Pro: ACORN can play key role fighting global warming
WASHINGTON — EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is addressing the question, Should Congress restore funding for ACORN?
It’s hardly amazing that ACORN, the embattled community organizer that has done so much good in the nation’s inner cities, is considered a latter-day embodiment of the anti-Christ by the nation’s right-wing fringe.
First came the baseless allegations of voter fraud that popped-up in the late stages of last year’s presidential election. Then two conservative activists posing as a pimp and prostitute did a gotcha video at several ACORN chapters seeking—and surprisingly, getting—advice on how to set up neighborhood bordellos. The gullible ACORN workers who dispensed the advice, it should be noted, were fired promptly by the group’s national office.
Now, the right-wing is going ballistic because the cap-and-trade legislation currently on hold in Congress contains money for ACORN and other community organizations to combat global warming by helping the urban poor to become more energy efficient.
Why all the fuss? A consensus of world-class international scientists has repeatedly stated that we are approaching the doomsday hour in confronting a climate change crisis that—if allowed to continue unabated—could well wipe out civilization as we know it.
Yet community organizations have played a storied role in modern American crises. They did yeoman work in aiding huge numbers of the downtrodden survive—and often thrive—during the decade-long Great Depression. They encouraged the notion of shared sacrifice on the home front during the darkest days of World War II when everything from gasoline to sugar and coffee were strictly rationed. In the ’60s, their cultivating of the grass roots pushed the long-held dream of civil rights into law and helped spur the movement that ultimately led the United States to withdraw from the quagmire of Vietnam.
Now—as we finally come to terms with the pending crisis that former Vice President Al Gore calls “a more serious threat to Americans than World War II”—community organizations can be our frontline troops in what must be an all-out war against catastrophic climate change.
Who better than ACORN’s 500,000 national members to act as energy auditors and educators in our battered big cities? They already are on the ground helping deprived city residents to weatherize their homes and obtain discounted home heating oil.
Who better than ACORN and similar groups to expand such efforts to help re-educate energy wastrels in our affluent suburbs, where gas-guzzling SUVs and luxury cars still abound nearly four decades after the Arab oil embargo 1973-74? That’s why both the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act that passed the House last June and the Boxer-Kerry bill now stalled in the Senate provide generous amounts of taxpayer dollars for community development groups such as ACORN.
Waxman-Markey allocates up to $300 million for community organizations that help small businesses, homeowners and renters in blighted neighborhoods comply with developing mandates for conserving existing materials and improving energy efficiency. The Kerry-Boxer bill has up to $200 million to “promote green development in distressed communities.”
Saving the planet ought to be the No. 1 goal of every American since it will save their lives and those of their descendants. Sadly, it isn’t. Polls show a majority of Americans have become deniers about the threat of global warming and that a larger number rank it far down the list of problems that need an immediate and concerted societal effort to solve.
Community organizers like ACORN can reverse these gloomy numbers by applying their highly effective brand of persuasion firsthand to skeptical Americans. ACORN can be—and should be—a vital force in America’s belated decision to join the rest of the world in thwarting global warming.
If anything, the current climate change legislation does not go far enough. President Obama should borrow a page from FDR and establish ACORN as a federal program similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps that helped rebuild a Depression-wracked America from 1933 to 1942. Now that would drive the yahoo complainers into a frenzy!
Wayne Madsen is a contributing writer to the progressive Online Journal (www.onlinejournal.com). Readers may write to him c/o National Press Club, Front Desk, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20045.
Jan 25, 2010 at 4:14 p.m.
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So the posters are concluding that all ACORN workers are fraudulent and the entire system is bad because a few were really stupid?? I would like to think that with any business there may be a few bad apples; those who spoil it for the rest, with the majority doing the best they can with what they have. I would hope only a few were truly bad, and that most are regular people who work to feed their family.
Hank-your link to youtube does not work for me; I tried it and it gave me a blank screen.
I always get bashed for my "eco-beliefs", but I don't care because I know what I learned in college about human accelerated climate change is true, and I know if you want political change to happen you have to do something other than post opinions on a news site. So let it fly: I'm ready...;)
Jan 23, 2010 at 2:53 p.m.
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OMFG! Surely you jest! Acorn is a criminal organization that is qualified to dig outhouse holes at best. And then only if they are closely supervised, as they are likely to steal the shovel.
Jan 23, 2010 at 2:21 p.m.
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"Community organizers like ACORN can reverse these gloomy numbers by applying their highly effective brand of persuasion firsthand to skeptical Americans."
This article must be the Gazette's idea of a joke...LOL. Why else would they even bother to waste the ink to reprint it? Yes, we all got the idea of how Acorn and its affiliates applied their effective brand of persuasion during the last election process. There is no evidence that ACORN has done anything good in the "inner cities" they infiltrate; Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, Chicago and the list goes on. Just visit a few to see for yourself.
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As for global warming, well,every day, you can find a scientist refuting the causes of global warming and then you can read another article saying that humans are causing it. Until there is something concrete and absolute, I can't say either way who is right or wrong and it's a non issue for me because I believe it is all political and just another ploy for global government to redistribute wealth through the cap and trade bill.
Jan 23, 2010 at 11:42 a.m.
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Global warming is a vehicle for Al Gore to make a lot of money. When he was questioned about this at a hearing he became furious and did not answer the question. He is like the person who owns an amunition factory and starts a war so who can sell his product.
Jan 23, 2010 at 11:23 a.m.
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ACORN has disqualified itself as a recipient of any government money or contracts of any kind. However, I have no doubt that some will try to give it some federal money to play with just the same.
Jan 23, 2010 at 10:54 a.m.
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I agree, this a laughably biased article with at least a couple complete fabrications to boot.Hmmm...lets see here
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"ACORN is considered a latter-day embodiment of the anti-Christ by the nation’s right-wing fringe"....Opinion, and criticism of ACORN is nowhere even close to being limited to the "right-wing fringe"
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"First came the baseless allegations of voter fraud that popped-up in the late stages of last year’s presidential election"... The author makes it look like ACORN is guilty of nothing, wich undeniably un-true.And with so many accusations and convictions of voter fraud/voter registration fraud, does anybody really believe that the low level workers are not being "coached" by people above them?
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" A consensus of world-class international scientists"... Consensus as always does not equal causality nor fact.
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"doomsday hour in confronting a climate change crisis that—if allowed to continue unabated—could well wipe out civilization as we know it"...very,very much opinion and a huge leap in logical thinking.
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"ACORN can be—and should be—a vital force in America’s belated decision to join the rest of the world in thwarting global warming"...Again, very much opinion and presents a false scenario where it's only the United States balking at "thwarting global warming"
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Hey, is it not man-made global warming anymore?
Jan 23, 2010 at 9:22 a.m.
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This article is so full of excrement that it's hard to know where to start...
"baseless allegations of voter fraud". Baseless??? It happened, AND it was videotaped! What more proof do you want?
"A consensus of world-class international scientists has repeatedly stated that we are approaching the doomsday hour in confronting a climate change crisis that—if allowed to continue unabated—could well wipe out civilization as we know it".
Already been proven to be a massive fraud. Al Gore is laughing all the way to the bank, and by his own massive "carbon footprint" he proves that he doesn't believe it himself.
"gas-guzzling SUVs" - you mean like the politicians tool around Washington in? Or how about the private jet that Pelosi routinely uses to minimize her time in "flyover country"?
ACORN does not deserve a penny of public funds.
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