Beware rapacious capitalists of Wikipedia—the unions are organizing.
The last time the world heard from ACORN, the liberal community-organizing group, it had declared bankruptcy after the federal government cut its funding. A series of muckraking videos from conservative activist James O’Keefe had shown ACORN employees allegedly aiding prostitutes and pimps in criminal tax evasion, and the group came under intense media and congressional scrutiny.
Now the organization’s former head is once more attracting the ire of conservatives, this time for promoting a union-driven editing campaign on Wikipedia. What’s worse for conservative critics? It all begins in Canada.
At his blog, Wade Rathke, who founded ACORN in 1970, passed along the plan, which originated in a column at Canadian labor journal Our Times.
The idea is to launch a “Wikipedia initiative,” organizing pro-labor activists for a Wikipedia sweep to cut out or correct anti-union bias. As Derreck Blackadder, the Our Times columnist suggested:
The portrayal of workers and unions scattered all over Wikipedia is more than occasionally problematic. Sometimes it may be clear, at least to someone in the know, that an entry, or part of an entry, is ideologically anti-union. Sometimes it’s not so clear. Sometimes the “analyses” look to be genuine; sometime they look very much like something that is part of an organized effort.
Blackadder is right to be worried. Companies really do have paid PR flacks prowling on Wikipedia, usually to scrub their Wikipedia pages clean. Just ask Vonage.
Do those same operatives also branch out to broader purely political purposes? It’s likely. If Blakadder and unions are contemplating a Wikipedia initiative, it’s quite likely the other side is doing the same.
The world probably never would have heard of Blackadder’s idea if not for Rathke’s blog post on Oct. 30. The ACORN founder wrote:
The harder job of not just restoring some entries to reality but pushing some of the slants so they are able to stand straight is critical. I hope our folks have the endurance and take this notion seriously before the fiction becomes so settled in the Wiki-world that there is no longer the prospect for facts or truths in that world.
The official blog for conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation was quick to respond. “ACORN Founder Proposes Mass Pro-Union Wikipedia Editing Campaign,” read the misleading headline. (Rathke didn’t propose a thing—he was simply passing along someone else’s idea.)
That story quickly spread on Twitter thanks to a tweet from Breitbart News, and was picked up on the #tcot (top conservatives on Twitter) hashtag.
Twitter user spongedocks summed up the general sentiment: “Be careful about using Wikipedia, as ACORN is likely working in the background altering history and fact,”
No doubt conservative activists are already organizing their own counter initiative. They’ll probably want to start with Acorn Wikipedia page itself, which surely makes their continued malevolence towards the organization seem a little unbalanced:
Following the publication of the videos and withdrawal of funding, four different independent investigations by various state and city Attorneys General and the [Government Accountability Office] released in 2009 and 2010 cleared ACORN, finding its employees had not engaged in criminal activities and that the organization had managed its federal funding appropriately, and calling the videos deceptively and selectively edited to present the workers in the worst possible light.
The next great battle between labor and capital, it appears, will play out on Wikipedia.
Photo by Photography by vaxomatic/Flickr