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ACORN: Puppet Master of Occupy Wall Street

Posted By Matthew Vadum On October 11, 2011 @ 12:50 am

The Working Families Party, an infamous ACORN front group notorious for corruption, was instrumental in organizing the Occupy Wall Street protests, according to radical journalist Laura Flanders of Free Speech TV.

The protests, which have spread to several other large U.S. cities, are part of what ACORN’s neo-communist founder Wade Rathke calls an “anti-banking jihad.”

Working Families Party (WFP) organizer Nelini Stamp has “been here since day one and she is part of the organizing team and the outreach team that has managed to bridge the distance between that first day and this day and between the grassroots folks here and the labor movement,” Flanders said at the protest in lower Manhattan.

We are “actually trying to change the capitalist system we have today because it’s not working for any of us,” Stamp told Flanders in an interview. Demonstrators are asking “how do we really reform and bring revolutionary changes to the states?”

The WFP is part and parcel of ACORN. In 1998 the party was officially recognized in New York State. WFP’s headquarters is at the same address as ACORN on Nevins Street in Brooklyn. WFP’s executive director is longtime ACORN operative Dan Cantor.

One of the SEIU-funded party’s co-founders is ACORN’s former national chief organizer, Bertha Lewis. Democratic National Committee executive director Patrick Gaspard also contributed to the creation of the party and sat on its board. Gaspard was a political director in the Obama White House and is a former SEIU executive. Gaspard was also an organizer for the radical New Party in the early 1990s. That party’s membership consisted largely of individuals from the Democratic Socialists of America, SEIU, and ACORN. The party endorsed Barack Obama when he ran for the Illinois State Senate.

WFP takes credit for raising taxes both in the city and state of New York and for pressuring the state’s congressional delegation to oppose Social Security reforms. The party has sister WFP-branded parties in Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont.

Working with its radical friends at SEIU, WFP advocates more government spending, higher taxes, universal government-run health care, campaign finance restrictions, free universal higher education, oppressive rent control, same-sex marriage, amnesty for illegal aliens, “greening” the economy by creating heavily subsidized union jobs in the energy sector, and mandatory paid sick leave for all workers.

In 2009 Connecticut WFP sent busloads of thugs to confront American International Group Inc. (AIG) executives at their homes. The protests were calculated to intimidate executives who had been receiving death threats after the company reportedly paid out bonuses using taxpayer bail-out funds.

ACORN allies are also involved in protests aimed at destabilizing the nation’s financial system.

SEIU board member Stephen Lerner has vowed to do his part to drive a stake through the heart of capitalism. Lerner says he wants to “bring down the stock market” through a campaign of disruption. He said last week that SEIU plans to terrorize bank executives at their homes.

Last year George Goehl, executive director of Chicago-based National People’s Action, said that “the banking crisis” was “the next big thing,” and “the way to build a big economic justice movement in this country.”

Meanwhile, ACORN’s new front groups are also deeply involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In Pennsylvania, Action United said it plans to participate in Occupy Pittsburgh on Oct. 15. Organize Now will be occupying Orlando, Florida, on the same day.

New York Communities for Change (NYCC), led by longtime ACORN lobbyist Jon Kest, is one of the major protest groups leading the demonstrations in lower Manhattan. Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment is leading the Occupy L.A. protests.

New England United for Justice, which is headed by former ACORN national president Maude Hurd, is participating in the related “Take Back Boston” protests in Massachusetts, according to watchdog group Judicial Watch. Hurd is a close political ally of Boston mayor Thomas Menino.

The influence of ACORN on the Wall Street protests should have been clear by the unhinged nature of much of the demonstrations. The question is really only whether the radical outfit will push the mob into more and more extreme behavior. Determining the answer to this question will likely not be pleasant.

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