New Orleans     Political bullies get frustrated when they don’t get their way.  We see this on the regular in the USA with our lame duck president every time reality intrudes on his make believe world and his attempts to get his way.  Recently, we saw this in Toronto when Ontario Premier Doug Ford lashed out viciously at ACORN.

ACORN Canada and Ford know each other well.  His late brother was mayor of Toronto, as was he before moving up the ladder to the premier slot over all of Ontario, where the bulk of the Canadian population resides.  We tussled frequently over the years, and it’s usually been over our demands for improvements and rights for tenants and his protection of landlords, and this was the case again.  He was proposing elimination of some protections for tenants.  He also was carrying the water for the landlord association in trying to thwart any attempt to implement rent controls.

In the provincial parliament, he was getting a lot of what he wanted, but not everything.  ACORN joined with others in a loud protest from the gallery of the Ontario parliament.  Usually, this would be just par for the course, but this time Ford lost his cool.  He called out ACORN.  He yelled and threatened.  He was going to have us audited, he claimed.  He knew us from his time as mayor, and didn’t like us then or now, and so forth.  A display that was, frankly, pretty un-Canadian in many ways, where what is called “Minnesota nice” would actually seem a bit rude. In fact, his outburst was so out there that it warranted a mention in the New York Times.

            Sadly, these kinds of attacks on ACORN, its leaders, and members are pretty common around the world, not only in the scurrilous assaults more than fifteen years ago in the States, but in other countries as well like France and Tunisia, or where we have been sued by landlords in the UK, and threatened over our organizing in Mumbai by Modi and his party for seeking rights for residents of Dharvi in redevelopment plans.  We joined other organizations in a rally of over a thousand within days.  We launched a protest petition over Ford and his actions on our website and 23,000 signed within days.  ACORN Canada is organized in local groups, but in response to the Ford attack, so many people were rushing to our website to join ACORN that Judy Duncan, the head organizer, and John Anderson, the field director, had to create a separate membership category to track “unaffiliated” members in the offices, as opposed to our regular members.  We didn’t poke the bear over his threatened audit.  He probably found out from his aides fairly quickly that it was all bluff and bluster, since we receive no money from the Ontario government for him to take away.

The simple rule, which ACORN followed without blinking in Canada, was “don’t bend, don’t break.”  It’s working.  It’s the way to deal with bullies.  These are lessons we’ve learned, perhaps the hard way.  Maybe others should try this as well?