Why I just gave a donation to ACORN

ACORN is probably significantly to the left of my politics in a lot of ways, but the heart of my reason for donating to it is that critics are taking advantage of the fact that ACORN recruits its employees from the low-income, poorly-educated, socially-disadvantaged communities that it's trying to serve. In that situation, some of its hundreds of employees will make stupid mistakes - that's no reason to condemn the whole organization.

An analogy that's probably offensive to those communities but might be the only way to get the point across to some people, is to employees working at alcohol and drug rehab clinics, many of whom are themselves recovering addicts. To expect a no-screwup rate at ACORN is like expecting a no-relapse rate among hundreds of recovering addicts given jobs at clinics.

Anyway, for more info, see this surprisingly balanced article by conservative columnist Debra Saunders (pointing out that the Philly ACORN office kicked out the posers), and broader context by Michael Tomasky. Or click on the ACORN link at the beginning of this post for their take.