Purple People Vote

Serious contradictions have arisen between Senator Obama’s account of his involvement in ACORN and an actual account from an ACORN leader.  The Obama campaign’s Fight the Smears site states:

• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN community organizer.
• Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.
• Fact: ACORN was not part of Project Vote, the successful voter registration drive Barack ran in 1992.

They site Ken Blackwell the former Secretary General of Ohio as the source of this rumor. However, Stanley Kurtz of National Review found documentation from ACORN organizer Toni Foulkes that states in the article “Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign,” that Senator Obama was an ACORN trainer and a part of the Project Vote registration drive. The article itself has been taken offline, however, a screenshot of the article link is below. Stanley Kurtz explains this connection in his article Inside Obama’s Acorn as follows…

The extent of Obama’s ties to Acorn has not been recognized. We find some important details in an article in the journal Social Policy entitled, “Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign,” by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board. The odd thing about this article is that Foulkes is forced to protect the technically “non-partisan” status of Acorn’s get-out-the-vote campaigns, even as he does everything in his power to give Acorn credit for helping its favorite son win the critical 2004 primary that secured Obama the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate.

Before giving us a tour of Acorn’s pro-Obama but somehow “non-partisan” election activities, Foulks treats us to a brief history of Obama’s ties to Acorn. While most press accounts imply that Obama just happened to be at the sort of public-interest law firm that would take Acorn’s “motor voter” case, Foulkes claims that Acorn specifically sought out Obama’s representation in the motor voter case, remembering Obama from the days when he worked with Talbot. And while many reports speak of Obama’s post-law school role organizing “Project VOTE” in 1992, Foulkes makes it clear that this project was undertaken in direct partnership with Acorn. Foulkes then stresses Obama’s yearly service as a key figure in Acorn’s leadership-training seminars.

Screen shot from SocialPolicy.org who in their own words, “Now published by The American Institute for Social Justice (AISJ) and The ACORN Institute, in cooperation with the Organizers’ Forum, Social Policy reports on and analyzes contemporary movements for social change in the workplace, the community, and the world.”