A bastion of progressive activism for 40 years, ACORN was undermined by a doctored video footage purporting to show its workers advising a pimp in 2009.
A harbinger of America’s current political crisis, the ACORN affair is recounted in Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard’s sharply unfocused (and uneven) documentary.
The organization, whose full name was Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, closed operations.
Polarization, vicious media attacks and the rise of Breitbart, all the key elements of the American political machine–and malaise–are evident in this tragedy which looks back on the Obama years with an eye towards the present.
ACORN is most associated with the 2008 election, when John McCain and some conservative groups accused it of voter registration fraud, and with a scandal in 2009, when secretly recorded videos suggested that Acorn’s employees had encouraged illegal activity.
Can the group’s reputation be restored or revived years after the scandal?