The American Institute of Social Justice (AISJ), one of four national affiliates, deserves greater scrutiny and attention in this area. Over $53 million was transferred between ACORN and AISJ from 2000-2004, according to a report from the House Oversight Committee.

ACORN was also on the receiving end of a $4,952,288 grant from AISJ, according to the Institute’s 990 tax form for 2006. This is instructive because AISJ itself received almost $4 million from ACORN Housing Corp. (AHC) between 2000 and 2006, tax documents show.

“The money flowing to AISJ from ACORN Housing should be a huge red flag for investigators because almost all the federal money that the ACORN network receives goes into its housing affiliate,” Matthew Vadum, a senior editor with the Capital Research Center (CRC) observes. “So it’s entirely possible that when money was being transferred to the national ACORN organization from AISJ, taxpayer money designated for nonpartisan purposes might have been used for blatantly partisan purposes. These transfers are extremely suspicious. This is the type of financial activity that we see with organized crime and it should be investigated.”

On April 1, ACORN’s leadership announced it was dissolving its national network, but in reality the national affiliates and their many state level counterparts are simply remarketing and rebranding themselves, former insiders have warned.

ACORN Housing Corp., for example, the national affiliate at the epicenter of last year’s videotape scandal, has renamed itself Affordable Housing Centers of America. Several state entities have also followed suit reorganizing under generic sounding names that avoid the ACORN label.

ACORN 8, the whistleblower group named for the eight board members blocked from investigating an embezzlement scandal, cautions against media reports that suggest the national organization known in full as the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) has been permanently set back.

“Always note the date, April 1.” Marcel Reid, the ACORN 8 chairwoman, said in an interview. “ACORN is not dissolving, it may be morphing, but it is still is in business and it is still in a position to receive funding, although it may be done under different names.”

In fact, it may become easier over the long for donors to reactive their support for “community organizers” who are no longer burdened by the tarnished ACORN name, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has observed.

“ACORN’s cover has been blown and its true identity has been revealed but it remains a viable entity beneath different names with the same patrons and same funding sources,” she explained in an interview. “I don’t see a tremendous change in the structure that called itself ACORN.”

Bachmann lead the charge against continued public funding for ACORN throughout 2009 but she does not anticipate that the current congress will move permanently cut off support. Only four Democrats joined with Bachmann to vote against an amendment attached to a mortgage bill last year that would prevent organizations with a criminal history from receiving taxpayer support.

Ron Sykes, a former treasurer with the Washington D.C. branch, and an ACORN 8 activist, has identified the Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI) affiliate as a major conduit for the comingling and misappropriation of funds. Tax documents do show links between CCI and other affiliates.

“ACORN did not want its local people to have any control over the finances,” he has previously explained. “There were many accounts by CCI had control over all of it.”

Reid, the ACORN 8 chair, recalls how the funding schemes worked to the disadvantage of rank and file members who sought support for community initiatives.

“You could make a tax-deductible donation to ACORN if you were a foundation,” she explained. “You made it through AISJ, then the money was funneled through CSI (Citizens Consulting Inc.) and then the money was kicked back to ACORN – that’s the loop.”

The future of Citizens Consulting remains uncertain and it’s not clear that the affiliate remains in operation. Consequently, AISJ appears to be the main vehicle through which financial contributions can be diverted away from their stated purpose. The national affiliate has attracted little press attention and deserves greater attention and scrutiny as ACORN activists gear up for the 2010 elections.

ACORN will probably run out of money and fold by year’s end but a dozen ACORN state chapters reincorporated to seem like new, independent organizations will spring up in the next week to carry on ACORN’s business, a leaked email from ACORN’s online director suggests.

“The truth is that it is hard for us to forsee [sic] any scenario where ACORN continues beyond the end of 2010 and some of us think it might not last that long,” writes Nathan Henderson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns, in an apparently authentic Feb. 22 email.

“Last one to leave turn out the lights and wipe the server,” he writes at the end of the message.

In the email Henderson-James explains the subterfuge ACORN will use to lead Americans to believe ACORN is breaking apart.

“It is definitely true that over the next week or so we should see a dozen or more organizations launched on the state level by staff who used to work for ACORN and leaders who developed their skills as ACORN members. These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize low and moderate income constitiuencies [sic] without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.”

It is a “tactically smart…reaction to the global situation that helps the work of building power for poor people to continue,” writes Henderson-James, an ACORN employee since 1997.

The Saul Alinsky-inspired public relations hocus-pocus described by Henderson-James is consistent with earlier reports that ACORN is trying to pass off various state chapters as “new” groups. ACORN’s ruse is designed to keep tax dollars and foundation grants flowing into its coffers. With the fallout from the hidden camera videos last fall, congressional funding of ACORN’s election fraud and racketeering business is no longer guaranteed, so ACORN developed a plan that would allow the operation to keep going, albeit on a smaller scale.

ACORN veteran Marcel Reid told me in an interview yesterday that she wasn’t buying into ACORN leadership’s spin. Reid is a whistleblower who was expelled from ACORN’s national board in 2008 for asking too many uncomfortable questions about a million-dollar embezzlement perpetrated in 2000 by the brother of ACORN’s founder and covered up by management for eight years.

“The folding of ACORN isn’t happening because it’s simply going to restructure,” she said. “In the meantime they’ll give all of these new community organizations in the states an opportunity to flourish without ACORN’s legal baggage.”

At least three of these dummy nonprofit corporations that Henderson-James describes have surfaced so far this year. They are Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New York Communities for Change, and New England United for Justice. All three groups operate out of ACORN offices. The president of New England United for Justice, Maude Hurd, just happens to be the 20-year national president of ACORN. (Massachusetts articles of incorporation available here)

The Henderson-James email to ACORN supporters also encourages recipients to help rewrite the history of the embattled group.

