Teabaggers, ACORN, lynching, and other ruminations--

It seems to me like his assumption that the African American people selling flags were affiliated with ACORN was a part of a notion that ACORN was an "urban poverty" (which is always read: African-American) group, and therefore, anyone associated with them was fair game. And anyone who was African American would be suspect because.....wellll.....ACORN!!!

So let's talk about ACORN, and race, and how it might have anything to do with lynching.

Now, ACORN is about empowering the lower class, and they employ the poor and volunteers--they are not about profit. As a part of the things they do to bring power to the poor, they also register people to vote, so that the poor can represent themselves at the polls. And it is legal for these people to be registered--they are just broke people trying to have a say in our democracy. The problem comes when people holler "Fraud!"

And why do they? Because ACORN employed people who, for whatever reasopn, decided to run a fraud on them, and register fictitious names--but fictitious people don't vote. So there was no voter fraud, just registration fraud. The ACORN group didn't somehow jigger an election--they just got hosed by some of their employees who worked on registering people.

They also do some business with helping low-income people negotiate with landlords and even help people figure out how to be homeowners despite a low income. A rightwing manchild with a camera and his equally immature female companion posed as a very stereotypical pimp and cartton prostitute and visited several ACORN offices, where they were sometimes given a hard way to go, but in one, at least, filmable instance, were treated sort of like people who were given weird advice. Notwithstanding that here in Philadelphia, the local ACORN office knew what end was up, and called the police.

It seems like a lot of trouble to go to, to demonize a group that just wants to enfranchise the poor. It seems like the detractors might be overly concerned that the "urban poor" (African Americans) are getting registered to vote, which probably leads to African closet Muslims getting elected. And there was a bit of noise regarding the ACORN folks being involved in the Census, such that even such a stable, healthy personality as Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, questioned whether their participation might lead to governmental skullduggery of the worst kind.


This demonizaton of ACORN, however, shouldn't really result in blowback to regular, everyday, Census-workers--should it?

Well it seems to have:



Whatever might have caused anyone to think to do this to a census worker? Not the same impulse that lynched Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner, surely? The fear that minorities might have the same access to the ballot. The fear that they might have power, too? The fear that the government had somehow been taken over by people who were different and threatening?

I think threads of ignorance, racism, and bias do pertain. All the facts aren't yet in, but in a climate where people are willing to swallow dumb conspiracies that stroke their biases the right way, people do get hurt.