The ACORN Headlines, NEWS, Updates

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The ACORN Headlines, NEWS, Updates

ACORN Staff in Baltimore should have been paid says Head Organizer

RATHKE REMAINS ON ACORN STAFF AFTER PRETENSE OF STEPPING DOWN

4 ACORN MINORITY STAFF FILE EEOC DISCRIMINATION CHARGES AGAINST ACORN

ACORN FOUNDER STEPS DOWN AFTER HE COVERS UP THEFT OF 1,000,000 USD BY HIS BROTHER!

Tijuana MEXICO ACORN WORKERS RIPPED SAY THEY WERE TREATED LIKE SWEAT SHOP ORGANIZERS

ACORN COMMUNITY IN COLORADO SPRINGS SAYS THE ORG STILL TAKES MONEY FROM THEIR ACCOUNTS EVEN THOUGH ACORN IS LONG GONE

Unpaid ACORN Workers in Miami Set Fire To Office

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: While I'm not clear on why you keep posting about all the negative stuff when the organization is clearly trying to move away from the Rathke era, I respect your desire to try to push ACORN to live up to its values.

But I do want to point out one factual error in your headlines. Wade Rathke is not currently employed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. He _is_ still the Chief Organizer of an entity called ACORN International, but that organization is separately incorporated. This is important because under the terms of that incorporation the original ACORN, the one he "resigned" from, has only one seat on its Board of Directors. The others are filled by ACORN International members from the various countries where AI operates: Canada, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, India. While the US representative would love to fire Wade, the other Board members have a different perspective and are reluctant to move in that direction.

I think from the outside this looks like splitting hairs from the outside but from a legal stand point, the US ACORN members simply can't fire Wade from his job at AI.

However, because of the fact that from the outside it looks like Wade "resigned" but then got a promotion, there is a large faction of senior staff and a large faction of US ACORN leaders who want him gone from that position as well. That and the fact that they want him disassociated with anything called ACORN or a part of the ACORN family of organizations because of the scandal and his attempts to purge the organization of anyone who disagreed with him.

I believe that a set of negotiations around his AI situation are on-going, but I don't know the timetable for them or what demands are really on the table.

I'm hoping that at some point you might cover some of the positive changes that are coming about as a result of the current transition, rather than posting news stories from two years ago, but I'm not really expecting it.

But it would be useful to understand what a positive vision for the transformation of the organization would be from a radical perspective rather than a rehashing of past failings.

Well, a boy can always dream, right? 8-); July 24, 2008 at 5:11 PM
0 said...: To start off and for the record I busted my ass for ACORN, Hit every goal I was told to hit, my former employees hang out with me all the time and we still have a community of justice between us. I see the members I worked with on a regular basis. They are no longer members.

ACORN BASICALLY RUINED MY LIFE, I DIDN'T DESERVE IT, I AM PISSED OFF ABOUT IT, and THAT ANGER MAKES ME WANT TO OUT ORGANIZE WADE TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS TRANSITION BRINGS ABOUT AS MUCH CHANGE AS POSSIBLE.

I WAS LIED TO ROUTINELY AND IT COST ME SO MUCH YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE. I WILL NOT GO INTO DETAIL.

Well actually i spent a big chunk of my life doing lots of positive things to advance the social justice movement and ACORN. I would love to pass on positive changes. I have nothing but respect for Bertha Lewis and I have nothing but respect and love for the field of community organizing. I've devoted my life to it. ACORN just about burned me out forever. Trust me if I wanted to post some negative things about ACORN I could. This an effort to avoid that.
So, in response to your statement:

International ACORN is not part of ACORN?
You know and I know it is. Just as the AISJ is seperate from ACORN but it is an intrinsic part of ACORN's funding and structure.

Where did the start up capital come from?
I know where it came from.

They do not report at Head Organzer and Management meetings?

Don't they come the end year meetings?

Why is that if they are a seperate Organization?

Now this is a website I just went and what do you call this?

http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=2683

Now on this Acorn.org website I found this?
International Offices
ACORN International is building community organizations of low-income families, and partnering with grassroots organizations outside of the United States. ACORN International aims to strengthen democratic movements for social change, as well as build connections between community-based organizations across borders and cultures.

ACORN International has offices in Argentina, Canada, Peru, and Mexico, and facilitates the India FDI Watch Campaign. We are establishing direct membership chapters in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Kenya, and Nigeria and are exploring partnerships with established membership-based organizations in Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea.

> ACORN Argentina
> ACORN Peru
> ACORN Dominican Republic
> ACORN Canada
> ACORN Mexico

Now what is that. I searched the site and found that.

Now when I go to this site, the offices link? I find this
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=2593
Now on this site the US offices, the national, and the international! I don't know if you know it or not but that is pissing alot of people off. Especially since this is linked as well:

So Sorry, we aint buyin it. Also why am I able to reach Wade's Chief Organizer page form the ACORN page?

