Privacy Laws and Citizen Journalism: ACORN and Romney's 47% Speech

by Nomad

I wanted to take a moment to follow up on a post I recently wrote on James O'Keefe III and the ACORN scandal.

In a somewhat related story, CBS has reported details about that notorious secret recording of Mitt Romney last year. The controversial video became known as the "47%" speech.

As it turns out, the recorder of that video was not a reporter (even self-designated like O'Keefe) but a bartender who worked at the site in Florida where the speech was given. 

In the speech he told his audience of wealthy campaign contributors that 47% of the population would never vote for him. That percentage of the population was politically unimportant to him. 

"My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

On the surface, he had a point. And the results of the election confirmed it. The problem was the background to those remarks, who spoke them and to whom they were addressed. These factors behind his speech accounted for in the decline in his popularity of the candidate. He was none to popular in the first place.

I saw one comment that interested me since I had recently investigated the James O'Keefe case in which he was sued by a former ACORN employee for recording him without permission.

The comment  points out that since O'Keefe was arrested on Invasion of Privacy Laws, the law should apply to the bartender as well. The comment reads:

This guy should be brought up on charges for filming someone without there knowledge. If the Acorn fiasco taught us anything, it was that it was illegal to film anyone without there knowledge. Then the people in power get a video that was to there advantage and the rule dosnt [sic] apply. Figure that. Illegal is only illegal when? The line is getting pretty blurry.

It's a valid argument and something that troubled me when I wrote the post. 

The Sudden Death of the Living Wage: ACORN 3/3

by Nomad

In the previous posts (Part One) (Part Two), we have looked into the meaning and importance of the living wage movement. We have also examined both the Conservative argument against and the history of the movement. In the final part of this three part series, we will examine at the more recent attempts at establishing a living wage and the organization that was destined to achieve some impressive results.  

The Rebirth of the Movement

One organization took up the cause of campaigning for a living wage and throughout the 1990s, won unprecedented successes. It was called “the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities" with the name the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN.

Ilyse Hogue, writing for The Nation, gives this summary about the important role that ACORN played.

ACORN was unique as an organization that served our nation’s poor people. Wrangling with life’s common challenges like mortgages and housing forms, ACORN employees built trust by offering help person to person, neighborhood by neighborhood. They then leveraged that trust to lobby for federal legislation to address the root causes of the crises facing these people—predatory lending, lack of community investment and stagnant wages.