Occupy Wall Street Movement’s Ties to ACORN Revealed

[lonestar]

EXCLUSIVE: ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role in 'Occupy' Movement
By Jana Winter
Published October 26, 2011
| FoxNews.com
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Fox News
Oct. 17, 2011: Members of New York Communities for Change, in orange t-shirts with orange banner, attend a press conference in New York with union leaders, including United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew.
The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.
The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.

NYCC’s connection to ACORN isn’t a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization’s controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.
Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day - to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.
At least some of those hired are being used as door-to-door canvassers to collect money that’s used to support the protests.
Sources said cash donations collected by NYCC on behalf of some unions and various causes are being pooled and spent on Occupy Wall Street. The money is used to buy supplies, pay staff and cover travel expenses for the ex-ACORN members brought to New York for the protests.
In one such case, sources said, NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive, but the money was diverted to the protests.
Sources who participated in the teachers union campaign said NYCC supervisors gave them the addresses of union members and told them to go knock on their doors and ask for contributions—and did not mention that the money would go toward Occupy Wall Street expenses. One source said the campaign raked in about $5,000.
Current staff members at NYCC told FoxNews.com the union fundraising drive was called off abruptly last week, and they were told NYCC should not have been raising money for the union at all.
Sources said staff members also collected door-to-door for NYCC’s PCB campaign — which aims to test schools for deadly toxins —but then pooled that money together with cash raised for the teachers union and other campaigns to fund Occupy Wall Street.
“We go to Freeport, Central Islip, Park Slope, everywhere, and we say we’re collecting money for PCBs testing in schools. But the money isn’t going to the campaign," one source said.
"It’s going to Occupy Wall Street, and we’re not using that money to get schools tested for deadly chemicals or to make their kids safer. It’s just going to the protests, and that’s just so terrible.”
A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers told FoxNews.com, "The UFT is not involved in any NYCC fundraising on the PCB issue.”
Multiple sources said NYCC is also using cash donations through canvassing efforts in New York’s Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods for union-backed campaigns to fund the Wall Street protests.
“All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we’ve been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people’s salaries—and those people on salary are, of course, being paid to go to the protests every day,” one NYCC staff member told FoxNews.com.
Those who contribute don't know the money is going to fund the protests, the source said.
“They give contributions because we say if they do we can fix things - whatever specific problem they’re having in their area, housing, schools, whatever ... then we spend the contributions paying staff to be at the protests all day, every day. That’s where these contributions - the community’s money – is going,” the source said.
“They’re doing the same stuff now that got ACORN in trouble to begin with. And yes, we’re still ACORN, there is a still a national ACORN.”
Another source, who said she was hired from a homeless shelter, said she was first sent to the protests before being deployed to Central Islip, Long Island, to canvass for a campaign against home foreclosures.
“I went to the protests every day for two weeks and made $10 an hour. They made me carry NYCC signs and big orange banners that say NYCC in white letters. About 50 others were hired around my time to go to the protests. We went to protests in and around Zuccotti Park, then to the big Times Square protest,” she said.
“But now they have me canvassing on Long Island for money, so I get the money and then the money is being used for Occupy Wall Street—to pay for all of it, for supplies, food, transportation, salaries, for everything ... all that money is going to pay for the protests downtown and that’s just messed up. It’s just wrong.”
Neither Kest, NYCC executive director, nor his communications director returned repeated email and telephone requests for comment, nor did his communications director. A Fox News producer who visited the Brooklyn office on Tuesday was told, "The best people to speak to who are involved with Occupy Wall Street aren't available."
In a phone interview on Tuesday, Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said he knew nothing about NYCC’s involvement in the Occupy movement.
“Haven’t seen them, couldn’t tell you,” he said.
He said he couldn’t comment on the Occupy the Boardroom website’s relationship to the movement and to NYCC.
“It’s a horizontal organization, a leaderless organization, it’s difficult to explain it,” Schultz said, “difficult to explain it to people who haven’t worked in this, who haven’t been part of it.”
Kest publicly threw his organization’s support behind the movement in a Sept. 30 opinion piece on HuffingtonPost.com. But top ex-ACORN staff members and current NYCC officials have been planning events like the Occupy Wall Street protests since February, a source within the group told FoxNews.com.
That’s when planning began for May 12 protests against Chase bank foreclosures, which were followed by the formation of the Beyond May 12 campaign, targeting Wall Street and big banks. That campaign was rolled out by a coalition of community groups and unions and led by the revamped former ACORN group.
“What people don’t understand is that ACORN is behind this — and that this, what’s happening now, is all part of the May 12 and Beyond May 12 plans to go after the banks, Chase in particular,” a source said.
Sources said NYCC was a key player behind a series of recent Occupy Wall Street events, including the Oct. 11 Millionaires March, which brought protests and union and community groups on walking tours of Upper East Side homes of wealthy New Yorkers; and the launch of the “Occupy the Boardroom” website, registered to Kest, which encouraged protesters to contact high-profile bankers, among others.
Fox News’ Shira Bush contributed reporting.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26...#ixzz1buxZikQp

[peacepipe]

considering acorn has done nothing wrong,I don't see the problem.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Why OWS Is the Next Republican Boogeyman

by Thom Hartmann | October 25, 2011 - 9:15am

The Boogeyman is dead, and Santa is dying.

