Anita MonCrief, March 1, 1979 – March 22, 2025

My friend, Anita MonCrief, was a tireless campaigner for what she thought was right.

When she was a left-leaning activist earlier in life, she worked for the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). When ACORN’s corruption disgusted her, she had an epiphany and embraced the political right.

She performed a great public service when she helped to kill ACORN, long a cancer on the American body politic.

She provided invaluable insights when I worked with her for countless hours and days as I documented the wrongdoings of ACORN in my 2011 book, Subversion, Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers.

Anita testified about ACORN’s shakedown racket in court. The group would harass a company by protesting it until it coughed up some money.

Anita said in court that ACORN didn’t mind being accused of voter registration fraud because that was familiar turf and because such accusations diverted media attention away from the group’s shakedown campaigns, as reported in the book.

I regret that Anita rarely discussed anything personal with me. She wasn’t that kind of person. I knew she had a family but she didn’t talk about them much. She preferred to stay focused on the task at hand.

I found a handout from her testimony, apparently in 2012, before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, in which she provided some details of her career.

She attended the University of Alabama. She traveled to Canada to promote understanding of the United Nations system and volunteered in several countries. In 2002, she served as an election observer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on its mission to Macedonia to maintain stability during a presidential election.

She was a funny, happy warrior with an irrepressible spirit. I knew her well but wish I had known her better.

The world is worse off with her gone.

Graphic: From Anita MonCrief’s Facebook page, March 30, 2025