FOX Goes Nuts Over ACORN

Editor's note: For more on this story please read Dan Cantor's piece Fox News Goes Apoplectic Over the Success of Working Families and ACORN.

FOX News never met a community organizer they didn't hate.  Desperate to exacerbate the GOP's recent attacks on ACORN, FOX is fueling the fire of misinformation about the nation's largest grassroots community organizing group.  They attacked ACORN's Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis last Thursday for endorsing Barack Obama in a video, claiming ACORN should not be allowed to make public endorsements since they are partly government funded.  Once again, however, FOX is dead wrong.

According to Dan Cantor, executive director of the Working Families Party in New York that created Lewis's video, "ACORN is not a c3 non-profit. Quite the opposite -- it has long fought to engage low-income Americans in politics, and its political action committee has long endorsed candidates for president on down to dog catcher in the attempt to hold politicians accountable to working people."  

Working Families New York has fought successfully for a minimum wage hike, paid family leave, and to extend healthcare coverage, among other recent campaigns.  And as Cantor points out, voting the Working Family line for Obama (which ultimately is added to the total number of Democratic votes under a New York provision that allows two parties to endorse the same candidate) conveys a message for real progressive change. 

Lewis is the co-chair of the Working Families New York, just as ACORN has many members who belong to other organizations fully capable of making public endorsements. ACORN also has numerous political action committees at the state level working directly on various electoral races.  Not to mention ACORN Votes, a federal PAC that endorsed Obama back in February.