Rhetoric rises, but ACORN has little effect on Southland

ACORN is a trailblazing American organization that helps advance social justice causes and elevates the discourse on poverty in this country.

Or the group is a controversial front for the Democratic Party that drains tax dollars and supports voter fraud and the smuggling of sex slaves.

The lens you choose to view the agency through is, of course, your choice.

But here in the Southland, its impact is minimal.

Election officials say the group, formally the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, hasn’t been active in registering voters in the southwest suburbs or Chicago.

That may have helped the local group dodge the spotlight in the 2008 presidential campaign, when some ACORN canvassers notoriously used fake names, including those of cartoon characters, in an effort to boost their voter registration tallies.

Although the group’s election footprint might be light, learning more about the group’s local effect on fair housing and other social issues has been a little tougher.

That’s because ACORN’s Chicago office dissolved a few years ago. In its place is a group called Action Now, an independent social justice group operating out of the city.

Calls to Action Now’s office were not returned.

Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman and who heads the political science program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said ACORN’s Chicago-area work peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s but waned in recent years.

“One of the problems in organizing poor people, which is what ACORN does best, is keeping the operation going,” he said. “Grant money is much harder to obtain in the recession, and a lot of organizations… are in greater need.”

And whatever efforts ACORN used to reach out to communities were spent in economically depressed areas, not well-to-do southwest suburbs, Simpson said.

Founded in 1970, the nonpartisan group advocates for social justice through improvements to schools, better wages for workers and fair housing standards through a national network of neighborhood chapters.

In the wake of recent controversies, its credibility has taken a beating.

Last week, a handful of the group’s workers apparently were caught on camera offering advice to a man and woman posing as a pimp and prostitute.

The undercover footage was the work of a pair of 20-something conservative activists and has been widely viewed online, thrusting ACORN back into the headlines.

Though the group fired the workers seen on the footage and pledged to review its policies, an ACORN statement called the video an “obvious set of lies and manipulations” carried out by an “aggressive and sustained right-wing campaign.”

Still, the controversies have prompted renewed scrutiny from federal lawmakers, with Congress voting to strip taxpayer funding of the group, several states demanding investigations into the group and the U.S. Census Bureau cutting ACORN from efforts to promote the upcoming 2010 census.

“The new vote in Congress … will weaken the national organization and make it hard for them to build up organizers,” Simpson said. “ACORN has been a reasonably strong voice for the poor, and it’s a very good time to have such an organization. But you have to have a staff.”