ACORN lobbying efforts continue in Washington under Communities United name

May 11, 2010 07:12


Despite ACORN’s reported demise, the radical group’s flagship Washington, D.C., office continues to go about its business below the radar as state chapters across the nation form breakaway groups.

By Matthew Vadum – The Daily Caller

For a supposedly dead organization, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now sure has been busy.

Despite ACORN’s reported demise, the radical group’s flagship Washington, D.C., office continues to go about its business below the radar as state chapters across the nation form breakaway groups.

On May 5 ACORN’s new D.C. spinoff group, Communities United, held a founding meeting in ACORN’s office on 8th Street Southeast in the nation’s capital.

“Communities United is just ACORN’s way of thumbing their nose in the face of everyone,” sources close to ACORN say.

The D.C. office is important to ACORN because the embattled advocacy organization runs its congressional lobbying efforts out of it.

The same office is also home to Project Vote, ACORN’s voter registration arm, which continues to operate. In the 1990s President Obama trained ACORN activists and worked for Project Vote.

Communities United registered as a nonprofit corporation with the District of Columbia government on May 4 and is the product of the consolidation of ACORN’s D.C. and Maryland chapters. The new group expects to open a Maryland branch office, sources said.

ACORN’s head organizer for Columbus, Ohio, Barbara Clark, is expected to be brought in to run the new group, according to sources. As part of a racketeering lawsuit settlement with the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a libertarian public interest law firm, ACORN is required to surrender its business licenses in Ohio by June 1.

Apart from Communities United, ACORN chapters in 12 states have reorganized themselves into 11 new organizations. The largest appear to be Alliance of Californians for Community Employment, New York Communities for Change, and New England United for Justice (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island).

Meanwhile, lobbyists for ACORN’s largest and best-funded affiliate, ACORN Housing, which recently changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America, disclosed in a lobbying reporting form that they have been lobbying a federal agency that is reportedly investigating ACORN Housing.

FULL STORY

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