NEWS HEADLINES

ACORN Closing Operations

By Donna Kimura

One of the nation’s best-known community organizing groups, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), is shutting down.

Group leaders approved a set of steps to bring the group’s operations to a close over the coming months, including closing ACORN’s remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1, announced officials.

The 40-year-old group has taken on predatory lending, worked to register voters, and fought to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in recent years, but it became famous last year for a video sting that showed ACORN counselors advising conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their activities and avoid taxes.

In the wake of the video, the group lost much support, and some local chapters severed ties to the national organization.

“ACORN has faced a series of well-orchestrated, relentless, well-funded, right-wing attacks that are unprecedented since the McCarthy era,” said CEO Bertha Lewis in a statement.

Vindication on the facts, she continued, doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.

The New York Times has reported that the organization is on the verge of bankruptcy. There is speculation that a new organization would emerge without the ACORN name.