ACORN_NathanHendersonJamesEmail –

“[T]here will be a fight over the narrative of ACORN’s demise,” he writes. The other side wants “a narrative about the corruption of popular organizations and how they are simply vehicles for the personal enrichment and power fantasies of their top staff members while pushing public policies that destroy middle America.”

This argument must be fought, Henderson-James argues, because it “gives people pushing a pro-corporate agenda a way to tar progressives and even non-progressive Democrats running for office with the ACORN brush.”

Then comes the whining from ACORN’s cyber-warfare chief.

Henderson-James acknowledges that ACORN made mistakes, but claims it was primarily a victim of dirty tricks perpetrated by the political right. “[W]e were all up against a 24-hour propoganda [sic] channel,” he writes, in an apparent reference to the Fox News Channel, one of the few media outlets to closely follow the ACORN saga.

Progressives didn’t fight back hard enough “in a moment of extreme duress, orchestrated by propogand [sic] videos,” he complains.

The movement “stood by as ACORN got gutted, while we also handed the forces of pro-corporate politics a handy club to kick the shit out of anything that vaugely [sic] sounds progressive. And that comes with a license to go after the next group or groups that embody the progressive agenda. This went beyond ACORN. We were just a convienent [sic] target to make into a bogeyman. This was about everything progressives stood for. And when it came time to stand up, most of us didn’t.”

Marcel Reid, who also heads a reform group called ACORN 8, told me ACORN’s setbacks are the fault of the left, not the right. Progressives should have come forward to help fix ACORN, but they didn’t.

“We stood up in the organization to straighten out its problems before they got to this point,” she said. “When they could have stood up to save it they sat down.”

“It’s the left’s fault because when it was time for them to police themselves they would not do it. The left didn’t stand up to purge itself when it could have. They can’t blame the right when they didn’t clean up their own house.”

In the email Henderson-James also complains that federal lawmakers and the mainstream media didn’t do enough to help ACORN, bemoaning “the breathtaking swiftness with which the Congress condemned us on the basis of what have been clearly shown by real journalists to be nothing but the purest propaganda [sic].”

Left-wingers, he writes, now have to promote a narrative “that says the attacks on ACORN were part of a concerted attempt to demobilize key progressive constituencies because they banded together to take power and threaten the status quo and that the legacy of ACORN deserves that regular people stand up for themselves and organize to take power, to pass public policies that create an America we all want to live in. One in which organizing is about average people making their lives and their communities and their workplaces better.”

This left-wing spin “will be contested for a bit and you can be sure that it will be marked by serious right-wing triumphalism,” he predicts. “Our side needs to make sure our narrative wins, using the kind of pushback that’s taken place recently around [undercover video maker James] O’Keefe.”

“That’s been beautiful,” Henderson-James coos.

Months before GOP  investigators on the House Oversight and Government Committee revealed that ACORN appears to be lobbying illegally in Delaware, a former ACORN employee alleged ACORN violated federal lobbying laws.

The ex-ACORN employee, Ron Sykes, said that Citizens Consulting Inc. (CCI), the shadowy financial nerve center of the ACORN network, filed false lobbying disclosure reports with Congress.

This is important because, as former ACORN national board member Charles Turner said earlier this year on “The Glenn Beck Program,” CCI “is where the shell game begins.”

“ACORN has over 200 different entities that the money gets moved around to – for this purpose to that purpose, this organization to that organization,” said Turner. “We believe the way the money has been moved around, they’ve been laundering money.”

CCI handles the financial affairs of hundreds of affiliates within the ACORN network. ACORN member dues, government money, and foundation grants, are all sucked into the CCI vortex often never to be seen again.

Although CCI is registered as a nonprofit corporation in Louisiana, it does not appear to have sought tax-exempt status from the IRS. Surely it declined to seek tax-exempt status because entities with that status have to publicly disclose financial data. This is the same approach employed by George Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a piggybank for left-wing political infrastructure that is registered as a taxable nonprofit in order to prevent public scrutiny of its finances and internal affairs.

Sykes said he was angry that ACORN affiliate CCI registered him as a lobbyist. “It’s like identity theft,” he said in an interview. “I have no idea why they registered me. I didn’t register myself and was not aware that they were doing it.”

Federal lawmakers have known for years about ACORN’s unorthodox and possibly illegal practices, including its use of government resources to promote legislation and its extensive commingling of funds within its network of affiliates. Former ACORN officials say these activities are controlled by the mysterious CCI, which was located in ACORN headquarters on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans until ACORN shut down that office. Incidentally, the building, a former funeral home, is up for sale. ACORN can’t sell it because the value of the tax liens pending against it exceeds its market value.

Sykes said he came to the nation’s capital in 2006 as an intern for ACORN’s national legislative program, working for it from April 2006 to February 2007. He said he was never a lobbyist although he did help to prepare lobbyists to meet with lawmakers and their staff on issues of interest to ACORN such as voting rights, housing programs, minimum wage laws, and predatory lending. Occasionally he went along on Capitol Hill visits, but arguing for or against specific legislation was not his job, he said.

According to forms filed under the federal Lobbying Disclosure Act by CCI, Sykes lobbied as an employee of CCI on behalf of ACORN between Jan. 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. He is described in three disclosure forms as a “fellow.”

Sykes said he received a scholarship from ACORN to help him cover living expenses but that it was abruptly cut off months ahead of schedule in February 2007. During his internship he became curious about ACORN’s financial affairs and began to ask a lot of questions about where the money was going. “I guess they got a little irritated and the scholarship money from the ACORN executive board was cut off,” Sykes said.

