Ties? What ties?
Posted on 11/07/2010 9:55:49 AM PST by balls
On his trip to India's commercial capital, Mumbai (Bombay), President Obama addressed entrepreneurs, university students, and Asia's richest man, who just built himself a 27-story house.
But he stayed far away from Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, which was made famous worldwide by the hit 2008 movie "Slumdog Millionaire."
Inside the slum lies an impolitic connection from Obama's past that – like Shakespeare's Falstaff – could have helped balance the president's view into the lives of citizens here.
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The ACORN Foundation India works to organize the slum's trash collectors and sorters known as "ragpickers." The group was set up separately by the founder of the ACORN community organization that Obama once worked with in America. Opponents assailed Obama's ties to ACORN after some of its workers falsified voter registrations during the 2008 presidential contest.
In India, the model does not involve widespread voter registration of the poor – partly because groups like the ragpickers are disenfranchised in the world's largest democracy. Many of them are migrants or homeless who lack the proof of residence papers needed to vote, says Vinod Shetty, the Mumbai head of the ACORN India Foundation.
"At every stage they are asked for proof of identity, proof of residence. So if you don't have [that] you are treated as a criminal in the city. So then they have to bribe someone to get something all the time," says Mr. Shetty. "They are in fact lining the pockets of all these authorities, who have a vested interest in keeping them either informal or without papers."
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Rathke stated he was quitting ACORN stateside to focus on the overseas branches.
Obama would feel alien in a place like Dharavi. There ain’t no welfare culture there, you work or you starve. I saw a Discovery thing about the place. It is a hive of industry and enterprise.
Ties? What ties?
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