Photo: blmurch

The white supremacist hate site, "Big Government," has made a dirty name of itself by running deceptively edited videos to promote its racist agenda. Finally, the fightback has begun.

Shirley Sherrod has expressed her intention to sue Andrew Breitbart, the racist behind that bigoted website. Deceptively edited video used to twist peoples' words in order to make false claims about them certainly deserves to be considered libelous. If the courts don't recognize this, then libel law desperately needs updating.

ACORN, an incredibly important organization, was almost completely wiped out by a classist and white supremacist smear campaign involving deceptively edited videos run on the same white supremacist blog. What did ACORN do to generate this attack? They fought poverty, educated people on how mortgages are supposed to work, and they registered poor people and people of color to vote.

Well, somebody decided not to just shut up and take it. A lawsuit has been filed this month by a former ACORN employee who was the target of those misleading videos.

From Alternet 7/14/27:

Juan Carlos Vera is suing James O'Keefe, the ACORN "pimp," and Hannah Giles (his "ho"), for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act.

Rightwing dirty-trickster and convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe and his accomplice Hannah Giles are being sued for invasion of privacy by a San Diego ACORN worker.

Juan Carlos Vera was fired by the 4-decade old anti-poverty, pro-democracy community organization after deceptively edited and secretly recorded video tapes of a meeting Vera had with O'Keefe and Giles were released by the pair and published on Republican propagandist Andrew Breitbart's websites. The tapes were then widely aired on Fox "News", as well as non-Rightwing media outlets.

Vera is suing for at least $75,000 in accordance with California's Invasion of Privacy Act which, according to the short, four-page complaint [PDF] filed at week's end in U.S. District Court, "prohibits the recording of confidential communications without the consent of all participants where there is an objectively reasonable expectation that the conversation is not being overheard or recorded."

Now, there is a call by Velvet Revolution for the people responsible for the videos lying about ACORN to be criminally prosecuted.

Yesterday, we filed a formal request with both Maryland state and Baltimore city prosecutors for criminal charges against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart for violating Maryland's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act. A copy of the letter is here. In short, when the accused videotaped employees of the Baltimore ACORN office without their knowledge or consent, they violated the law which requires two party consent.

The rightist bigots behind all of this are bullies who go after people they think are weak and powerless. However, not all of their victims are weak, nor are they powerless. Breitbart and his band of bigots may have thought that they could intimidate non white voters as well as people who discuss the racism that permeates the teabagger Astroturf scam, but their actions may very well have dire legal consequences.