He found out that his internship was coming to a premature end when he received an email and a telephone call from the legendarily smooth Wade Rathke, who was then chief organizer (CEO) of ACORN. Rathke offered him thanks and told him that he did a great job. “I asked him if there were any positions open and said I’d like to stay but he said there was no funding at this time for a salary for me,” Sykes said.

A former senior ACORN official, Marcel Reid, who was a member of ACORN’s national board from October 2005 to late 2008, said she and other members were unaware that CCI even did lobbying.

Legal reform advocate and lawyer Zena Crenshaw said CCI’s behavior raises several red flags.

“They certainly should be segregating 501(c)(3) funds from their lobbying activities,” said Crenshaw, a founding director and executive director of the National Judicial Conduct and Disability Law Project Inc. (NJCDLP). “I’m not sure how you can segregate them if the lobbyist is handling the money. I don’t know how CCI can be both a lobbyist and a financial manager handling ACORN’s 501(c)(3) funds.”

“This just confirms the need for an examination of the organization’s affiliates,” said Crenshaw, who is also chairperson of the legal affairs committee of ACORN 8, a group of former ACORN members co-founded by Reid that is calling for a forensic audit of ACORN.

ACORN conducted its own sham investigation headed up by former Massachusetts Attorney Scott Harshbarger, a longtime ACORN ally. Harshbarger’s whitewash was unveiled last week in a tightly controlled conference call.

ACORN had been warned by its own lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg last year that its lack of internal firewalls and its chaotic organizational structure were likely to land it in hot water. Kingsley’s letter to her client was excerpted in a report by Republican investigators on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. (The memo was also published at BigGovernment.)

The congressional investigators found that CCI should have paid an excise tax on any lobbying expenditures it made, but noted that evidence indicates the spending was never reported to the IRS.

The investigators also found that by “intentionally blurring the legal distinctions between 361 tax-exempt and non-exempt entities, ACORN diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities.” They argued that ACORN should be stripped of its jealously guarded tax-exempt status because it illegally spends taxpayer dollars on partisan activities, commits “systemic fraud,” and violates racketeering and election laws.

ACORN uses interlocking directorates, which refers to individuals serving as directors on multiple corporate boards, in order to subject its network of affiliates to centralized control from the top. Having interlocking directorates may be widespread and lawful, but the practice raises questions about the quality and independence of board decision-making.

While the ACORN network claims to be a “family” of organizations, embodying the ethos of community organizing, which stresses local action and decentralized authority, it is run by senior officials who treat its national board as a rubber stamp.

It’s worth noting that all three lobbying disclosure forms that reference Sykes were signed digitally by Donna L. Pharr, who is listed as CCI’s assistant treasurer. The services of the ubiquitous Pharr, herself a walking, talking example of interlocking directorates, are in demand all throughout the ACORN empire. She’s on the board of dozens of ACORN affiliates including ACORN Housing Corp. and the American Institute for Social Justice Inc. Pharr is also deputy treasurer of Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee and is listed in a Michigan Bureau of Elections filing as the contact person for Communities Voting Together, a 527 pressure group.

CCI itself has a long and checkered past. In 1996 the federal Department of Labor sued CCI. The next year a federal court ordered CCI to cough up $10,000 in back wages.

CCI also played a prominent role in Wade Rathke’s eight-year long coverup of his brother Dale’s $948,000 embezzlement from ACORN. Wade was dumped as chief organizer of the group he founded after ACORN’s national board learned that he failed to notify police when he discovered in 2000 that Dale had stolen the money.

Wade Rathke allowed his brother to leave the payroll of CCI to work as his $38,000 a year “assistant” at ACORN headquarters. The missing money was disguised as a loan to an officer on the books of CCI.

The internal report issued by former Massachusetts Attorney General is out. Clearly, here’s what the headline will be.

The high-profile lawyer hired to investigate ACORN has found no pattern of intentional illegal conduct in the community organizing group — a finding that was dismissed as “damage control” by one of the two filmmakers who, posing as a pimp and prostitute, videotaped staffers offering advice on how to operate a brothel .

This was immediately mocked by conservatives in the media.

Harshbarger has determined — wait for it — that ACORN engaged in no wrongdoing
depicted in the nationwide undercover stings conducted by BigGovernment.com / James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles.

In fact, everyone is getting into word games here. ACORN did in fact engage in no criminal wrongdoing by offering advice to a “pimp” and “prostitute” about how to hide assets and their business practices. Simply offering such advice is not illegal. If that’s what Harschbarger was brought in to do, I could have saved everyone plenty of time. In fact, if that’s what he was investigating, then it’s clear they gave him a scope that would lead to a conclusion that would maximize their positive press. In fact, these videos occurred at no less than five offices. That’s a pattern of behavior for which management, and not merely those on the videos, must take some responsibility. That’s at the heart of the series of exposes by Giles and O’Keefe. It’s not about whether or not the behavior on the videos is or is not technically legal. It’s about what it says about an organization when a “pimp” and “prostitute” can so routinely walk into just about any office and be offered advice that the advisor knows is illegal if implemented. That reality is barely acknowledged and not really addressed.

In fact, the report has put more blame on former chief organizer, Wade Rathke, than on current leadership. The report itself is full of contradictions and equivocations, and to me, that’s a sign of a report that has as its agenda more than simply getting at the truth.

For instance, the report points out that ACORN has taken “significant steps toward financial reform and protection of whistleblowers” since Rathke’s dimissal. Yet, both Karen Inman and Marcel Reid were dismissed from the board when they insisted on continuing their own investigation into ACORN in October of last year. Is this the example of progress of the protection of whistle blowers?