The Republicans have been, since the 1930s, the party of the Boogeyman. They led the fear-based crusades against Communists, first with the Blacklist, then Joe McCarthy's hearings, then the twin fears of Communist Mao and the Communist USSR. With the death of the Soviet Union, and the corporate embrace of still-Communist China, 9/11 let them turn their fears to "radical Islam."

But when President Obama killed Bin Laden, it took the steam out of their movement. And to make matters worse, Obama had earlier gone to Egypt and said, in essence, "Tear down these dictators!" - helping spark the Arab Spring and totally deflating the Republican fear machine, which now sputters along on the fringes trembling about Bachmann's gays, Santorum's fertilized eggs, and Perry's immigrants. The likelihood of Mormon Romney's presidential candidacy means they can't even add "God" to their traditional "Gays, Guns, and God" trinity of GOP fears.

Without something or someone to be afraid of, the Republicans are truly lost, wandering in the wilderness. And no matter how hard they try to gin up fear of the "dreaded deficit bomb," it just doesn't make Americans jump the way the USSR's nukes did two generations ago, or 9/11 did a decade ago. So now they're trying to whip up fear of the Occupy Wall Street folks, but so far OWS has the sympathy of average Americans; it's just not working for the Republicans.

But the Democrats aren't doing much better.

Back in 1976, Republican strategist Jude Wanniski invented the phrase "supply side economics" and then proposed his famous "Two Santa Clauses theory" to sell it.

Democrats, he said, had always been the party of Santa - bearing gifts to the American people like unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, the 40-hour workweek, safe workplaces, clean air and water, and the minimum wage. What the American people needed, they got - and they got it from the Democrats playing the role of Santa.

The Republicans, Wanniski pointed out, had always been the anti-Santa party, saying "No" to virtually every single "Santa gift" Democrats wanted to give to the American people, for over a century.

But, Wanniski reasoned, if the Republicans could become Santas themselves - give the American people an annual gift - and at the same time could force the Democrats to stop being Santas (in Wanniski's words, "force the Democrats to shoot Santa"), then the Democrats would be neutralized and Republicans could win elections.

His strategy was simple, and picked up virtually from Day One by the Reagan administration in 1981: When Republicans are in the White House, cut taxes dramatically (particularly on the rich, but talk about the tax cuts to working people), while also jacking up spending to bubble-stimulate the economy and make it look like the good times are flowing. And when Democrats are in the White House, block all tax increase and spending measures while screaming hysterically about the "debt bomb," forcing austerity and economic pain for everyday Americans.

Reagan dutifully ran up more debt in 8 years than every president from George Washington to Jimmy Carter - combined. And he spent those borrowed trillions, which bubble-pumped the economy and made people think he had some wonder-cure economic patent-medicine.

Herbert Walker Bush followed Reagan's lead, adding trillions more to the debt and throwing in a war for good effort.

When Clinton came in, the "Debt Bomb!" screams began, so Clinton dutifully shot the Santa Claus of "welfare as we know it" and kneecapped "the era of big government."

George W. Bush put Wanniski's program on steroids, giving the most massive Republican Santa tax-cut for billionaires in history, while borrowing almost $6 trillion and spending it all so fast, stretching the bubble so hard, that it actually popped in the last year of his presidency.

For three decades, Wanniski's strategy has worked brilliantly for Republicans and their rich donors, with the added bonus of largely wiping out the once-politically-active and pesky unionized middle class. Three Republican presidents ran the nation's debt up to such incredibly high levels that President Obama is now talking about shooting Santa Claus - this time, cutting Medicare and other benefits.

But Wanniski hadn't figured on the collapse of the USSR when he put forth his theory, so now both parties are politically impotent. Republicans can't convince Americans to be terrified anymore, given that Obama's pretty handily (and cheaply) chopped the head off Al Queda, the Republican's most recent boogeyman. And Democrats can't play Santa Claus any more because the Republicans ran up so much debt, and taxes are so low, there's no way to get enough money to revive Santa.

It's going to make for a fascinating electoral season, as Republicans try to gin back up any fear card they can find because, to their chagrin, nobody's really all that afraid anymore of gays, communists, or Muslims. Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to revive Santa Claus, but Republicans in the House and Senate are successfully blocking their efforts to raise the taxes on rich people and corporations necessary to bring Santa back to life.

