Another Big Labor Operative in White House has ACORN Ties

by Don Loos

BigGovernment.com continues to wake-up America to Obama Administration relationships with ACORN and Big Labor.  BigGov’s  latest story highlights Presidential Advisor Valerie Jarrett’s crew member Buffy Wicks who is the former political director of forced union dues financed WakeupWalmart.com (Wakeup). In the conference call, Wicks highlighted the important role United We Serve (Serve.gov) has in President Obama’s Organizing America strategy. See Dana Loesch’s article about Serve.gov directing volunteers to ACORN.

Buffy

The Obama campaign boastfully promoted Wick’s moniker, “Buffy the Wal-Mart Slayer” that highlights her community organizing experience with Wakeup’s efforts to increase costs for Wal-Mart and the prices for its customers.  However, the Obama White House press release tones down Wicks past position:

Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.  Wicks has a long history in grassroots organizing and civic engagement. Most recently she was the Director of the Renew America Together effort, the call to service issued by then President-elect Obama. She also served on the Obama for America campaign in a variety of roles, including California Field Director and Missouri State Director, and helped develop the national grassroots field strategy. She has also worked in the labor movement, fighting for better health care and wages for disenfranchised workers. She is originally from California and graduated with a double major in Political Science and History from the University of Washington.

It appears that Wicks may be continuing to influence Wakeup on behalf of President Obama’s agenda, because Big Labor-funded Wakeup resources were used to harass Glenn Beck for his opposition to President Obama’s vision for America. Wicks’ former employer Wakeup currently boasts that it forced Wal-Mart to pull advertising from the Glenn Beck Show. Here’s Wakeup’s post: 

You won. Walmart has bowed to pressure from activist groups and over 14,000 WakeUpWalmart.com supporters to end its direct support of Glenn Beck. Finally, Walmart has distanced itself from Beck and his hateful rhetoric.

But, even though Bentonville has pulled its ad dollars from the Glenn Beck Program, it still advertises on his parent station. We think it’s time Walmart fully commits to keeping the airwaves free from offensive hate-mongering. Write Walmart and demand they pull all ads from Fox until Glenn Beck apologizes for his absurd remarks about President Obama.

 ACORN & Big Labor partnership

United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union bosses have paid ACORN over a half-a-million dollars.  While Wicks coordinated UFCW sponsored Wakeup’s “political” organizing campaign, UFCW bragged about its coordination with ACORN.  UFCW also coordinated numerous voter registrations with ACORN. 

After Howard Dean’s presidential quest crashed and burned, Wicks became the Political Director for Wakeup, an outfit supported by forced union dues under the direction and control of UFCW bosses.  On October 13, 2005, UFCW announced its new partnership with ACORN:

‘We are witnessing the creation of a new social and political movement led by ordinary Americans, from all across the country, who are coming together to change Wal-Mart into a responsible corporation,’ said Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com. ‘The national momentum to change Wal-Mart is both incredible and unprecedented.’

Today, WakeUpWalMart.com also announced an exciting new partnership with two of the largest grassroots organizations in the country – Jobs with Justice and ACORN. The alliance between Jobs with Justice, ACORN, and WakeUpWalMart.com builds an unparalleled force for change with thousands of activists, on-the-ground organizers and community groups ready to help change Wal-Mart in every town and city in America. Jobs with Justice and ACORN will be instrumental in helping WakeUpWalMart.com raise public awareness of why Wal-Mart needs to change beginning with Wal-Mart Week in November and extending through the entire holiday season.

‘This is a new day in the fight to change Wal-Mart. We have created an unprecedented, bottom-up force for change which will demonstrate why Wal-Mart needs to change now,’ added Maude Hurd, ACORN’s national president. [Emphasis added]

‘We are building the largest grassroots movement in history to change Wal-Mart. Our movement is led by community coalitions who believe America’s largest corporation should reflect the best in American values,’ said Fred Azcarate, executive director of Jobs with Justice.

ACORN
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation’s largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities. Since 1970, ACORN has grown to more than 175,000 member families, organized in 850 neighborhood chapters in 75 cities across the U.S. and in cities in Canada, the Dominican Republic and Peru.

Jobs with Justice
Jobs with Justice (JwJ) is a national network of local coalitions that connect labor, faith-based, community, and student organizations to work together on workplace and community social justice campaigns. JwJ coalitions now exist in over 40 cities in 29 states in all regions of the country.

Translation

What the Obama Administration’s Buffy Wicks did with Wakeup, and it continues to do with an apparent partnership with ACORN, is to engage in a “corporate campaign” against Wal-Mart in an attempt to inflict as much financial stress on its target as possible.  For an insiders view of what it is like to be a target of a corporate campaign a good read is Dave Bego’s book, The Devil at My Doorstep, a chronicle of the shameless three-year corporate campaign he and his employees endured.

These corporate campaigns are not about worker choice, they are about inflicting financial costs and public image damages to companies like Bego’s and Wal-Mart. 

Essentially, this means that Buffy Wicks was a professional troublemaker hired by Big Labor to work hand-in-hand with ACORN in an effort to inflict pain to bring one of the nation’s largest employers to its knees.  So far, the efforts by Wicks and ACORN have only served to reduce Wal-Mart’s ability to hire new people and lower prices for its customers. 

Now, ACORN collaborator Wicks is inside the Obama White House as it oversees record unemployment.  If the White House continues to place Big Labor staffers like Wicks who worked for organizations hostile to worker freedom throughout its Administration, then the Obama Administration will likely become the antithesis to job growth and the primary obstacle to any future U.S. economic recovery.


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Posted Sep 21st 2009 at 8:57 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Obama | 116 Comments