California ACORN leaves parent group

[ilbegone]

California ACORN leaves parent group

SPLIT: Scandal at national organization a key factor in nonprofit's shakeup.

By Evelyn Nieves, The Associated Press

01/13/2010

OAKLAND - The California chapter of ACORN has become the first to split from the troubled national organization, citing politically motivated attacks against the parent group and its own internal failings for making the state group's job too difficult.

Amy Schur, former head of the California branch, said Wednesday that board members from the state's 11 chapters decided that it was in the best interests of the low-and moderate-income people they served to start fresh with a new nonprofit group, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE.

"This obviously has been hard," said Schur, who is the executive director of the new group. But with California facing a huge budget deficit again in 2010, she said, the new group will launch a "campaign soon that focuses on fixing the state's fiscal crisis with a bottom up approach."

No one could immediately be reached for comment at ACORN's national office in Washington, D.C.

Schur said the new nonprofit will have most of the same staff members, volunteers and 37,000 members it had as ACORN. It will also have similar community-organizing missions in low-income neighborhoods.

"Our staff and community members are incredibly proud of the work ACORN did," Schur said. "We passed anti-predatory lending practices in California, passed strong tenant protection laws and helped raise the state's minimum wage." But, she added, "serious damage has been done" to the organization's reputation over the last year.

National ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - which was formed in 1970, has been tarnished by scandal. Critics have accused the group of voter-registration fraud, and an embarrassing sting video made last year showed ACORN workers advising a woman posing as a prostitute how to launder earnings.

Last fall, Congress voted to cut federal funding for ACORN, a move a federal court in December ruled was unconstitutional.

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service at the request of House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr., D-Mich., and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., found that ACORN had not misued federal funds in the last five years or improperly registered voters. But an intense media campaign focused on ACORN, as well as other scandals - including the revelation in 2008 that the national group tried to hide the embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the organization nine years ago - have been devastating.

Millicent Hill, a former ACORN member who runs a nonprofit group serving the poor in the Watts section of Los Angeles, said that it was becoming difficult to raise funds after ACORN's image took a battering.

"We want to continue to do the work we're doing," said Hill, who said that giving poor people who do not have money for food has become a major focus.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, applauded the new group.

"What a relief to know that the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment will be on the scene," Waters said in a statement. "I expect great things from this new organization and encourage them to roll up their sleeve sand do the hard work that is needed to assist communities throughout California."

Schur said that besides the scandals, the California chapter of ACORN found it difficult to have decisions about California made by the national organization.

As a state organization, local chapters will have more say in their own issues, she said. The state will also have some oversight into the group, "which we welcome," Schur said. "We intend to be a fully transparent organization."

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Everything is basically the same, just the name has changed. How stupid is the public to fall for this? Ya, that stupid.