It also says the group has made progress on financial reform. Of course, all those that have been screaming about reform at ACORN have all demanded the same thing, a full, independent and forensic audit of the books of ACORN. That has still not happened so how much reform has there been?

The report also lists 9 separate reforms. In fact, most of these reforms were themselves recommended by Reid, Inman, and ACORN 8 before and after their dismissal. So, again, how serious is the group about reform if they are dismissing the very people truly trying to reform it?

The first reform is to “return ACORN to its core competency of community organizing and citizen engagement.” Here’s what the front page of ACORN 8 says.

ACORN is not living up to its original mission; and that is to give meaningful voice and empower low and moderate income members of society

Yet, ACORN 8 isn’t even mentioned in the report even though the recommendations largely mirror those they’ve recommended.

The report also recommends that “ACORN should develop a simplified structure of two entities”. On this, I have some confusion. After all, when I interviewed Wade Rathke, that’s exactly what he said ACORN now has.

(Rathke) told me the structure of ACORN is different than the structure of COI. ACORN, according to Rathke, was one corporation while COI was a federation.

So, in fact, the structure of ACORN is supposedly exactly what the report wants it to be. Yet, this contradiction is never addressed. Clearly, the report found a much more sophisticated structure than what Rathke and the current leadership claim that ACORN is. In fact, what the report calls “separate but interrelated” entities (ACORN Housing, Project Vote, etc.) the folks at ACORN would say are entirely separate organizations that merely partner up with ACORN on projects of mutual interests. That’s also exactly what Rathke told me he considered ACORN Housing. In fact, the problem isn’t the structure of all these “interrelated but separate” entities, but a total lack of a firewall between them.

ACORN and ACORN Housing are supposed to be two separate organizations. They have separate boards, management, and finances. Yet, it was Bertha Lewis that was on television defending the behavior of employees of ACORN Housing. So, while the report say they are separate entities, the report never addresses the fact that these separate entities dont’ seem to have any substantive firewalls.

For instance, in the first “pimp” and “prostitute” video, the employee not only offers the two housing and tax advice but then attempts to sell them on an ACORN membership. ACORN Housing has no members. There are no membership dues. That’s only something that ACORN does. So, why is an employee of ACORN Housing selling ACORN memberships? That’s like a used car salesman driving you to the local electronics store and then selling you a television.

Then, the ninth recommendation was “ACORN should form a national advisory board to report back in six months with…progress of reform”. That’s exactly what Karen Inman and Marcel Reid lead when they were summarily fired.

All of these contradictions are never addressed all while the report congratulates ACORN on taking substantive steps toward reform. Meanwhile, when I asked Wade Rathke for comments he wanted to make sure that three things were clear 1) he hadn’t read the report 2) he was never contacted for the report and 3) he’s been gone for nearly a year and a half. It’s interesting that the report mentions him so often then. In fact, Rathke’s name is mentioned nearly as prominently in relations to breakdowns and problems as the current management. So, the report is willing to blame Rathke without contacting him. The report did in fact contact no less than 200 individuals in preparation but, according to Rathke, he wasn’t one of them.

Here’s what Rathke said when he was informed that he was mentioned prominently in the troulbes of ACORN.

(it’s a) little hard to connect me to the candid camera stuff and the pr problems
after I was long gone. Furthermore, after I left they decentralized management which directly contributed to a lack of oversight in these areas which have now caused so much grief and heartache for ACORN members.

…

I care deeply about ACORN and its members and the importance of the organization as a voice for low and moderate income families in our country.  If blaming me were sufficient to solve all of the problems faced by the organization now, I would be more than delighted to gratefully bear full responsibility, so the organization can once again move forward as an effective vehicle and voice for its members in these desperate economic times for low and moderate income families and their communities.

That mirrors what Rathke told me in minimizing his own role in their current troubles.  He told me that if it had occurred a month after he left that would be one thing but it’s happening about a year and a half later. I’m of the opinion that Rathke minimizes his own role in a mostly self serving manner, but, if you’re going to issue a report that’s scathing in its criticism of his leadership while at the helm, there’s no excuse for not interviewing him. It’s as though the report was looking to make him a scapegoat.

This report may provide some PR value for ACORN but it does little in the way of offering any meaningful ways to substantively reform ACORN.

1) What can the local, state, and federal government do right now to help the poor and middle class?

The answer that Rathke gave was both surprising and impressive. I expected him to rattle off several laws that could be implemented, maybe a moratorium on foreclosures, and other policy changes that he believed in. Instead, Rathke was practical and pithy.

He said that all government programs: unemployment insurance, welfare, etc. should be streamlined on the internet so that all citizens would be given access to electronic files. By doing this, the government would cut all sorts of red tape and save those in need all sorts of time and energy in receiving these benefits. For the money the government would spend in implementing these systems, the benefit to the people would come back ten fold.

The answer was impressive both in its practicality and in its non ideology. In fact, Rathke is right. The government’s entitlement system is outdated. There’s no reason why people still need to show up to apply for benefits, and streamlining the process through the use of technology would benefit all.

2) When someone calls you a radical, do not care, agree, or disagree vociferously?

“I don’t care”.

Rathke said that he doesn’t see himself in those terms. In fact, he sees himself as an organizer first. This is the biggest misconception of most opponents and observers of Wade Rathke. Most people think he is driven by a radical ideology. The only ideology Rathke is driven by is the ideology of organizing. That’s not only a way of life for Rathke but it’s a way for him to see the world.

