The Reality Check » Blog Archive » How I Overcame Fear and Rejected the ACORN 8 Alternative

The Reality Check » Blog Archive » How I Overcame Fear and Rejected the ACORN 8 Alternative

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

General George S. Patton, Jr

You must be single minded. Drive for the one thing on which you have decided. You will find that you will make some people miserable; those you love and very often yourself. And, if it looks like you are getting there, all kinds of people, including some whom you thought were loyal friends, will suddenly show up doing their damndest, hypocritical best to trip you up, blacken you, and break your spirit.

One almost never hears of paralyzing joy or happiness. The adjective “paralyzing” is usually combined with the word fear. Fear can take on many forms. In most cases, it is the driving force behind the decisions that follow. In 2008, the fear I encountered involved my family, our safety and loyalty to my race and political party. When others are aware of your fears, they can make the most of opportunities to capitalize on them; whether it is a fellow whistleblower warning you away from Fox News, or liberals throwing the word racist in the face of conservatives.

Often, it is the fear of being alone that paralyzes. To avoid being alone, women (and men) can make bad choices in mates or politics. A person will align with a group or organization that adds support or disproves a claim. In July of 2008, I aligned with both The New York Times and former board members of ACORN that had formed a group called the ACORN 8. On October 21, 2008, New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom, with whom I had been working on an ACORN expose, told me that her editors had told her to “stand down,” because the ACORN/Obama story was a “game changer” and it was their policy not to print a “game changer” that close to the election.

My sense of having a reliable system in place to help expose the truth disintegrated. I will always wonder about the timing of the release of the Kingsley report (a report by an ACORN lawyer that showed huge problems within the organization related to the connection between the ACORN entities) to Strom when she was hot on the story of ACORN and Obama campaign corruption and about to be made to “stand down” on it by “higher up.” I began to suspect that the same group who had decided to “wait until after the election to go after Wade Rathke, and whose representative had warned me about going on Fox the weekend before the election may have had an ulterior motive for releasing the report to Strom right before a potentially damaging expose on ACORN/Obama.

A screen shot of the July 29^th 2008 meeting by the ACORN Interim Staff Management Committee (ISM) details the efforts that ISM members including Karen Innman and Marcel Reid to protect Obama by not exposing Rathke before election day 2008.