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Rathke told SCLC that he considered McCray's book another in a long line of hit jobs on his past organization and he couldn't answer each one, even if he wanted to.
The book delves into another area entirely, the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. That's because McCray is also a seasoned political operative. McCray was raised in Arkansas, the birthplace of ACORN and home of the Clintons. He worked on their Presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996. In 2008, he jumped at the chance to work on Senator Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign.
In so doing, he created a perspective for himself, stunningly unique. He's an African American community organizer working for the opponent of an African American community organizer who will during the course of the book, pull off one of the greatest political coups, winning the Democratic nomination, of all time.
McCray points out in the book that Obama won because Clinton underestimated him from the beginning. As evidence the group of Black politicos he led, The Buffalo Soldiers, weren't brought into Iowa until weeks before the primary. Obama had his best troops on the ground months earlier.
It's a two pronged story that crescendos just as the world finds out that Dale Rathke, Wade Rathke's brother, embezzled almost a million dollars. It was at that moment that the story exploded in America at large. Of course, as whistle blowers and national board members, Reid and McCray have vantage points no one else can claim.
The book ends measuring the legacy of Wade Rathke. Rathke is an individual that continues to be an enigma wrapped up in a riddle. He's been described as everything from cold blooded, messianic, a Svengali, the most charming person alive, radical, disarming, and many others. He's probably a little bit at least of all.
In fact, it is Reid, not McCray, that knows Rathke the best. She attended dozens of board meetings also attended by Rathke. Reid got up close and personal with Rathke. "I like Wade," says Reid, both magnanimously and cryptically.
The book also describes an event that almost no one in the general public knows about: ACORN's battle with the Carlyle Group. If ever there was an organization that you could build conspiracy theories around, it is the Carlyle Group. On its board includes a former President, George HW Bush, and a former Prime Minister, John Major. It trades on its influence and is run by its ruthless leader, David Rubenstein. ACORN had a history of confronting large corporations. In fact, the book describes Reid's own confrontation with Sherwin Williams over lead in paint.
Rathke has tussled with everyone from Wal-Mart, Newt Gingrich, Countrywide Bank, along with the World Bank, the United Nations, and national banks in numerous countries.
Yet, it turned out that the Carlyle Group was different. Almost certainly, the book surmises, it was responsible for leaking the story about Dale Rathke.
The book also delves into Anita MonCrief. MonCrief fell under a lucky star when Michelle Malkin chose information MonCrief fed her as the most explosive seven pages of her best selling book Culture of Corruption.
The accounts in the book precede Malkin and MonCrief getting together by about a year, and lay remarkable context for that relationship. While Malkin acknowledged that MonCrief's hands were dirty before MonCrief turned over evidence that purported to lay blame on ACORN, she also down played it. Malkin characterized MonCrief as courageous while this book takes a totally different tact.
ACORN 8: Race, Power and Politics is a thriller, political analysis, historical document, and screenplay idea all rolled into one. If you thought you knew this story, you know nothing about the inside story of ACORN until you read ACORN 8: Race, Power and Politics.
--SCLC Magazine
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