Prosecutors in Brooklyn have said there are no grounds to bring charges against ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) after conservative activist James O’Keefe used a hidden camera to make videos purporting to show its staff colluding with a prostitute.
The accusations resulted in the withdrawal of government funding for the organization, which aids poor people and registers voters. It’s not known exactly how much the decision cost ACORN, which received $53 million from the government between 1994 and 2009.
The videos were convincing—as far as they went. One showed a motherly ACORN employee discussing prostitution so convincingly that it seemed the organization was condoning it and advising Keefe’s companion, Hannah Giles, on how to launder money from turning tricks. What the video didn’t show, though the transcript does, was that Keefe had told the worker that Giles was trapped in a relationship with an abusive, violent pimp and that he was trying to rescue her.
News reports showed a part of a tape in which an ACORN worker in Brooklyn suggested that Giles hide her money in a tin can; the implication was that the woman was advising Giles on how to evade taxes. What the worker actually said was that putting the money in the can would keep the pimp from getting it “if he wants to come and rip up the place.”
Though that worker talked as though she believed the story concocted by O’Keefe and Giles, ACORN workers in San Diego and Philadelphia called police after hearing a version of the tale.
The findings come too late to undo the damage the videos caused ACORN, an organization the ultra-conservative right has reason to dislike. Not only did ACORN register large numbers of people expected to vote Democratic in the 2008 presidential election; it sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency and won extended housing benefits for 1,000 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and has developed aggressive programs to protect homeowners from foreclosure. It has also sparked controversy because of an internal embezzlement scandal and some documented instances of voter registration fraud.
