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ACORN's muscling for money is nothing new
ACORN has used threats and intimidation to advance its agenda since its founding in 1970 by Wade Rathke, who adapted the tactics he learned as a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society - a group former New Leftist David Horowitz describes as "the first terrorist political cult."

In 1969, Rathke started a Massachusetts chapter of the militant Welfare Rights Organization founded by George Wiley. As Horowitz explains in his book, "The Shadow Party," Wiley used the Cloward-Piven strategy (named for left-wing Columbia University sociologists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven) to purposely overwhelm New York's welfare system and thereby encourage either increased benefits or social upheaval.

Rathke was later arrested for incitement to riot in Springfield, Mass. when the welfare recipients he led in a demonstration turned into a violent rock- and bottle -throwing mob.

ACORN's so-called "muscle for money" strategy extorts "donations" from targeted government and corporate officials by offering them Mafia-like protection from protests by the group's own paid thugs, many of them convicted felons. ACORN has also blocked bank mergers until the targeted financial institutions agreed to change their lending policies to ACORN's satisfaction....

...Hundreds of ACORN members swarmed into the Washington Hilton in 1995, grabbing the microphone and forcing then- House Speaker Newt Gingrich to cancel his planned speech. Two years later, they pushed over a metal detector and prevented Chicago aldermen from leaving a closed session of the City Council.

And a bus full of profanity-chanting ACORN members targeted the private home of then Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, who complained that the protesters badly frightened his wife and children, during their "living wage" campaign....