A Brief History of ACORN

ACORN is the largest community organizing group in the United States. It has chapters in 110 cities in 40 states. ACORN and its affiliates have an annual budget of over $100 million, over 1,000 employees, and nearly 500,000 dues‐paying families. ACORN emerged out of the anti‐poverty activism of the 1960s. By the late 1960s, one of those groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), had built an organization with affiliates in 60 cities across the country. But because it focused exclusively on welfare recipients, its narrow constituency base guaranteed that it would remain a marginal force in the nation's politics. George Wiley, NWRO's leader, and Wade Rathke, one of NWRO's best organizers, believed that the time was ripe to build a broader multi‐racial movement for economic justice, with a membership base of lowincome people, including the working poor, but with support from middle‐class allies. In 1970, Rathke agreed to go to Little Rock, Arkansas and try a different approach. He started a new group called ACORN (it initially stood for Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now). At first it organized welfare recipients and low‐income working families around issues that could unite them, including free school lunches, Vietnam veterans' rights, hospital emergency room care, and unemployment. ACORN soon expanded in Arkansas and started building chapters in other cities throughout the South, then later in other parts of the country. By 1975, it was organizing in eight cities in three states. Five years later, ACORN had chapters in 35 cities in 24 states. By 1990, ACORN counted 40 chapters in 27 states. Its growth continued in the 1990s, so by 2000 it had 46 affiliates in 29 states. After 2000, ACORN rapidly accelerated its expansion effort, growing to 92 cities in 35 states by 2005, then to 103 cities in 37 states two years later. As a result of its expansion outside Arkansas, the group kept its name but soon revised the acronym to stand for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Most people, however, simply know the group as ACORN. ACORN has focused on issues that improve living and working conditions for low‐income Americans, including housing, mortgage discrimination, schools, wages, welfare, health care, and voting rights. ACORN identifies issues by knocking on doors in low‐income neighborhoods and bringing people together in local chapters. There are thousands of local groups around the country engaged in community organizing around similar issues. What makes ACORN unusual, and what accounts for its significant growth, is its "federated" structure. ACORN is a national organization with state offices and local chapters. This allows ACORN to conduct organizing campaigns simultaneously at the neighborhood, local, state and federal levels. As a result, its chapter members are often "in motion" on a variety of issues, and so that its local organizations can link up with their counterparts around the country to change national policy on key issues that can't be solved at the neighborhood or municipal level. ACORN organizers recruit leaders and identify issues by regularly knocking on doors in low‐income neighborhoods. People tell ACORN organizers about the problems they face in their communities. These conversations became the basis of local organizing campaigns to improve conditions. Its organizing staff works to build strong local organizations and local leaders that can influence municipal and county governments, and local corporations or other employers and institutions (such as hospitals) to address the needs of the poor and their neighborhoods. Neighborhood organizing defines ACORN's core issues. At the local level, ACORN members can be organizing to close down a crack house, clean up vacant lots and turn them into parks, put up stop signs to prevent children from getting killed at a dangerous intersection, or counsel people on how to negotiate with their bank to stop a foreclosure. But when national leaders and staff recognize problems that are energizing members in several cities, they can consider whether the issue can also be effectively addressed by changes in state or federal policy. Because many problems cannot be solved solely at the neighborhood or city level, ACORN also educates its members about the importance of mobilizing at the state and national levels. ACORN employs a staff of researchers and lobbyists in its national offices in Brooklyn, New York and Washington, DC to serve the needs of local chapters. So at the same time that ACORN is tackling local issues, its members may also be mobilizing voters to approve a referendum to raise the state minimum wage, or push Congress to pass a federal law tightening rules against mortgage abuse by banks or to enact universal health insurance, or meeting with top executives of major banks to push them to change their business practices to be more consumer friendly. For example, during one week in July 2008, the New York Times reported on ACORN's successful campaign to save 5,881 rental units of working class housing in Brooklyn. The Las Vegas Review‐Journal and the Orlando (Florida) Sentinel reported on ACORN's local voter registration drives. The Pittsburgh Post‐Gazette recounted an ACORN demonstration at a local bank, with members blowing whistles and chanting "Criminal offenders, predatory lenders." The New Orleans Times‐Picayune described ACORN's ongoing work to rebuild homes in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood battered by Hurricane Katrina. A Connecticut paper described ACORN's counseling program that helped homeowners save their houses, and local media in Tucson, Arizona reported ACORN's campaign to pressure local officials to adopt a law to prevent unfair lending practice. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill pushed by ACORN that will help desperate California homeowners avoid foreclosure. The Dallas Morning News reported on ACORN's campaign to expand health insurance in Texas, while dozens of papers highlighted ACORN's key role in a national coalition of unions, consumer and religious groups to fight for universal health care. Most of ACORN's members are low‐income, predominantly black and Latino residents of urban neighborhoods, although there are also white and Asian members in some of its chapters. ACORN members pay dues, but these don't provide sufficient resources to pay for the group's operations, so it also depends on local fundraising (such as bake sales, raffles, and annual dinners) and grants from philanthropic foundations and wealthy donors. In its earliest years, most ACORN organizers and researchers were drawn from idealistic college graduates. Increasingly, ACORN has sought to recruit organizers from among its volunteer leaders, in order to employ a staff that is more like its members. Since its founding in 1970, ACORN has mobilized low‐income and working class Americans to challenge powerful banks, corporations, and government officials around such issues as wages for the working poor, predatory lending and foreclosures, welfare reform, public education, affordable housing, and voting rights. It has registered millions of Americans, mostly poor people, to vote. ACORN's success has depended on staking out progressive stances, mobilizing poor people, especially its dues‐paying members, on issue campaigns, and enlisting allies among foundations, unions, religious groups, and politicians. ACORN is often called a "protest" group because it often organizes rallies, demonstrations, and pickets to draw attention to its campaigns – public events that generate media attention. But much of ACORN's success is due to its less visible activities. ACORN staff conduct research that help frame issues and become reliable sources of information for reporters – for example, research on the discriminatory lending patterns of specific banks. ACORN engages in quiet negotiations and lobbying with politicians and other government officials as well as top executives of corporations. ACORN organizers spend much of their time canvassing neighborhoods, talking to residents about their problems and recruiting them to attend meetings with their neighbors. Once ACORN staffers have identified potential leaders, they spend many hours talking with them in their kitchens, church basements, and other meeting places, helping them talk about their frustrations and training them in such leadership skills as chairing meetings, negotiating with people in powerful positions, and public speaking. At the same time, ACORN recognizes the limits of protest as a tactic as well as the limits of community organizing as a strategy. One of ACORN's strengths is its combination of "inside" and "outside" tactics and strategies. ACORN's activists and leaders often work both inside the system (organizing the poor to participate in politics) and outside the system (recognizing the need for protest and confrontation). ACORN has also learned to forge partnerships with some corporations, banks, and politicians whom it at one time opposed, recognizing that successful organizing campaigns involve negotiation, compromise, and winning over new allies. ACORN's signature issues deal with banking practices, housing, the wages of the working poor, and voting rights. Source: http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/acornstudy/acornstudy.pdf Listen to my news Podcast http://RonMills.us/news Visit My Social Media Blog http://ronmills.us/ Visit me on twitter http://Twitter.com/RainbowUSA Visit Me On Face Book http://RonMills.us/facebook My Biz on Twitter http://Twitter.com/theRbuzz