So - at least for the moment - it's dueling straw men.

Republicans are telling their base the next boogeyman is "Occupy Wall Street," and using GOP TV (aka "Fox News") and a well-funded punditocracy to push out the message. Democrats are repeatedly - but unsuccessfully - bringing before Congress proposals to revive Santa, with unemployment insurance extensions; jobs for infrastructure, teachers, and cops; and free healthcare for the growing class of the working poor via Medicare. But the American people - at least so far - actually like the OWS movement (even Republicans!), and the last election stripped Obama of the electoral advantage needed to actually pass Santa Claus legislation.

Which is why the electorate seems largely asleep, and political discussions seem vapid.

Barring another attack on America before November 2012, or the OWS movement turning violent, Republicans have lost their boogeyman. And so long as Tea Party control of the House of Representatives remains unbroken, Democrats have lost access to their Santa Claus.

Wanniski and Reagan are dead, but their legacy - and strategy - lives on...

[alkemical]

So, explain to me Lonestar - how the #Occupy movement's literature focuses on how Obama is continuing the same failed policies that got "us here", as being a "covert funded Obama plan"?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by alkemical

So, explain to me Lonestar - how the #Occupy movement's literature focuses on how Obama is continuing the same failed policies that got "us here", as being a "covert funded Obama plan"?

Why, don't you know?

The same way Obama is a "socialist" AND in bed with Goldman Sachs:

It's the magic of Fox News.

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Why, don't you know?

The same way Obama is a "socialist" AND in bed with Goldman Sachs:

It's the magic of Fox News.

, you know what the funniest part of that "paradox" is: Is that it is true. (Re: Corporate socialism)



It's not even comprehended, that's what's scary.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by alkemical

, you know what the funniest part of that "paradox" is: Is that it is true. (Re: Corporate socialism)



It's not even comprehended, that's what's scary.

Correct.

Socialism for the top 1% - private enterprise for everyone else.

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Correct.

Socialism for the top 1% - private enterprise for everyone else.

Meh, from my POV - the very upper, and very lower get the benefit. There are career welfare people in both those spectrums.

[peacepipe]

Originally Posted by alkemical

Meh, from my POV - the very upper, and very lower get the benefit. There are career welfare people in both those spectrums.

the differance being the very bottom need it.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by peacepipe

the differance being the very bottom need it.

This.

Plus, what we spend on programs for the most vulnerable members of society is chump change compared to the handouts the top 1% receive.

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

This.

Plus, what we spend on programs for the most vulnerable members of society is chump change compared to the handouts the top 1% receive.

I seeeeeee. You must have gotten your job from a poor person!

[Blart]

[UltimateHoboW/Shotgun]

Originally Posted by Blart

Soonto be in every school textbooks!

[W*GS]

Originally Posted by UltimateHoboW/Shotgun

Soonto be in every school textbooks!

If the right-wingers get their way, probably.

Right up there with teaching creationism as science.

[ant1999e]

Originally Posted by alkemical

So, explain to me Lonestar - how the #Occupy movement's literature focuses on how Obama is continuing the same failed policies that got "us here", as being a "covert funded Obama plan"?

Can you show us any of this literature?

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Blart

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by UltimateHoboW/Shotgun

I seeeeeee. You must have gotten your job from a poor person!

L0L @ you thinking this somehow constitutes a rebuttal of what I said.

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by ant1999e

Can you show us any of this literature?

What would be the best way? I don't have a scanner for documents. Let me know and I will work at trying to make it available.

[alkemical]

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

EpicTard and the rest of Koch's foot soldiers are just pissed because OWS is stealing the teabaggers' spotlight.

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

EpicTard and the rest of Koch's foot soldiers are just pissed because OWS is stealing the teabaggers' spotlight.

It's not about the spotlight, they believe they are at war with ideology. The problem is, their betters* do not have their interests in mind.

They are being distracted by divide & conquer, yet they don't understand they're only consumers* to the hierarchy.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by alkemical

It's not about the spotlight....

It is in part.

[epicSocialism4tw]

The scammers at ACORN has guys like LA Troofer Delusion, Spider, and Wags duped.

[alkemical]

llamamyth

[Mile High Mojoe]

Originally Posted by peacepipe

considering acorn has done nothing wrong,I don't see the problem.

What? They used canvassers nationwide to fill out bogus registration forms to help Obama get elected in 2008. In April ACORN pleaded guilty to felony-level unlawful compensation for registration of voters. With the full knowledge of upper management, ACORN illegally offered cash bonuses to its voter registration canvassers in a scheme called "Blackjack." Canvassers received extra money if they hit the magic number of 21 registrations in a day.

The organized crime syndicate, which used to employ President Obama, probably won't pay a cent of the fine. That's because ACORN, the shell corporation that ran the corrupt ACORN network, is in bankruptcy.