The Great ACORN Bank Heist: Part Two

While most of America was preparing for Thanksgiving and contemplating an Obama administration, ACORN and SEIU were once again planning a way to rob America's banks. Of course, they could not go in the front door-guns drawn- so they devised a particular strategy that has always worked well in the past.
The headline on ACORN's webpage read “ACORN to Present "Turkey of the Year 2008" Awards to Foreclosure Forces Preventing the Change We Need "and the article below it detailed that:

“ACORN chapters across the country will stage events on Tuesday, Nov. 25, presenting ACORN "Turkey of the Year 2008" awards to companies and politicians whose inaction is preventing the kind of serious, structural changes needed to solve the enormous foreclosure crisis we face.”

What the article failed to mention is that this so called protest was actually a shakedown engineered by SEIU. During the 2006-2007 cycle SEIU has given ACORN over 54 million dollars and in an November 12th email a representative of SEIU wrote ACORN the following:

Hi,

Hopefully you’ve come down a little bit from the election of President-elect Obama to focus and get work done. I’m just starting to be able to!

We are starting to think about what possibilities there are in organizing bank workers, since the banking industry is now being infused with billions of taxpayer dollars. We need to get a handle on who these workers are, working conditions, etc.

Do you have ACORN members who work for banks or Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae? Is there anyway you could check?

The banks we’re most concerned about are:
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
Chevy Chase/B.F. Saul
BB&T
SunTrust
Bank of America/Countrywide
Wachovia/Wells Fargo
PNC
Bank/National City
Citigroup

Please let me know and if you have other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Thank you,"

Since ACORN and SEIU operate as the same organization in some states, these type of tactics are not surprising. Here is a copy of the ACORN/ SEIU draft agreement from 2004.

ACORN PROPOSAL

SEIU and ACORN want to form a partnership to help family providers of childcare to establish collective bargaining vehicle for childcare workers. SEIU will be the union for childcare workers and ACORN the community organization

1. 1. SEIU will pay ACORN :
   97,800 for lost dues
   368,000 for initial investment
   465,800 total

2. ACORN will conduct an affiliation vote with the members and do whatever is necessary to transfer the members and membership dues to SEIU. A transition plan and timeline for the transfer of members will be agreed to in the state planning meetings.

3. A transition process will be agreed to which includes state meetings attended by SEIU and ACORN to plan a joint approach to member signups, transfer of members and dues, and community and political organizing. In some cases, ACORN will continue to assist in organizing new family provider members. ACORN will support the family provider organizing through community
   organizing strategies and helping to build the political support for the
   collective bargaining vehicle. Whatever joint plans are developed will be
   appropriately resourced.

4. As SEIU and ACORN develop joint plans, the appropriate resources will be negotiated to open new states and cities, which may include San Diego and other cities in California, Maryland, Massachusetts as well as other states.

5. When there is a collective bargaining vehicle established, the local representing the child care members will pay ACORN an annual affiliation rate.

I testified about ACORN's Muscle for the Money program and the bank protests are classic ACORN fundraising tactics. ACORN has always been for hire, and during my tenure I saw ACORN go after the Carlyle group at the behest of SEIU (I do have proof of this transaction) because the Carlyle group refused to hire union workers. ACORN's objectives were to intimidate, threaten and the exhort money from the group. Andy Stern and SEIU's mob-like tactics were ignored because the dirty work was being done by low income protesters.

Moreover, ACORN's history with the banks dates back decades and began with ACORN abusing the provisions of the CRA. Stanley Kurtz in his National Review Online articlePlanting Seeds of Disaster ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic party explains the process:

“At first, ACORN’s anti-bank actions were relatively few in number. However, under a provision of the 1989 savings and loan bailout pushed by liberal Democratic legislators, like Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy, lenders were required to compile public records of mortgage applicants by race, gender, and income. Although the statistics produced by these studies were presented in highly misleading ways, groups like ACORN were able to use them to embarrass banks into lowering credit standards. At the same time, a wave of banking mergers in the early 1990's provided an opening for ACORN to use CRA to force lending changes. Any merger could be blocked under CRA, and once ACORN began systematically filing protests over minority lending...”

ACORN's own archives describe the process as:

“The ACORN convention in New York in 1992, the "ACORN-Bank Summit," was organized to hammer out deals with giant banks like Continental, First Fidelity, Mellon, PriMerit, and Chemical. Representatives signed agreements to establish programs for low- and moderate- income people to qualify for mortgages in their communities. Citibank, the nation's largest bank, did not participate. In response, the conventioneers held a lively action at Citibank's downtown Manhattan headquarters, and won a meeting to negotiate for similar programs. The meeting also led to increased Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac funding from the secondary mortgage market to ACORN neighborhoods. These efforts led to billions of dollars of primary and secondary mortgage money flowing into ACORN communities over a period of several years.”

Once again, the ACORN website failed to mention that according the the Capital Research Center, ACORN also became the recipient of sizable donations from organizations like:

• JPMorgan Chase Foundation ($5,007,500 plus at least $300,000 to separate state-level ACORN-affiliated housing nonprofits),
  
• Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc. ($1,405,000),
  
• US Bancorp Foundation ($285,000, plus $470,000 to ACORN Housing Corp. of Illinois),
  
• PNC Foundation ($95,000),
  
• Wachovia Foundation ($5,000)
  
• Provident Bank Foundation Inc. ($5,000 to “New Jersey ACORN”)
  

ACORN has an interesting habit of going after the enemies of their coalition partners. For example, ACORN formed a partnership with Bank of America in 1990 and has seemingly attacked Bank of America's competitors including Countrywide, which was acquired by Bank of America this year.

On the other side of the coin are the unlikely alliances formed after ACORN strikes a deal with a former adversary. Such was the case with H&R Block. ACORN sent protesters out into the streets against H&R Blocks practices, and this year after several generous donations by H&R block, ACORN will utilize H&R Block's extensive tax preparation resources at their tax sites. Is this social change or muscling out the competition?

ACORN has made other famous shady deals and alliances such as the Atlantic Yards debacle in NYC. This agreement orchestrated by new Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis called for Bruce Ratner of Forest City Ratner to promise that his $3.5-billion arena and residential project would be linked to 600-1,000 below-market-rate condo units. However, community members and leaders cried foul at this deal because of the enormous benefit to ACORN and what some say is the “ghettoization of Brooklyn”

What is really intriguing about this whole Atlantic Yards mess is that Forest City Ratner has begun layoffs while at the same time bailing out their old friends Bertha Lewis and ACORN. I wonder if those unemployed workers know about the $1.5 Million bailout loan to ACORN by the company. At the East Regional Meeting in August of this year, ACORN leadership stated that:

“Big NY ally Forest City Ratner agreed to loan us $1M at 2% and grant us $500k
to pay back health fund and to use for other transition costs. Board will decide
how much to allocate to IRS payment and how much to allocate to lawyers.”

ACORN must be stopped, it is not okay to use the mortgage crisis and government bailouts as an excuse to extort money from banks. The banks themselves must be willing to stand up and tell ACORN that they will not pay them off this time and will report any offers for a side deal to the Justice Department. Also, it might be time for the Department of Labor to look into some of SEIU's activities regarding their association with ACORN.