Don’t get me wrong. He has political thoughts and opinions. (I asked him those later) They don’t drive him. Organizing drives him. Organizing is the way that he has been able to influence society and make his mark on the world. Community organizing has been mocked and ridiculed by conservatives, but conservatives don’t understand that to be a good organizer means you can do anything. It means you have an army behind you to accomplish any goal. Finally, there’s been very few, if any at all, organizers better than Wade Rathke. (as an aside Rathke said he doesn’t consider himself a radical and believed that his political views were much more pragmatic than people might think)

3) Do you know George Soros and do you believe in one world government?

I asked this because it’s been widely reported that Rathke is on the board of the Tides Foundation and Soros is tied to Tides.

First, Rathke doesn’t know George Soros personally. Of course, he knows who he is but has never met him. In fact, he told me that it was news to him that Soros has any ties to Tides. Rathke told me that he’s been involved with the Tides Foundation for almost four decades. Conservatives have often used the Tides Foundation as a link between one radical in their view, George Soros, and another, Wade Rathke. The truth is a bit more complicated. Rathke’s been with Tides long before Soros ever became involved with them. Furthermore, as a member of the board, that meant attending two the three days of meetings every quarter. In fact, as Rathke later told me, Tides is all a part of a synergy of his vocation as an organizer. (in a previous interview Rathke told me he’s also never met Bill Ayers)

As for one world government, that’s not something that Wade Rathke thought could practically happen.

4) What’s the relationship between Citizen’s Consulting Incorporated and ACORN?

For some background, when I first started investigating ACORN, I was told that CCI was a sort of weigh station for all monies that reached not only ACORN but any and all of its multi hundred affiliates. CCI is also the company that Wade’s brother Dale used to be the comptroller of back at the beginning of this decade.

Wade Rathke characterized it in a much different manner. He said that CCI was contracted by ACORN for “accounting services”. He said they’re a separate organization with its own board and its own business.

I pointed out that when Wade Rathke is head of ACORN and Dale Rathke is head of CCI, how separate are two organizations?

Rathke said that by that estimation that means that because Rahm Emanuel is Chief of Staff in the White House and Ari Emanuel (inspiration for Ari Gold in Entourage) is a Hollywood agent that this means there’s no separation between the White House and Hollywood.

That’s an interesting comparison but not exactly fair. The White House hasn’t contracted out all its film work to clients of Ari Emanuel. The problem with one brother running ACORN and the other running CCI is that CCI relied on ACORN for most, if not all, of its business. There’s a clear conflict there, and it’s unclear that there were any clear firewalls.

He also told me that ACORN is one organization always registered as a “vanilla” non profit. In my first interview, I thought Rathke had made a stunning admission when he said that ACORN is one organization. That’s because those members of the board that were concerned about corruption, most later became members of ACORN 8, felt that ACORN AND IT’S AFFILIATES were all one organization. I initially thought that Rathke was admitting to what they were accusing. In fact, Wade Rathke was only talking about ACORN itself. Organizations like ACORN Housing were organizations that, according to Rathke, ACORN “partnered with”.

All of this is vital to the story of ACORN and it’s also terribly complicated and confusing. Those, like members of ACORN 8, who thought and think that there’s malfeasance at ACORN believed that all these affiliates, as they call them, are all part of the same organization. They believe that money, resources, and human capital all transferred freely between them all. In fact, often, ACORN Housing and ACORN share offices. The so called Kingsley memo said this as well. Rathke maintained that everything was separated and all above board. He maintained that ACORN was fully audited each of his years at the helm and they went through the very forensic audit that ACORN 8 has been demanding.

5) What’s your vision for the future of Community Organizations International?

First, Rathke wanted to clarify. He changed the name of ACORN International in the United States to Community Organizations International to avoid confusion between ACORN and the now called COI. Internationally, this organization still maintains the ACORN name. So, for instance, it maintains a presence in the Dominican Republic and it’s called ACORN Dominican Republic. This name change couldn’t really have been butchered any more if the media tried to report it inaccurately. In fact, Rathke says he still gets calls asking why ACORN changed its name. (once again, ACORN didn’t change its name.)

He sees COI as an organization that goes into each and every urban area with “significant infrastructure problems” (or every urban area) and organizing the community to be “a positive force for change”. He told that his passions are really juiced when he thinks about what kind a force for change COI can be in urban areas that are at the “crossroads of huge populations”.

To be frank, the vision he laid out for COI was inspirational. It’s hard not to believe when someone puts it as inspirationally as that. I’ve said that Rathke is not only charming but hypnotic even and when speaking about his vision, he was at his finest.

6) In our last interview, we got into ACORN 8. Rathke believes that ACORN has done plenty wrong and deserves criticism. He also believes that ACORN’s faults are being singled out and over emphasized by those with an agenda. So, I asked him, “how you process ACORN 8 making the same criticism as opponents”. He essentially boiled it down in the last interview to an internal philosophical dispute. Privately, he told me that his answer wasn’t fully developed. So, I asked him to expand.

If Rathke was at his most inspirational in the previous answer, he was at his most cunning in this one. First, he played a bit coy. He told me that much of what happened, happened following his leaving ACORN. So, he wasn’t necessarily speaking from first hand experience. Of course, one thing I don’t worry about is Wade Rathke knowing about the inner workings of ACORN, even after his departure.

He said that according to his understanding the dispute boiled down to a dispute over power. First, the internal debates that started between those like Marcel Reid and Karen Inman and Maude Hurd (president of ACORN) hardened following his departure. According to his understand, Reid and Inman were part of a thirteen person group set up following disclosure of Dale Rathke’s embezzlement to investigate ACORN to root out future problems. This group included three board members Inman, Reid, and Carol Hemingway, and ten employees of ACORN.

