Posted on 10/15/2009 9:14:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Recent disclosures about certain questionable practices at ACORN, the left-leaning nationwide community advocacy organization, have raised questions about the organization's very legitimacy.
But as ACORN rightly moves to get its house in order and restore its credibility, it might be worth taking a few moments to ask some other questions, not about ACORN but about ourselves, and our commitment to lifting up the millions of our fellow Americans who live in a netherworld of poverty, hopelessness and victimization.
You cannot understand the ACORN videos (understand, not condone), without making some honest effort to understand this netherworld in which ACORN and too few other hardy, modern day missionaries work to improve the lives of people most of us never see and never want to see.
Wasn't it odd that so many ACORN workers hardly blinked an eye when a woman identifying herself as a prostitute showed up in their offices ostensibly to ask for guidance on how to buy a house? It's as if such people - prostitutes, people with substance abuse problems, young men with criminal records - show up at ACORN offices all the time asking for help.
Crazy, no? Or maybe that's what ACORN does. That and helping high school dropouts prepare for a job, building affordable housing for single mothers, signing kids up for health insurance, counseling homeowners facing foreclosure, and encouraging every American to exercise their right to vote. The uncomfortable truth is that tens of millions of Americans live the kind of lives where the availability of help from groups like ACORN is the difference between having food on the table or not, having a roof over their heads or not, seeing a doctor or not, and having a voice in the political process or not.
Which is crazier, we should ask ourselves: that there is an organization like ACORN that tries to counsel people in dismal circumstances so that they too might find a way into the middle class, an honest life, a clean life? Or that so many desperate people still live in our country, side-by-side with us, but almost completely invisible to us?
We know who is there to counsel those on the other end of the economic and social spectrum - the super wealthy instead of the super poor - on their schemes to avoid taxes, defraud stockholders and cheat taxpayers. Oh, the lawyers and accountants and bankers were fawning over Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay and John Rigas and Dennis Kozlowski and AIG and ... the list goes on and on.
But even the lives of middle-class Americans are light-years - light-years - away from the void in which the entrenched poor live. I can walk into any Chase bank, where I've had an account since graduating college (even when I had $10 dollars in it, I still had an account), produce three years' worth of tax returns, a driver's license, a birth certificate, a passport, you name it, and get all the counseling I need on how to take out a home loan. I would probably even leave with some viable options for financing, despite these difficult times.
Who will counsel the people working in the back of our favorite restaurant, on the construction site around the corner, working off the books without health insurance, overtime, pensions or even the promise of receiving Social Security after a lifetime of labor?
I'm rooting for ACORN to right itself, as it is aggressively moving to do, because for me the biggest question is this one: if not ACORN, who? Who will counsel and advocate for the "other half," whom Jacob Riis shone a light on over a century ago, that great swath of society which today occupies that same netherworld of poverty, hopelessness and victimization?
Understanding that world is the key to understanding ACORN, and why ACORN is such a vital organization for so many Americans.
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Rory Lancman represents the 25th District, comprising part of north central Queens, in the New York State Assembly.
So how much money did Rep Lancman receive from Acorn? He is in favor of aiding and abetting criminal activity.
Legitimate charities?
Liberal Garbage
This article illustrates exactly why the liberal media is so useless and despised anymore: present one side and do no research -- ignoring the possibility that the message delivered might be wrong.
If ACORN disappeared, who would aid the poorest of us?
The church (broadly speaking) did a fine job of that for centuries/millenia. If not for excessive taxation and legislation, it still would. ACORN is hardly the all-saving boon to the poor he portrays.
But even the lives of middle-class Americans are light-years - light-years - away from the void in which the entrenched poor live. I can walk into any Chase bank, where I've had an account since graduating college (even when I had $10 dollars in it, I still had an account), produce three years' worth of tax returns, a driver's license, a birth certificate, a passport, you name it, and get all the counseling I need on how to take out a home loan.
What he utterly fails to realize is that he just totally eviscerated ACORN's purpose. Yes, indeed, anyone CAN walk into any Chase bank, deposit $10 to open an account, and get all kinds of financial advice & official information.
Fact is, IT'S ALL THERE FOR THE ASKING. You just have to ask for it - persistently. High-class education? ocw.mit.edu for the content of any MIT class or degree (diploma extra). Banking/investing? $1 will open an account anywhere; I've had a Fidelity account open for _years_ with only $0.03 in it (I kid you not). Housing too expensive? MOVE already - $100 will get you cheap luggage and a ticket to somewhere affordable (too much stuff to move? sell!) Hungry? ACORN does _not_ have a monopoly on soup kitchens and free pantries. Driver's license? birth certificate? passport? you name it? DMV, Vital Records, Post Office, Department Of You Name It - go there, ask, pay the modest fees (c'mon, you can get >$7/hr to friggin' _sweep_floors_).
if not ACORN, who?
Family.
Church.
State (the rest of us are paying enough in taxes!).
ACORN is not the end-all of helping the "poor".
The real problem is that help starts with the individual; there's plenty of people, food, money, etc. just waiting for the request.
You can’t “Fix” ACORN. All you can do is kill it. As for the poorest of us, they are about 1000 times the wealthier than the poor of say... China, India, Bangladesh, African... Our Poor would be filthy stinking rich there. Who will take care of the poorest of us? How about those people start TAKING CARE OF THEMSELVES instead of waiting got a HANDOUT?!
How about get up off your fat butt and go create something out of nothing!
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