Independent Lens: ACORN and the Firestorm

Photo:New York ACORN protest

Credit: Courtesy of ACORN

For 40 years, the controversial community organizing group ACORN sought to empower marginalized communities.

Its critics, though, believed ACORN exemplified everything wrong with liberal ideals, promoting government waste and ineffective activism. These competing perceptions exploded on the national stage in 2009, just as Barack Obama became president. Fueled by a YouTube video made by undercover journalists, ACORN’s very existence would be challenged. Produced and directed by Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard, ACORN and the Firestorm, airing Monday, June 8, 2020 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV, goes beyond the 24-hour news cycle and cuts to the heart of the great political divide.