In Rathke’s view Inman and Reid began to make demands for the entire group. In other words, the two of them started speaking for the board in its entirety. This went outside of protocol. So, Carol Hemingway was there to reign them in. Inman and Reid wanted to get the books of ACORN and they wanted a forensic audit. Rathke said that ACORN had gone through this exact forensic audit a few years earlier. Because there was no calming presence (meaning Wade Rathke) there to make sure cooler heads prevailed the confrontation lead to Inman and Reid being removed. Of course, if he were still around, this wouldn’t have happened.

Members of ACORN 8 scoffed at this notion when I spoke with them afterwards. In their minds, it was very clear. They were members of the board of ACORN. They had a right and a duty to see the books. They were never given the books, and instead thrown out of ACORN when they demanded them.

(for the full story from the other side, here’s how ACORN 8 was started as recounted by members of ACORN 8)

7)Do you believe in single payer health care?

Much like one world government, Wade Rathke doesn’t see single payer as any possibility. He believes a robust public option is “very important to providing competition”. He believes that every health care system is different. He believes Canada’s single payer is good but not as good as some make it out to be.

He also said that the public option wasn’t a litmus test for his support. He went back nearly four decades to frame the issue. In the early 1970’s, welfare rights groups he had previously been alligned with were fighting for welfare reform. They wanted a bill that would give a family of four earning less than $5,500 welfare benefits of $5500 when unemployed. The bill proposed $1800. So, the groups opposed the plan. By doing so, they actually joined forces with conservative groups who wanted the bill to give zero. The bill was defeated. So, sometimes, it’s better to get some of what you want than be an ideological purist and oppose unless you get all.

He said that he sees his role as seeing what passes and then organizing to make it better.

Do you believe in free markets and capitalism?

He said he doesn’t really know any free markets. With a plethora of bailouts, we no longer have free markets. In fact, China’s markets are currently much more free than are ours. Ironically enough, on this issue, Wade Rathke made a very intuitive and correct point, and unfortunately, I must agree. (I say unfortunately because I wholeheartedly support free markets)

He said that his role isn’t to see the world through a theoretical prism that he wants. Instead, he works within the framework of the world as it is and organizes to make that framework better.

Epilogue:

After the interview, I came to what I initially thought was a stunning revelation. After I thought about it it isn’t that stunning. To frame it, let’s first play one of my favorite 80’s songs.

It’s true everybody does want to rule the world. We are all struggling to influence society as much as possible. The reason that people blog, give their opinion, and write about politics is in hope that their point of view influences others. We are all through this media trying to rule the world. So, why should Wade Rathke be any different?

I’ve come to the conclusion that Wade Rathke’s goal is to rule the world. If you think about what community organizing is, the whole thing makes perfect sense. A good organizer will organize a lot of people. A really good organizer will organize even more. How do you measure someone’s worth in community organizing? It’s by how many people they’ve organized. It’s by how much influence they’ve had in they issue they organize for. Furthermore, effective organizing means a synergy of media outreach, political outreach, and community outreach. Effective organizing means the ability to reach your tentacles into all levels of society. Make no mistake, the reason that ACORN became a force in our society has everything to do with the organizing genius of Wade Rathke.

Now, think about COI. It’s a confederation of international organizations currently in seven countries. It was started about five years ago. In five years, it might be in seventy countries. Wade Rathke started and founded ACORN (then Arkansas Community Organization for Reform Now) nearly four decades ago. Then, it was an organization of one. It grew into an organization that had tentacles into nearly all parts of our politically, cultural, and media structure by the time he left. This happened because Wade Rathke is a unique and remarkable organizer. He was so good at it, that he gained enough influence to become embedded into governments of all levels in the U.S. So, what was his goal in ACORN? It was to rule the U.S. If you think that’s absurd and provocative, think again about what makes a good community organizer, the biggest community possible. The bigger the community meant bigger influence. That was in the U.S.

COI is a world organization. It knows no borders. It can go anywhere but it’s purpose is the same. Remember, Wade Rathke told me himself that he wants to go into every urban neighborhood. He himself told me he wants to rule the world. There’s nothing provocative or incorrect in what I’m saying. He’s a community organizer. His goal is as big a community as possible. His place of business is the entire world. So, in effect, Wade Rathke wants to rule the world.

What makes Wade Rathke different from everyone else? He can do it. He grew ACORN from one person to a force in politics, culture and life in the U.S. Now, he wants to do something very similar in the world. I’ve said it before. ACORN is no longer the story. They’re a dying organization that’s disintegrating in front of us. We’re only paying attention for the same reason we pay attention to a trainwreck.

Going forward, Wade Rathke is the story. He’s an individual that not only wants to rule the world but he’s found the vocation to do it, and he’s effective enough to make it happen. An individual with the means, the capability and the resources to rule the world is a story. That’s one I want to follow. It’s one everyone should follow.

1)What do you think of the tea parties?

It’s important to note that I wasn’t asking about political philosophy or personal preference, but rather as an organizing philosophy.

Rathke is impressed by their ability to organize. As an organizing phenomenon, the tea parties are effective and, as an organizer, Wade Rathke believes they took advantage of a vacuum, stepped in, and filled a void that the president never saw coming. Rathke once referred to the tea party movement as “tea baggers”. He did this only once. He never really took any pot shots at them besides this and so I don’t know that this was a deliberate dig.

Rathke did, however, also point out that often the tea parties fail basic organizing principles.

Far too often, screen shots, photos, and videos show angry people, people yelling, and faces that portray meanness. That’s not the image you want in organizing. As Rathke told me, “the more angry you are, the calmer you have to look”. In organizing, Rathke is always very aware of how a crowd will appear in newspapers, on television, and in photos. This is something he stresses at all times in organizing protests. Portraying anger, in his opinion, turns off more people than it attracts.

