The American Spectator

While ACORN and its affiliate organizations remarket and rebrand themselves under different names, community activists who are working to restore the organization’s original mission to its proper station are maintaining the acronym.

Former insiders who formed a whistleblower group in response to an embezzlement scandal are cutting a distinct path under ACORN 8, which is named for eight board members who were blocked from launching a wider investigation of the national organization’s finances.

Marcel Reid, who chairs ACORN 8, submitted 31 questions at an ACORN national board meeting in July 2008 that included requests for the following information:

“Listing of all Accounting Firms (with contact information) for all ACORN related entities.”

“Copy of all existing contracts with the Accounting Firms for all ACORN related entities.”

“Copy of all organizational documentation for the `Chief Organizer Fund’

 “Copy of all ACORN related payments made to the `Chief Organizer Fund.’

On April 1, ACORN’s leadership announced it was shutting down its national operations, but in reality the same network will remain in place under different names, according to sources who are familiar with the ongoing operations.

“ACORN is not dissolving,” Reid said. “It may be morphing, but there was never any genuine intention here to dissolve. Note the date the announcement was made, it  was on April 1.”

Just a few months ago, ACORN, which stands in full for the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, threatened legal action against ACORN 8 over its use of the acronym. But it never came to pass.

 “How can anyone oppose the original mission of ACORN, which is to empower lower and moderate income people?” Reid asks. “If those 31 questions had been answered ACORN would have been forced to close, or clean up.”

Going forward, ACORN 8 members will focus to two areas of activism, Reid explained.  1) Health and Wellness 2) Citizens’ Forum on Judicial Accountability.

“We are absolutely unfettered in our use of the ACORN name,” she said. “This gives us a wide reach and a completely different focus. The renamed ACORN groups were late to the party on healthcare and they were never really involved.  We are also getting involved with judicial accountability because so many times we see people go to court and different levels of justice are metered out.”

Matthew Vadum, a senior analyst and editor with the Capital Research Center (CRC) has carefully tracked the renamed ACORN entities that remain active under new names. Most recently he identified Communities United, a spinoff of the former Washington D.C. affiliate.