ACORN Follows Obama to India

Your future under Obama's "Green Jobs" program

Guess what supposedly defunct organization greeted Barack Hussein Obama in India today?

The Christian Science Monitor announced even India is not free of the president’s longtime allies in community organization, corporate shakedowns, and voter fraud. India is one of nine nations to host a chapter of ACORN International, a “new” organization headed by Wade Rathke, the longtime head of ACORN. Which makes it look not so terribly new after all.

Rathke told the newspaper, “We’re trying to organize a vast base in order to push on all political parties” in India.

What is the focus of their work? Ragpickers in Dharavi, the decrepit area featured in Slumdog Millionaire. The Monitor notes, “Many of them are migrants or homeless who lack the proof of residence papers needed to vote, says Vinod Shetty, the Mumbai head of the ACORN India Foundation.” So, ACORN rushes to the rescue. “ACORN India issues the ragpickers identification cards.”

With ID cards, these workers “become eligible for city services.”

And, coincidentally, for voting.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy goes to Bombay.

ACORN International hopes to expand these services. Its website worries, “one of the last remnants of [India’s] socialist legacy is now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism.” To push back against this anti-socialist common sense, “ACORN India is also demanding that the Government of India agree to a Universal Health Plan to include the unorganized workers. We are proposing that our members can be covered by this policy using part of their membership dues as the premium.”

ACORN International is hoping to get the Indian government to allow the dregs of society to get government healthcare by joining…ACORN International.

Lest the reader believe this story is merely an overseas curiosity, it has a warning about America’s future.

Green Jobs: Your Future on Display

The ragpicker jobs are considered the model green jobs. The Monitor reports, “Shetty says roughly 40 percent of all Mumbai’s waste gets recycled, meaning ragpickers are part of the ‘green-collar’ workforce that politicians and industrialists tout as a ‘win-win’ between environmental and business concerns.”

What do their lives look like?

[S]ome of the 150,000 to 200,000 ragpickers in Mumbai live on top of the garbage they sort on the fringes of Dharavi.

One such colony lives under a highway overpass around a trash heap hemmed in by two massive water pipes. The pipes have become sidewalks connecting hovels where ragpickers skillfully squeeze profit from the 10,000 tons of trash discarded daily in the metropolis.

Virtually all of Barack Obama’s job creation program has revolved around “Green Jobs,” a program headed by Van Jones. ACORN International’s agenda sounds very much like the Obama agenda: masses of peons sorting trash for a living, while ACORN collects membership dues to enroll you in government healthcare.

Perhaps that is why the Obama administration has embraced the organization overseas, while pretending he has no connections with the organization at home. America’s ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, met with an ACORN International representative at Dharavi, and the U.S. consulate has participated in an ACORN International event.

Meanwhile, ACORN was reportedly set to jeer Obama’s speech in India today “to pressure Indian lawmakers not to allow foreign companies like Wal-Mart into retail.” Or to shakedown Wal-Mart once it enters.

Despite the friendly rivalry, ACORN still has a key ally in the Obama White House, even 8,000 miles away.