Conservatives can dismiss this criticism but they’ll do it at their peril. I processed this as Rathke, not the political opponent, but Rathke the schooled community organizer offering an opinion based on experience. There is a lot of anger portrayed at tea party rallies and that’s what often winds up on television. Image is everything and Rathke, the organizer, understands this.

2) What do you think of conservatives demonizing the SEIU protests of the American Banking Association while lionizing the tea parties?

This is something I have found peculiar myself. When I thought this question up, I thought it was a red meat question for Rathke. He didn’t necessarily react quite as ideologically as I thought.

Rathke simply said that protests are totally legitimate. He said that SEIU has been criticizing the banks for a while. The latest protest was no different than protests they’ve done before. Rathke didn’t take the bait to take a series of potshots at his political opponents to exploit the hypocrisy of folks that lionize one set of protests while demonizing another set of protests. Protests are something that Rathke has engaged in his entire career and he told me that he has no problem with anyone conducting a protest for any issue as that’s something he’s done his whole life.

3) What do you think of conservatives attacking Saul Alinsky all while using his tactics?

Rathke told me he often receives “strange emails” both from folks he knows and doesn’t know that brag about how they have used one Alinsky tactic or another on LIBERALS. This he finds to be delicious irony.

On the issue of Saul Alinsky, he told me that all organizers owe at least some inspiration to Saul Alinsky. Saul Alinsky was able to drive imagination for idealistic youth. He showed people like Wade Rathke that community organizing can be a profession, a calling, and a way of life. It wasn’t something his high school guidance counselor ever told him was possible. Far more than anything he did as an organizer, Saul Alinsky inspired with words, speeches, and several books.

4) How do you build rapport as a white guy in a place like the Dominican Republic, India, etc. Wade Rathke now runs Community Organizations International, a world organizing organization.

I was curious about this because I thought that he goes through a long and arduous process in acclimating himself to new cultures and customs. Instead, I got an education in Rathke’s experience, confidence, and skill as an organizer.

He told me that building rapport, for him, in India, the D.R, or any foreign land is no different than building rapport as a young organizer in the African American neighborhoods of Massachusetts. Wade Rathke is a six foot white guy and that won’t change, but when he goes into any neighborhood he offers the community a “set of skills to build their voice”. He seeks leaders. Most importantly, “it’s not about me, it’s about finding leaders in the community”.

5)What advice would you give current ACORN leadership?

Rathke wanted to stay away from giving advice to the current leadership. He didn’t want to be one of those folks that sat on the sidelines and told his former organization how to run things. In a broad sense, he told that me that ACORN needs to “deeply embed yourself in the community”. Show the community “why you’re valuable”. ACORN is most effective as the grassroots organization that is able to get on the street, build rapport with the community, and identify their problems. In short, go back to the basics of organizing.

6)Did he, in leading ACORN, follow the philosophy of Cloward/Piven and how does this philosophy differ from his Maximum effective participation strategy?

This was suggested to me be a fellow reporter. In fact, I wasn’t totally familiar with either and to be totally frank, Rathke went above my head.

Rathke told me that Cloward/Piven was a strategy for a time and place, the late 1960’s. It focused on welfare rights. It was focused and myopic. As the world has evolved, the strategy has become outdated. At the time, the federal government spent a lot more resources on urban renewal. There are no more race riots.

His own maximum effective participation strategy is much more expansive and in his opinion follows for the times.

In fact, Rathke was being very diplomatic in his description of Cloward/Piven. I spoke with several individuals involved in organizing following the interview. Cloward/Piven is in fact, at least according to them, a way of organizing welfare recipients to demand more and more entitlements until the capitalistic system breaks. What it really is, is a way of reaching the poor. It’s important that without poor there are no rich. Everything is relative. Poor are given all sorts of reasons for why they have a station in life. In this philosophy, the system is blamed for their station in life and you attack the system.

In the view of one, Rathke is more expansive in that he wants to apply a similar philosophy to the world.

On this note, Wade Rathke told me that he’s never met, never known, and has had no contact with Bill Ayers. There are all sorts of rumors, internet and otherwise, that put the two of them together in the 1960’s and the present. Rathke told me categorically that he doesn’t know William Ayers.

6) Did he feel any responsibility for the current travails of ACORN?

Rathke really didn’t feel any personal responsibility for the current problems at ACORN. To put it in Rathke’s words, “if this happened 30 days after I left that would be one thing, but this happened a year and a half later”. He told me he worries about ACORN often. He is saddened and disturbed by their disintegration but he doesn’t necessarily feel any personal responsibility for their current problems.

7) Are the attacks on ACORN legitimate or mostly ideologically based?

He said that without question ACORN has brought many of its problems on itself. He wasn’t going to pretend as though they’d done nothing wrong and that the attackers had no legitimate claims to make. That said there was a certain “neo McCarthyist” streak to the attacks. In his mind, there’s no question that ACORN was being singled out because, “ACORN is the single most effective community organization that works on behalf of the poor and middle class in the country”.

For this, I followed up with another question?

8)If it is ideological, how do you process the likes of former ACORN employee Greg Hall and the ACORN 8 making the same claims. Both Hall and ACORN 8 believe in ACORN’s mission. Surely, you can’t dismiss their criticism to ideology.

Rathke first dealt with Greg Hall. He said he doesn’t know who he is. (Hall is a former ACORN organizer) At any given time, ACORN will send out between six and twelve thousand W2’s in a given year. So, if one individual is unhappy, that’s not something he can speak to.

