October 15, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
A group of liberal nonprofit organizations have rallied around Acorn, the community-organizing group that is under fire from Congress and conservative commentators — expressing concern that the attacks could spread to other social-justice advocacy organizations. “Acorn is the canary in the coal mine,” said Doug Lakey, director of advocacy programs for the Alliance for Justice, an association that collected pro-Acorn statements from eight groups.
Both houses of Congress voted last month to cut off federal money to Acorn, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, after undercover videotapes showed staff members giving advice to two conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute.
Many of the eight groups — which included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights — urged lawmakers to wait for the results of an independent investigation that Acorn asked Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general, to lead.
Separately, Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofit groups and foundations, said the group’s public-policy committee plans to discuss the “implications of recent Congressional action regarding Acorn.”
Some legal questions have been raised about the Congressional moves. The Congressional Research Service said in a September report that the House bill, the “Defund Acorn Act,” by specifically focusing on Acorn, could constitute a “bill of attainder” — an unconstitutional legislative act to punish a group deemed guilty of a crime without a trial.
But Hans A. von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said in an online memorandum that the House acted appropriately to keep the government from giving money to a group that has been accused of crimes, including violating voter-registration laws.
