Red-clad protestors besieged Liberty Tax headquarters in 2005 when the company refused to comply with demands by the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), according to the company founder and chief executive officer.
Demonstrations against the Virginia Beach-based firm were part of a Muscle for Money campaign funded by the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) against mortgage loans ACORN viewed as being too costly for low-income people.
After Jackson Hewitt and H&R Block negotiated agreements with ACORN, the group's attention shifted to Liberty Tax, said the company's founder and CEO, John Hewitt. Harrassment in the ACORN campaign began with threatening letters and culminated with protests aimed against corporate offices throughout the country.
Hewitt recalled meeting Wade Rathke, ACORN's founder and then its chief organizer. "He was like a hippie right out of the 1960s," Hewitt said.
Liberty Tax agreed to make changes to give customers a better understanding of the mortgages they were receiving, but refused to go any further, Hewitt said.
"All of sudden, four bus loads of homeless people pull up in front of our headquarters here in Virginia Beach," he said. "They came pouring into the building like a Mongolian horde. There was screaming and fighting. One employee was bitten and another was scratched. They both had to go to the emergency room."
All of the protestors were arrested and Liberty Tax filed a complaint but it was later dropped because the legal expenses pursuing it would easily have exceeded hundreds of thousands of dollars, Hewitt said.
Despite it all, Liberty Tax ultimately signed a long-term agreement to pay just under $50,000 a year to an ACORN affiliate, Hewitt said.
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