David Morris: ACORN deserves an apology, too

By DAVID MORRIS
StarTribune
July 26, 2010

Shirley Sherrod has her job back and a presidential apology. ACORN is still waiting.

The cases are remarkably similar. Both Sherrod and ACORN were demonized by highly edited videos appearing on right-wing websites and widely publicized by Fox News and conservative radio hosts. In both cases the mainstream media and the federal government rushed to judgment without seeing the full unedited video. Within hours, Sherrod was fired. Within days, Congress cut off federal funding to ACORN.

The Sherrod and ACORN cases are similar in another way. Sherrod's full speech makes clear that over the years personal experience had taught her that the key issue isn't race but class. It's "not about black and white" but "about those who have and those who don't."

ACORN thought so too. For over 30 years ACORN was the nation's preeminent and arguably its most effective poor peoples' organization. Its membership of 400,000 was led by poor people of all races.

ACORN confronted those who have on behalf of those who don't, earning it the undying enmity of conservative administrations. The first President Bush's Department of Labor convened a grant jury to investigate ACORN. It found nothing. George W. Bush's Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, fired several U.S. attorneys who refused to prosecute ACORN after they found no evidence of voter fraud.

(More here.)