In September 2009 Matthew Vadum introduced me to Marcel Reid, former national ACORN board member and president of DC ACORN. I only got to talk with her a few minutes but she changed my view of ACORN and the Left forever because she told me that ACORN fired her for believing its stated goals and trying to put them into action to empower poor black people in Washington, D.C., to get out of poverty. She was bounced for not perceiving and embracing the duplicity of ACORN — that it talks empowerment but the reality is that it deliberately sinks people, especially blacks, ever deeper into helplessness and victimhood, while “rubbing raw” their grievances as Saul Alinsky advised so they can be used as weapons against capitalism.

What changed me in that conversation was the mental picture I got of Ms. Reid’s superiors in ACORN realizing that she had believed their lies rather than noticing that what ACORN promised was not what ACORN delivered — she didn’t see the bait-and-switch. Ms. Reid worked to figure out how to keep the promises ACORN makes. So they fired her ass.

I feel like that was me when I was a liberal and proud of it.

Now that the Internet and blogosphere have broken the grip of the mainstream media gatekeepers of the marketplace of ideas, I am horrified at the degree to which the liberal media claimed to be fair while operating like the propaganda department of a totalitarian state.

This came to mind today after I read a piece at Hot Air by another ex-ACORN worker, Anita MonCrief — “Obama, ACORN and Stealth Socialism.” Moncrief explains the mechanics of ACORN’s process for drawing its workers deeper and deeper into socialism, while weeding out those like Ms. Reid. Her piece is well worth reading. But I was struck the following passage (boldfacing mine):

The “Liberals” who elected Obama President may have a “tower of Babel” moment as gay rights, civil rights, immigration rights, environmental extremists, pro-choicers and all the other special interests that supported the Obama presidential campaign strive to push America further to the left and shed all inhibitions. As with ACORN itself, it seems impossible that the coalition that put Obama in the White House and gave Democrats huge majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives will continue to work smoothly together now that Obama and the Congressional Democrats are in control and America is learning what Obama really meant by the seductive-sounding “hope and change.” ACORN needed the cloak of stealth socialism to maintain its hold on the poor. ACORN’s image is synonymous with blacks and other minorities and the race card has become the last bastion of its “hope.”

What clicked for me is how out-of-place “gay rights” is in the list of groups pushing America to the left. No, no, no, no, no! The only reason gays are on the left is that social conservatives demonize us so comprehensively that Leftists saw their chance to, well, bait-and-switch — to get a prosperous, entrepreneurial, resourceful and hard-working group of people who could be exploited forever.

But think for a moment. Lesbians and gays are predominantly capitalists. Their real interests are served by fiscal conservatism. Lesbians and gays belong on the Right.

And a quote from a recent piece on ACORN’s president, Bertha Lewis, by Ron Radosh glaringly leaves gays and lesbians out of its list of identity groups (boldfacing mine):

Then, Lewis raises the bogeyman of racism. Again, no matter that a popular African-American political figure is president of the United States. The Tea Party movement proves that the racists are on the march. Her goal, however, is an America filled “with more black people than white people,” which will then have the majority necessary to lead the country to real socialism. This, of course, is a new version of the 60’s theory of the black underclass as the new proletariat that would fulfill Marx’s prophecy of a class that would be the agent of change for revolution.

As Lewis put it:

The future of our country is people of color. And how that’s going to change our psyche and our economics, this is why folks are grabbing so hard to change the economic paradigm, because we gettin’ ready to have a majority country of people of color. And the fear of a black planet is real.

What has to be done, she admonishes, is for the young socialists to join the Hispanics and blacks together in a new coalition for socialism. She ends her remarks with: “That will be the battle for the kind of government that we have. That will be an economic battle of epic proportions. Immigration, self-sufficiency, and the people united.”

Where are gays, lesbians, women and Jews in the new world order of ACORN and the Left? Gone with the wind?

By the way, Moncrief notes that Bertha Lewis was installed as ACORN’s president to create the impression of black leadership, even though ACORN’s other leaders are all white and her predecessor was white — Moncrief even provides a photo.

Because election fraud doesn’t just commit itself:

Rachel Maddow is joined by Occidental College politics professor Peter Dreier, who authored a study on how myths about ACORN were manufactured and how easily the mainstream media–not just the right wing media –was led into reporting falsehoods.

(I can’t get the video to embed properly here — it’s at Maddow’s blog at the link above, if you want to see it.)

So, who you gonna believe? A college professor or your lying eyes?

Rachel: Andrew Breitbart has not released all the tapes he has.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Update, 10/17/09: ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief explains at Hot Air her personal knowledge of the enormous lengths the New York Times went to in order to bury news of ACORN’s malefactions long before Andrew Breitbart published the videos made by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.

