Nyambala
JF-Expert Member
- Oct 10, 2007
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Barack Obama Never Organized with ACORN
Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN. • Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer. • Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee. • Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992. In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called "Motor Voter," Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack's career, check out our Obama bio.) Ken Blackwell is best known today for disenfranchising Democratic voters in his dual role as Ohio Secretary of State and chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign in 2004. To see him shed crocodile tears for the integrity of the vote while making accusations about Barack and ACORN with absolutely no basis in fact is disturbing. Blackwell's attacks against ACORN and community organizers continue a vile Republican pattern of mockery and viciousness against this noble profession. Community organizers are the very individuals Republicans should be celebrating for helping people to help themselves rather than depending on the government.
BARACK WAS PRAISED FOR COMPLETING PROJECT VOTE; ACORN WAS NOT INVOLVED
Obama's Voter Registration Drive Registered 150,000 New Voters, The Highest Number of a Single Local Effort. In 1993, Crain's Chicago wrote of Obama's effort to register voters for Bill Clinton's election, "Last year, Barack Obama galvanized Chicago's political community, as no seasoned politico had before. The director of Illinois Project Vote orchestrated an unwieldy band of 10 staff members and 700 volunteers to the tune of 150,000 new voters for the general election - the highest number registered in a single local effect. ‘Under Barack's leadership, we had the most successful, cost-effective and orderly voter registration drive I've ever been involved with,' says Alderman Sam Burrell of the West Side's 29th Ward." [Crain's Chicago Business, 9/27/93]
Chicago Magazine: Obama Headed "Most Effective Minority Voter Registration Drive." Chicago Magazine reported, "None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization. "It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives. At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama." [Chicago Magazine, 1/93]
Discredited Republican voter-suppression guru Ken Blackwell is attacking Barack Obama with naked lies about his supposed connection to ACORN. • Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer. • Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee. • Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992. In his capacity as an attorney, Barack represented ACORN in a successful lawsuit alongside the U.S. Department of Justice against the state of Illinois to force state compliance with a federal voting access law. For his work helping enforce the law, called "Motor Voter," Barack received the IVI-IPO Legal Eagle Award in 1995. (For more about Barack's career, check out our Obama bio.) Ken Blackwell is best known today for disenfranchising Democratic voters in his dual role as Ohio Secretary of State and chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign in 2004. To see him shed crocodile tears for the integrity of the vote while making accusations about Barack and ACORN with absolutely no basis in fact is disturbing. Blackwell's attacks against ACORN and community organizers continue a vile Republican pattern of mockery and viciousness against this noble profession. Community organizers are the very individuals Republicans should be celebrating for helping people to help themselves rather than depending on the government.
BARACK WAS PRAISED FOR COMPLETING PROJECT VOTE; ACORN WAS NOT INVOLVED
Obama's Voter Registration Drive Registered 150,000 New Voters, The Highest Number of a Single Local Effort. In 1993, Crain's Chicago wrote of Obama's effort to register voters for Bill Clinton's election, "Last year, Barack Obama galvanized Chicago's political community, as no seasoned politico had before. The director of Illinois Project Vote orchestrated an unwieldy band of 10 staff members and 700 volunteers to the tune of 150,000 new voters for the general election - the highest number registered in a single local effect. ‘Under Barack's leadership, we had the most successful, cost-effective and orderly voter registration drive I've ever been involved with,' says Alderman Sam Burrell of the West Side's 29th Ward." [Crain's Chicago Business, 9/27/93]
Chicago Magazine: Obama Headed "Most Effective Minority Voter Registration Drive." Chicago Magazine reported, "None of this, of course, was accidental. The most effective minority voter registration drive in memory was the result of careful handiwork by Project Vote!, the local chapter of a not-for-profit national organization. "It was the most efficient campaign I have seen in my 20 years in politics," says Sam Burrell, alderman of the West Side's 29th Ward and a veteran of many registration drives. At the head of this effort was a little-known 31-year-old African-American lawyer, community organizer, and writer: Barack Obama." [Chicago Magazine, 1/93]