sowing the seeds of love

Pimp, Freelance Sex Provider Ensnare Brooklyn ACORN

Last week, activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles released videos showing themselves posing as a pimp and a prostitute and getting financial advice from ACORN offices in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. ACORN has fired the employees in question, though the taint was enough for the U.S. Census Bureau to cut ties with the community-organizing group this Friday. In a statement, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis refused to defend the disgraced employees but insisted their behavior was isolated. “This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen,” the statement reads. Which may very well be true … except for the New York part.

The newest heavily edited video from O’Keefe and Giles takes the pair to ACORN’s Brooklyn office, where they ask for and receive advice on how to get a loan (say you’re “freelancing”), how to operate their brothel undetected, laundering money through intermediaries, and what to do with their excess cash. “When you buy the house with a back yard. You get a tin … and bury it down in there, and you put the money right in, and you put grass over it, and you don’t tell a single soul but yourself where it is,” an ACORN counselor suggests.

One might wonder how this ACORN employee could be so blasé about helping a pimp and prostitute run their illegal business more efficiently. Perhaps ironically, the activists (who admit to using Saul Alinksy methods so vilified by conservatives) seem to have entrapped and brought down a libertarian. “I can’t tell you don’t do it because you won’t listen to me,” the counselor tells them at one point. “It’s your business how you want to live.”

’Pimp & hooker’ catch B’klyn staff [NYP]

Pimp, Freelance Sex Provider Ensnare Brooklyn ACORN