Megyn Kelly hosted an excellent one-hour Fox News report entitled, “The Truth About ACORN,” which aired on Friday, Oct. 2. As I was looking through my onscreen cable schedule to see when it would be repeated — it will not, as far as I can tell — Megyn Kelly in her closing remarks said it would be posted on Hulu.com. Fox has a lot of content on Hulu, but so far, not this new special.

I’m posting this to alert my gentle readers to check Hulu in case I forget and don’t revisit this post with the link when Fox and Hulu get it together to post the show. It was instructive to see ACORN founder Wade Rathke in action, but for my money, the real value was in the contribution of ex-ACORN worker Marcel Reid, whom I have met. I’ll write soon about our encounter to explain how our short conversation has changed my view of the Left and liberalism forever.

Washington, D.C., Sept. 29 — ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis, the sole black person in the organization’s leadership, announced today that ACORN has signed a deal with film director Roman Polanski to create a new kind of daycare center at ACORN offices across the U.S.

“Thanks to those two crazy kids and their hidden video camera, we’re having to get very creative about generating revenue streams now,” Lewis said. “We’ve got a $100 million a year nut to crack. Obama, Pelosi, Reid — none of them will take my calls anymore. Congress has cut us off. We’ve been dropped by the Census and even the IRS. And now Bank of America has announced it will stop paying the protection money we charge in exchange for not harassing their bank managers at their homes. They’ve even threatened not to approve any more mortgages for our unqualified applicants. Other banks are sure to follow. And no one wants fraudulent voter registrations and tampered ballots in an off-election year.

“It doesn’t matter how many shell corporations you have for laundering money if you don’t have rivers of cash in the first place,” Lewis continued. “So when Roman Polanski came to us with his concept for day care centers with on-site pharmacies and liquor stores, we knew it was a winner from the get-go. He’s the man with the experience needed to get something like this off the ground. Our skillsets are a great match.

“Gathering prey for predators and making the prey think we’re doing them a favor have always been key parts of our core mission,” Lewis said. “Well, that and keeping the vulnerable populations we serve in a perpetual state of dependency, hopelessness and resentment. When you consider that since ACORN was founded in 1970 that we have worked night and day to bring down capitalism from a thousand different directions, is it so wrong not to want to share in the spoils just as victory is in our grasp?”

Credit: Decades ago I read an interview of Melissa Gilbert some time after the demise of “Little House on the Prairie.” She was experimenting with being a stand-up comic and one of her jokes was about being cared for as a child at “the Roman Polanski Daycare Center,” which I thought was hilarious. I have borrowed it for this post. Thanks, Ms. Gilbert. But I agree with The Feminist Texican that it is wrong for you to make excuses for Mr. Polanski now. I also agree with Little Miss Attila that Mr. Polanski should do his time.

Moe Lane wags his finger at the Right-wing street artist who tagged Shepard Fairey’s Los Angeles studio with — what do you suppose?

Moe Lane presents his advice for conservatives on how to do grassroots demonstrations as, “How to ruin a professional agitation group’s day.” Regarding his suggestion to use cameras — I really love my Flip video camera and covet the new Flip UltraHD, which is very affordable, easy to use, records for 120 minutes and uses AA batteries. Now I just have to figure out how to turn my July 4 Tea Party recordings into videos for YouTube.

HillBuzz is a blog by a group of gay men in Chicago who worked to get Hillary the nomination and got so mad about all of the dirty deeds Obama did to steal it that they worked hard and made many sacrifices to campaign for the McCain/Palin ticket. I love them with all my heart.

I don’t think conservatives follow HillBuzz as closely as they deserve, so I want to share a bit of something I just read from their April 15 “Open Thread” post on attending a meeting with Michael Steele. Here’s a sample — and be aware, these guys were on the road for Hillary and had to cope with ACORN when Obama was using it against her:

We brought ACORN up to Steele – and wow, he HIT THAT OUT OF THE PARK. At dinner, there were about 40 people in the room, and Steele asked us what’s a concern we have here in Illinois, and we related to him our experiences with ACORN/Obama’s tagteam in not only Iowa, Texas, and other states in the primaries, but during the General Election as well. We told him how important it is to take ACORN on, and to basically treat it like the cancer that it is for our democracy. ACORN, in our opinion, is practically a terrorist group.

Well, Steele blew us away, because he said the first thing he did when he became Chairman was to tell the RNC’s lawyers that they need to stop waiting around to defend against frivilous lawsuits crazy people file against the GOP every day and start attacking ACORN in court in every single state until ACORN is completely dismantled. Steele reminded everyone that Obama taught ACORN a lot of its tricks when he was a community organizer, and he used ACORN as a defacto arm of his campaign in 2008. Republicans have never fought back – and have allowed Democrats to use ACORN to do nasty, rotten things that the DNC can’t directly do. It is time to strike back and put ACORN on the run. Steele is outraged that Obama wants ACORN to run the US Census. It was crystal clear he plans on doing what should have been done years ago: putting ACORN out of business.

There’s more that’s well worth reading here.