Toronto city councillor Mike Layton with Alejandra Ruiz Vargas of ACORN Canada
Anti-poverty group ACORN is one of the most ethically challenged social justice NGOs known to mankind. The group was originally conceived in the US and had close ties to the Democratic Party. They were a growing organization back in the day but this all changed in 2009 when James O’Keefe filmed undercover videos where they offered help as he played the role of a pimp trying to register his “underaged” prostitute to cheat the IRS. ACORN USA shut down the next year.
ACORN Canada claims that they’re an independent organization with no connections to their dirty cousins in the USA. They work closely the Canadian labour movement, including the First Nations abusers at Unifor, the child abuse advocates at OPSEU, the cop baiter allies at CUPW, and the Ontario Federation of Labour’s militant anarchist heavy Ontario Common Front. Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson is a known associate of ACORN USA founder Wade Rathke.
Wait, didn’t they say they were unrelated?
Being an anti-poverty NGO, it should come as no surprise that ACORN has an interest in the minimum wage. ACORN has complained that “Canada’s elected leadership has been disturbingly timid on the wage-raising front”. They’ve been actively working on the labour movement’s campaign to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour and to index it against inflation. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, like many labour-backed social justice warriors and poverty pimps, ACORN Canada is yet another hypocritical “do as I say, not as I do” organization.
$15 minimum wage now! (ACORN excluded)
Like many of Canada’s AstroTurf poverty pimps, ACORN isn’t as grassroots as they try to position themselves as. They have little respect for transparency, so there’s no way of knowing where they get their cash from (likely the unions). That said, they have enough cash to pay organizers to rally together the poor people they use make themselves look grassroots.
Three weeks ago ACORN posted a job ad on Craigslist looking for a part-time “community organizing position”. The lucky candidates will “be part of a team doing community organizing in order to expand the reach of Toronto ACORN’s economic justice campaigns in low-to-moderate income neighbourhoods.” No experience is necessary and training will be provided.
There’s “room for advancement” for staff who successfully fool enough poor people to attend their meeting and rallies. Some of who, presumably, will join the campaign to stop ethically challenged capitalist pigs from “exploiting” workers in their campaign for a $15 minimum wage. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Yeah, but there’s one little problem. Staff who are lucky enough to get paid to exploit Toronto’s poor will be exploited themselves. You see, ACORN is only willing to pay staff $13 an hour to work on their campaigns for the $15 minimum wage. Can you say hypocrisy, sure you can! (If you’re a manager at ACORN.)
My advice to Canada’s poor is to avoid ACORN at all costs. They’re not working for you, they’re working for the unions. If you’re one of the “lucky” people who founded themselves a job at ACORN, perhaps it’s time to stand up and revolt?
The labour movement will surely back your cause, and ACORN won’t fire or punish you by reducing your hours, will they? On second thought, if they’re willing to pay you a wage they deem exploitive, you might want to think twice befoe you start fighting for your rights- it doesn’t seem like ACORN actually gives a damn about the poor.
Solidarity!
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Thanks for the caution. I am contacted by them regularly, and if I had the time would have worked with them. In my hood, they at least tell appartment residents that their rents are high because of high police, fireman and government official sunshine lists. BTW, I have heard on a few occasions that they get their money from Soros. I mentioned this to a few of them and they did not deny it. Great work Greg!
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Wow, they really treat people like idiots don’t they! Good to hear you’re going to stay away from them, people shouldn’t have to be subjected to their “oppressive” low wages!
You know Greg, I really look forward to your posts and all the work that goes into them The only problem I have is that after reading your posts, I`m so pissed off with these Hypocritical lefties I start arguing with my wife and then go to bed early! { Ha-Ha} Keep them coming my friend! you`re a great voice for the silent majority!!
” “room for advancement” for staff who successfully fool enough poor people to attend their meeting and rallies. ”
Sounds like a typical pyramid scheme or “multi-level” sales technique. You can get more money only if you sign up more people to sell your stuff.
Sounds legit.
ACORN Canada, because Canada just can’t produce enough poverty pimps and far left loonies on it’s own, so the American far left has to set up another branch plant. We’ve all heard about so called “Economic Colonialism” how about political colonialism? No we can’t have our own home grown social activists, they might not do what they are told, we need the Liberal gentry from San Francisco and New York and Chicago to run things, just like Moscow used to do in Eastern Europe.
It’s not just that ACORN Canada is being hypocritical in terms of what they are willing to pay their new “Community Organizers” it’s that they themselves know that a $15 minimum wage is economic snake oil, but pedal it anyhow hoping to snare a few suckers. If they did believe that $15 an hour was a workable entry level wage for employment then they would pay it to their own entry level employees, but it’s obvious that they themselves can’t afford to pay it.
This whole story reminds me of one of the big labor unions a few years ago (it may have been the CAW), their office staff wanted to organize and join a union for clerical workers and their employer was attempting all sorts of union busting techniques just to keep their offices as an “open shop”. I think that their twisted logic was that the office staff of this union should just belong to the union whom employed them, no conflict of interest there eh? I’m not sure what happened but it was amusing to read about.
It wasn’t the CAW, it was the Federal NDP.
Knowing the way things work it has probably happened more then once, it may have happened with the NDP office staff but I can distinctly remember that it happened with the office staff of one of the big unions, it may have been the Steelworkers (formerly IWA) rather then then CAW. I think that a similar situation went on more recently with office staff for the Ontario Federation Of Labor. The bottom line is that if the labor movement treats it’s employees so poorly that they wish to organize themselves it really shows what a farce many unions and union affiliated organizations are.