that we should vote out all the tenured incumbents that voted for the war and vote for the best candidate in each district that meets the criteria the poor have selected as "the right stuff". We could force the change required in this country that way. What person wouldn't be beholding to those that elected them in? Only a one term fool that is only in it for the money would try that. At some point there may be so many poor who vote that even their machines won't be able to skew the results enough. Next would be getting rid of the elitist based Electoral college, their last vestige of voter decision control.

Unfortunately enlisting the oppressed is one venture that we may have waited too long to try as they seem so betrayed and abandoned that what would bring them hope anymore. So many cuts and tax grabs as well as third class finance decisions that eat at their limited budgets- they have no way out of their dilemma, with so many against their rise who capitalize off their condition of poor health, education and poverty.

No hope- Someone needs to come along and offer hope to the poor, like a JFK, someone who could galvanze them and offer them hope. Start by stating that only middle and upper class children can enlist in the wars for resources. That would be a candidate to vote for!!! Offer free medicare for the poor and the rich have to support it. Why not? They make their profits off the poor, you'd think they'd want to return SOME favor? Right? No! Well then offer to shoot them and see if they change their minds. I'm sure Bush and Cheney's children would make excellent cannon fodder!

Cindy could do it!! She could galvanize them!!

It would be so easy to beat them if we just got over our conditioning to accept that greed is OK for everyone, as we all have a chance to become greedy. What a ruse- what a lie!! No wonder we're in so much trouble- so much ignorance and lack of caring and sharing for each other.