Maybe the approach with the woman who mentioned ACORN is not to tell her it sounds like Fox News, but to press that point on the merits: has she visited any of the encampments or read about them? There is pretty obviously not any big money behind them, and what supplies they have are donated from ordinary people. Etc. But you've probably tried that kind of thing.
An anecdote that has encouraged me is in the opposite direction: when I was in DC last week, I was at crosswalk waiting for a light, on my way toward an #OccupyDC BoA micro-protest, which we could see and hear from across the intersection (the streets were busy with pedestrians because it was lunchtime). I turned to a conservatively dressed woman next to me and said, "These people are heroes," not knowing how she would respond (but she looked like she might well be the type to say something about ACORN). She smiled and responded: "It's about time." Later, watching the same group of #OccupyDC march noisily back toward Macpherson Square, I cheered them from the sidelines, which was all it took to get a several other lunchtime gawkers to cheer also.
I thought that meant that even in DC, where people seem very buttoned-up and conservative, there was support for the Occupiers just below the surface. But maybe that's the difference between a big east-coast city and a more rural place like your hometown. I wonder what tactics, beyond Facebook, would help garner sympathy for #OWS in such areas (and organizing around it).
Also: note this piece in today's NYT about hydrofracking pitting neighbor against neighbor in Cooperstown NY (near my hometown of Syracuse): www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/nyregion/in-cooperstowns-fight-over-gas-drilling-civility-is-fading.html. I can't even think about fracking in the beautiful Finger Lakes without getting pissed off.
Message: 16
> Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:25:25 -0700
> From: MICHAEL YATES <mikedjyates at msn.com>
>
> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Message-ID: <COL107-
> W1584D7F2FA56D110F9B14CBBD10 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
> There is a facebook page devoted to people who grew up during the 1950s
> and 1960s in my hometown of Ford City, Pennsylvania. Every now and then I
> post something of contemporary relevance. I have posted about Marcellus
> shale drilling in the area, the burning of all sorts of toxic trash in
> people's backyards, and a coupe of days ago, about OWS. Each time, the
> responses have been vitriolic. I have been called a communist, a person
> with ulterior motives, a person pressing his agenda on others, a deeply
> unhappy person, a person trying to ruin the happy memories of others, and
> so forth. People won't even admit that there was and is lots of racism in
> the town. I was called unhappy for bringing this up. In the OWS post, I
> simply asked what people from and in my hometown thought of OWS. When one
> person replied with nonsense about how ACORN was behind this and it was all
> a plot by Obama to manipulate us, I responded by saying that this seemed
> straight out of Fox News. Then all hell br!
> oke loose. The consensus seemed to be that the site was suppposed to be
> about people's happy memories of those halcyon days when they grew up. When
> all was right with the world. Something was seriously wrong with me for
> bringing up politics. One person said that the town was such a happy place
> that when we left the town, we all got a rude awakening from the real
> world. And she doubted that we talked about or knew about politics when we
> were young. OWS has hit a nerve for maybe millions of us. However, while
> my hometown is today a particularly fucked up place, I always try to
> remember that there is plenty of hate out there for us too. So we really do
> need to stick together, to act as if an injury to one of us really is an
> injury to all of us. Let's disagree, vigorously and sometimes impolitely,
> but let's always give the right answer to the question, Which Side Are You
> On.
>
-- -- Chris Sturr Co-editor, Dollars & Sense 29 Winter St. Boston, Mass. 02108 phone: 617-447-2177, ext. 205 fax: 617-447-2179 email: sturr at dollarsandsense.org