As for ACORN 8, he told me that within the ACORN board, two factions began to form. There was the “administrative party”. That was lead by Maude Hurd, current President of ACORN. Then, there was the “dissident faction”. That was lead by Marcel Reid and Karen Inman (for full disclosure, I’ve interviewed both), both currently in ACORN 8. The dissidents were caught in a philosophical battle with the administrative wing that started in 2007 and even 2006. They saw the direction of ACORN differently from the administrative wing. In his view, their disagreements are rooted in these philosophical battles.

It was at this point of the interview that I was most exhilarated. The answer was brilliant both in its genius and in its diabolical nature. I knew exactly what Rathke was attempting to do and I was still impressed even as he was doing it. In his own smooth silky manner, Rathke painted the ACORN 8 as ideologues. They aren’t conservative ideologues that see ACORN as bad. Rather they are philosophical ideologues that see the direction of ACORN as wrong and thus their disagreements are rooted in that philosophical split.

Of course, several members of ACORN 8 I spoke with afterwards found this to be, well, hog wash. One said, “what about the embezzlement“…alluding to the million dollar embezzlement by Wade’s brother Dale. Another said that if they are “ideologues”, it’s ideologues that want to see ACORN return to its original mission of helping the poor. If there was a philosophical split, it’s as both told me that they believed that ACORN was no longer helping the poor. It’s the corruption that they saw that was the philosophical split.

Epilogue:

Without speaking to Rathke, it’s really impossible to describe just how pleasant he is. That’s the best description for his demeanor and manner. This is extremely important. His pleasant nature is almost hypnotic. After speaking to him, there’s absolutely no doubt why he’s so effective. It’s damn near impossible to not like Wade Rathke after speaking to him for more than an hour. That makes him effective and also potentially very dangerous, depending on his intentions. It also makes him a lot more complicated than his political opponents would like to turn him into. He’s not anything like the political caricature that opponents make of him. One individual described him to me as “diabolical” and that’s why I thought of the word when he was answering my question, and if that’s really so, he’s also dangerous. He is under no circumstances to be underestimated. Whatever Wade Rathke is, one thing is for sure and that is that he is newsworthy.

Wade Rathke would like to turn his organizing philosophy into an organization that organizes throughout the world. At one time, his organization was an organization of one, Wade Rathke. He grew that organization into a political, organizing, media, and cultural force that has become a polarizing organization in large part because of its effectiveness. Make no mistake, he is capable of doing it. If he does it right, the conservative ideologues  of the world will criticize. If he does it wrong, it will unleash a web of corruption that will interlock the globe and span continents. That makes what Wade Rathke will do going a forward a story that everyone should follow.

Here’s part I of the interview.

Stay tuned for part III.

“We’re looking for corporate records and financial documents” states Investigator Scott Bailey; which are essentially the same things the ACORN 8 sought nearly 18 months ago. “We also wanted ACORN real estate records” states Marcel Reid, President of ACORN 8.

“We sent letters to the entire ACORN Board of Directors nearly a year ago, stating that it was either provide this information through the ACORN 8’s Writ of Mandamus (request for books and records) or we were going to go to the Police” continues Reid.

“It could not have happened at a better time” states Michael McCray, National Spokesman for the ACORN 8. “We believe that ACORN is trying to flee this jurisdiction. Since Louisiana seems to be the only government agency that is seriously investigating ACORN.”

“If ACORN hopes to survive then the know nothing, see nothing, do nothing board of directors must by replaced by individuals with the strength and capabilities to fulfill their fiduciary obligations and the courage to reign in corruption within ACORN’s senior management ranks” continues Reid.

“ACORN as we know it today is finished.  It’s a 40 year old business model that never adopted to changing political times or new technology” McCray continues, “and a do nothing board of directors can not operate such a high-profile multi-national corporation.”

ACORN is still reeling after a barrage of bad press and negative government reaction following undercover videos of “pimps and prostitutes” seeking ACORN assistance; and is desperately struggling to remove itself from this legal imbroglio.

In a letter that ACORN Attorney Schwartz sent to “ACORN Friend’s in the Legal Community” stating, “We need some top-notch bankruptcy advice and maybe representation. The reorganization may involve the creation of new nonprofit entities in each state where ACORN functions, as ACORN considers moving from a centralized corporate structure to a decentralized federated structure. ACORN will need help from people who have handled rebranding …”

“That’s like putting lipstick on chitterlings” states McCray, “If ACORN was afraid of the independent audit and forensic examination which  eight ACORN board members demanded; I can’t imagine what they will do once a U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee is appointed to investigate ACORN.”

“The ACORN 8 have always sought a forensic examination and an independent audit of ACORN and its related entities. And we were thrown off the board for attempting to investigate a $1 Million embezzlement” continues Reid.

Recently, Eric Eve senior vice president of Global Consumer Group, Community Relations, at Citigroup also unexpectedly resigned from the ACORN Advisory Council. The “new” board charged with assisting Bertha Lewis, ACORN Chief Organizer to investigate and reorganize ACORN. This advisory council includes John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank; Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; and former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

“ACORN’s organizational structure and management culture creates real conflicts for anyone who truly seeks to exercise their fiduciary obligations for the benefit of the membership and not just to appease management” concludes Reid.

While not everyone has always approved of ACORN’s confrontational tactics, many know some of the impressive results achieved for poor people over the years. Living wage laws to fight poverty. Partnership with unions to assist workers. Housing programs to get Americans one step closer to the American dream. Those are real, tangible victories that improve people’s lives.

“We just only hope and pray that ACORN’s  mission to serve the underserved, and give meaningful voice to low and moderate income families can continue” states McCray. The ACORN 8 is dedicated to doing just that. Quoting the late Senator Edward Kennedy, an ardent ACORN supporter, McCray concludes “the work goes on, the cause endures, hope still lives, and the dream will never die.”