Either he is gone or not. If ACORN is a out control freight train that has already left the station. Then USA ACORN will sue them for all resources drained from our members and will demand they change their name!

What I hear you saying is that Wade's dream of a Walmart of Organizing is coming true on our sweat and dimes. Whether the members like it or not.

Meanwhile people out here who continue to organize with no help from ACORN because we BELIEVE IN COMMUNITY ORGNANIZING are really getting tired of the daggers and razors in our backs.

I am doing this because members who were busting their asses and meeting all goals had their office yanked out from under them because there weren't any hot elections coming up. That isn't organizing, Wade thinks it is, IT IS NOT!

Wade and ACORN organize where they are preaching to the choir. They aren't in the places where the real fight is. We can build a new organization in this country that respects the individual culture of organizing of each region. ACORN has stomped all over everyone in this country's toes and they shouldn't have stepped on mine. Because I delivered way more than my paycheck and because I am in till the end and I don't give a F&&CK!
I will devote the rest of my life to building true organizing, while ACORN farms you guys out as the outsourced migrant workers of whatever flavor of the day they are contracting. I have seen some awfully questionable farming out of ACORN workers and I have the paperwork from it. I haven't broke with everything I have because I would really like to see ACORN take up the cause of:

Well we will fill in these blanks soon.; July 24, 2008 at 10:28 PM
0 said...: I totally respect your position.; July 25, 2008 at 4:51 PM

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New York Times Article Wade busted!

Funds Misappropriated at 2 Nonprofit Groups

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: July 9, 2008
Two prominent national nonprofit groups are reeling from public disclosures that large sums of money were misappropriated in unrelated incidents by an employee and a former employee.
The groups, Acorn, one of the country’s largest community organizing groups, and the Points of Light Institute, which works to encourage civic activism and volunteering, have dealt with the problems in very different ways.
Acorn chose to treat the embezzlement of nearly $1 million eight years ago as an internal matter and did not even notify its board. After Points of Light noticed financial irregularities in early June, it took less than a month for management to alert federal prosecutors, although group officials say they have no clear idea yet what the financial impact may be.
A whistle-blower forced Acorn to disclose the embezzlement, which involved the brother of the organization’s founder, Wade Rathke.
The brother, Dale Rathke, embezzled nearly $1 million from Acorn and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000, Acorn officials said, but a small group of executives decided to keep the information from almost all of the group’s board members and not to alert law enforcement.
Dale Rathke remained on Acorn’s payroll until a month ago, when disclosure of his theft by foundations and other donors forced the organization to dismiss him.
“We thought it best at the time to protect the organization, as well as to get the funds back into the organization, to deal with it in-house,” said Maude Hurd, president of Acorn. “It was a judgment call at the time, and looking back, people can agree or disagree with it, but we did what we thought was right.”
The amount Dale Rathke embezzled, $948,607.50, was carried as a loan on the books of Citizens Consulting Inc., which provides bookkeeping, accounting and other financial management services to Acorn and many of its affiliated entities.
Wade Rathke said the organization had signed a restitution agreement with his brother in which his family agreed to repay the amount embezzled in exchange for confidentiality.
Wade Rathke stepped down as Acorn’s chief organizer on June 2, the same day his brother left, but he remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.
He said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a “weapon” into the hands of enemies of Acorn, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.
Wade Rathke said he learned of the problem when an employee of Citizens Consulting alerted him about suspicious credit card transactions. An internal investigation uncovered inappropriate charges on the cards that led back to his brother.
“Clearly, this was an uncomfortable, conflicting and humiliating situation as far as my family and I were concerned,” he said, “and so the real decisions on how to handle it had to be made by others.”
The executive director of New York Acorn, Bertha Lewis, who has been named director of an interim management committee set up to run the national group’s day-to-day operations, said Dale Rathke was paid about $38,000 a year but that none of that money was used to pay back Acorn.
Instead, she said, the Rathke family has paid Acorn $30,000 a year in restitution since 2001, or a total of $210,000.
A donor has offered to give Acorn the rest of what the Rathkes owe, and an agreement to that effect should be finalized in coming days, Ms. Lewis said.
“Now that this is under our watch, we are putting financial auditors in place, legal counsel in place, a strong management team in place to make sure this organization moves forward for another 38 years,” she said. “I will not allow and the board will not allow something like this to happen again.”
But the fact that most of the handful of people who did not disclose the fraud when they learned of it eight years ago still work for Acorn or its affiliates concerns many of the group’s financial supporters.
“We’ve told them that when the process is ended, we’ll have a look at it,” said Dave Beckwith, executive director of the Needmor Fund, which has given money to some of Acorn’s charity affiliates for at least 10 years and was contacted by the whistle-blower in May.
Representatives of some 30 foundations and large donors have been discussing the matter on conference calls and may establish a committee to monitor Acorn’s overhaul of its management and accountability systems.

The Real ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now-the myths exposed!

Thursday, July 24, 2008