ACORN scaling back or shutting down in many cities
Stung by the recession and a string of scandals, the ACORN community activist organization has been shutting down in many of the communities it once worked to empower.
No new clients are being signed up, said national spokesman Brian Kettenring, while the group conducts an internal investigation into how its business is conducted.
[ACORN] had already shuttered 40% of its centers — in cities including Chicago, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Omaha — since its high of 105 offices two years ago, he said. The branches helped low- and middle-income clients with housing, jobs and navigating government aid programs. -snip-
“When you have this big of a mess, it takes time to clean up and your funders drop like flies,” said Madeline Talbott, a former head organizer for ACORN’s operations in Illinois.
ACORN’s Chicago office closed in January 2008, when Talbott — along with 365 community members, the local ACORN board and at least a dozen paid staff members — quit over concerns about mismanagement and a lack of financial transparency at the group’s national headquarters.
-snip-
President Obama worked as an attorney for the group in the 1990s.
The organization mobilized a get-out-the-vote effort to support Obama’s presidential bid last year, but it was tainted when nearly a third of the 1.3 million voters the group registered were rejected.
Last week, authorities in Miami announced the arrests of 11 former registration canvassers on allegations that they had submitted nearly 200 falsified forms.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for this month in Nevada, where state prosecutors have accused ACORN and two former top officials of using an illegal incentive system to motivate people registering voters just before the 2008 presidential election.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com …
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
ACORN is doing an internal audit?
In other words…FIRE UP THE PAPER SHREDDERS!!!