Anita MonCrief Fights Progressive Subversion
Anita MonCrief, like so many others in urban America, was drawn to ACORN’s promise of bringing a better life to the disadvantaged in low income minority communities across the nation. But unlike most who join the ranks of ACORN, Anita attained recognition from the faculty at the University of Alabama where she graduated with an award for academic excellence. Her subsequent experience, before joining ACORN included interning as a legislative assistant with the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative and as an election observer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. ACORN saw the opportunity to exploit experience that would require access to priority election agendas. What they didn’t see was Anita’s strong moral compass and the courage to back her convictions.
Association of Community Organization for Reform Now [ACORN]
To understand the true objectives of ACORN and the intent of the methods they employ one must know something of co-founder Wade Rathke. While attending Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts from 1966 to 1968, Rathke organized draft resistance for Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] whose radical tactics, including their more extreme offshoot group, the “Weatherman,” willingness to take lives, are well known. After leaving Williams, he organized welfare recipients in Springfield and Boston, Massachusetts for the National Welfare Rights Organization [NWRO]. The NWRO goal was to promote enrollment of of welfare recipients to the point it overburdened the financial and bureaucratic capabilities of the system. This, in turn, would lead to a political crisis that they hoped would force the Democrats who controlled the White House and Congress at the time, to institute a guaranteed national income accomplished through a massive redistribution of wealth.
MonCrief’s experience would make her acutely aware of the extreme measures ACORN employed when it came to elections and voter registration drives. It was while working with ACORN affiliate Project Vote that she became suspicious of seeming irregularities of funds being transferred between a seeming endless list of tax-exempt non-profit affiliates. When Heather Hidelbaugh representing a candidate, voters and the Republican State Committee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sought the Court’s Order that ACORN stop encouraging voting by individuals that they knew had falsely registered to vote MonCrief’s relationship with New York times reporter came to light:
Thereafter, she [MonCrief] informed me that she had been a confidential informant for several months to the New York Times Reporter, Stephanie Strom, who had been writing articles about ACORN based on the information that she had provided.[page 81, lines 18-25] [Ms. Strom wrote the following articles about Acorn from July 9, 2008 to October 21, 2008: 1.) ‘Funds Misappropriated at 2 Nonprofit Groups’ July 9, 2008; 2.) ‘Head of Foundation Bailed Out Nonprofit Group After Is Funds Were Embezzled’ August 16, 2008; 3.)’Lawsuit Add to Turmoil for Community Group’ September 9, 2008; 4.) ‘On Obama, ACORN and Voter Registration’ October 10, 2008; 5.) ‘ACORN Working on Deal to Sever Ties with Founder’ October 15, 2008; and 6.) ‘ACORN Report Raises Issues of Legality’ October 21, 2008.] The New York Times
articles stopped when Ms. Moncrief, who is a Democrat and a supporter of the President, revealed that the Obama Presidential Campaign had sent its maxed out donor list to Karen Gillette of the Washington, DC ACORN office and asked Gillette and Ms. Moncrief to reach out
to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN. Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama Campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at the New York Times wanted
her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer”. That’s when Ms. Moncrief telephoned me on October 21, 2008. Ms. Strom never wrote another article about ACORN for the New York Times for the remainder of the period before Election Day, i.e. November 4, 2008.
[Full text of "TESTIMONY OF HEATHER S. HEIDELBAUGH, ESQUIRE"]
On an April 1st Fox News broadcast the following voicemail from Stephanie Storm to Anita MonCrief was reported:
Hi, Anita. It’s Stephanie. I have just been asked by my bosses to stand down. They want me to hold off on coming to Washington. Sorry, I take my orders from higher up – ah, sometimes. Anyway, um, I’m sorry about this and we’ll still be in touch. Take care. And let me know if there is anything I can do to help you. Take care. Bye-bye
As more and more improprieties at ACORN came to light, Bertha Lewis, who had taken over the chief executive position from Wade Rathke after he was forced from the position after details of the embezzlement scandal emerged, welcomed the criticism of MonCrief claiming the hoped it would shed light on what needed to be done to reform ACORN. She made similar statements about the “ACORN 8,” a group of current and former ACORN leaders who are suing the organization to get financial documents released to expose the web of financial improprieties that have allowed them to pursue their clandestine strong arm tactics. Again she feigned the same false appreciation when activist film makers James O’Keefe and Hannah Jiles posed as a pimp and prostitute trying to get a home loan at ACORN offices in several U.S. cities that include the disclosure they intended to import underage girls from El Salvador [ BigGov's O'Keefe and Giles Have Done It Again; Philly ACORN Vid Exposes 'Kicked Out' Lies ]. Despite Lewis’ statements on behalf of ACORN all three of these parties are doggedly pursued by ACORN members and are subject to legal prosecution by the organization. Now MonCrief finds herself trying to raise funds to fend off ACORN, the sad result of doing the right thing [ follow Anita Moncrief at her blog]. And the main line media, for the most part, continues to ignore the transgressions of ACORN and it’s relationship to Obama.