Just how "leaderless" is Occupy Wall Street? According to Fox News, the thousands of Communists, anarchists, eco-feminists, malingerers, and professional protesters taking part in OWS are actually being guided by a reconstructed ACORN. The "fair and balanced" news organization alleges that OWS is being funded and controlled by former ACORN activists under new names who are using shady practices to collect money for OWS under false pretenses. Will this turn out like that time that a certain prominent news organization alleged George Soros was funding OWS?
Let's take all the allegations piece by piece: Fox spoke to several anonymous sources inside the New York Communities for Change (NYCC), a group led by the former director of NY ACORN, Jon Kest. The network claim that NYCC is the direct descendent of ACORN: working from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, using old ACORN office stationery, and employing much of the old ACORN staff. The sources inside NYCC allege that the group has hired approximately 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities, paying some of them $100 a day, to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. NYCC has also allegedly paid homeless people around $10 an hour to attend OWS events. And here we were thinking homeless people were only in Zuccotti Park for the free food, shelter, and welcoming vibes.
Furthermore, the sources allege that NYCC staff members collected cash donations for what they were told was a United Federation of Teachers fundraising drive (specifically for dangerous PCB's in schools)—but the money was instead used to fund OWS events. And the people who are donating have no idea that their money is being redistributed:
"All the money collected from canvasses is pooled together back at the office, and everything we’ve been working on for the last year is going to the protests, against big banks and to pay people’s salaries—and those people on salary are, of course, being paid to go to the protests every day,” one NYCC staff member told FoxNews.com.
Those who contribute don't know the money is going to fund the protests, the source said.
“They give contributions because we say if they do we can fix things - whatever specific problem they’re having in their area, housing, schools, whatever ... then we spend the contributions paying staff to be at the protests all day, every day. That’s where these contributions - the community’s money - is going,” the source said.
“They’re doing the same stuff now that got ACORN in trouble to begin with. And yes, we’re still ACORN, there is a still a national ACORN.”
Fox also spoke with one homeless woman who said she was hired straight from a homeless shelter, sent out to the protests before being deployed to Central Islip, Long Island, to canvass for a campaign against home foreclosures:
“I went to the protests every day for two weeks and made $10 an hour. They made me carry NYCC signs and big orange banners that say NYCC in white letters. About 50 others were hired around my time to go to the protests. We went to protests in and around Zuccotti Park, then to the big Times Square protest,” she said.
“But now they have me canvassing on Long Island for money, so I get the money and then the money is being used for Occupy Wall Street—to pay for all of it, for supplies, food, transportation, salaries, for everything ... all that money is going to pay for the protests downtown and that’s just messed up. It’s just wrong.”
Two weeks ago, Andrew Breibart's Big Government published a piece alleging that ACORN are the "puppet masters" of OWS—writer Matthew Vadum seems to have a serious hard-on for ACORN, writing the book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. However, throughout several of his pieces on the inner-workings of the nefarious organization, Vadum mostly stuck to demonizing the Working Families Party for assembling "rent-a-mobs." The NYCC and Kest only get passing mentions.
Fox News might have bit off more than they could chew though: toward the end of the long piece, they quote another anonymous source who sheds more light on just how vast and long-running this anti-capitalist conspiracy ahs been going on: that source alleges that top ex-ACORN staff members and current NYCC officials have been planning events like OWS since February. “What people don’t understand is that ACORN is behind this — and that this, what’s happening now, is all part of the May 12 and Beyond May 12 plans to go after the banks, Chase in particular,” a source said, referring to May 12 protests against Chase bank foreclosures.
A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers denied any involvement with any of the conspiracy; Harrison Schultz, an Occupy Wall Street spokesman, said he knew nothing about any NYCC involvement with OWS; and several NYCC members refused to speak to Fox. If NYCC and the ex-ACORN members are as powerful, as monomaniacal, and as in control of OWS as they claim, wouldn't their army of white, college-educated pimps already control most of the city's prostitution?
And what if there's an even more nefarious group in control of OWS, constantly thumping on the strings behind the scenes? What do we really know about these drummers, except for the fact that they are entirely unreasonable? And guess who very well probably maybe is a drummer? Former ACORN slayer James O'Keefe! We don't know for sure that he is, but he does dress like Ringo Starr. So couldn't that mean O'Keefe's mentor Andrew Breibart is involved with OWS as well? Could Briebart be ACORN? Could ACORN be Fox? Could Finkel be Einhorn??
