Sep 18, 2009 3:52 pm US/Central
Former ACORN Members Here Saw Scandal Coming
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
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Denise Dixon, former president of ACORN Illinois, says she was leery of national management.
CBS
The fireworks just keep coming in the ACORN case. Another official was fired Friday.
ACORN employees were secretly recorded giving advice on everything from how to smuggle in illegal immigrants to setting up brothels for teen prostitutes.
Conservatives paid for a sting that secretly videotaped employees of ACORN. The employees appeared willing to help two undercover actors, even though the two said they were setting up a brothel for teen-aged prostitutes.
Posing as a female madam and a male pimp, the actors recorded ACORN employees in Maryland, New York, California, D.C. and other places – but not in Chicago.
That's because there no longer is an ACORN Illinois. As CBS-2 News Political Editor Mike Flannery reports, activists here broke away two years ago, calling ACORN's national leadership "bad people."
The ACORN scandal has Barack Obama's conservative critics noting that he and ACORN Illinois were close allies on community development issues here.
They're demanding the group be investigated. What they don't seem to know is that ACORN Illinois no longer exists. It collapsed in 2007.
Denise Dixon was once president of ACORN Illinois, and Madeline Talbott was a top organizer. But two years ago, in a move that now looks prophetic, they and other Chicago activists quit ACORN.
"We just felt things were not right at the top. There were different people in charge then," Talbott said.
"After I left and others left, we had heard that steps were being taken to get rid of the bad apples in the barrel and to straighten it out," she added. "I still believe that's true. But it's very clear they didn't get all the bad apples yet."
Talbott and Dixon complained that ACORN's then-national leader, Wade Rathke, put his brother in charge of finances, was concealing key money moves and was, in short, a scandal waiting to explode.
Still, they're stunned by video from a recent conservative group's sting.
"My people would be holding them while they called the police, because my people would probably be doing something to them that they shouldn't be doing," Dixon, now executive director of Action Now, said.
Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Roland Burris were among a handful of senators who voted "no" this week when both houses of Congress voted to cut off all federal funding for ACORN.
"The amendment voted on by the Senate ... went too far," Durbin said in a written statement. "It prohibited all federal housing funding from going to ACORN, an organization that has helped more than 100,000 families acquire homes."
Local conservatives disagree.
"It's pretty sad that you've got a vote like that by both of our senators," said state Rep. Tom Cross, R-Oswego.
After ACORN Illinois collapsed two years ago, many of its former activists formed Action Now. They say they seek to stop foreclosures, improve public schools and reform health care.
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