Why We Need Acorn
The group, once a top anti-poverty organization,
fought to empower those whose interests and needs
get short shrift.
By Frances Fox Piven and
April 22, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-piven-20100422,0,1875085.story
This is a eulogy for ACORN as we knew it. Our premier anti-
poverty organization has been forced into a massive
reorganization, and its future is unclear. If we care about
democracy, we should study the story of what happened to
ACORN, or the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform
Now. It is true that in its rush to recruit people and build
its organization, ACORN was sometimes sloppy and should have
supervised its people more closely. But those faults could
have been corrected and ACORN's singular contributions to
our polity sustained.
More than any other national organization, ACORN succeeded
in bringing the voices of the poor into domestic politics.
The group had its roots in the welfare rights movement of
the mid-1960s, when impoverished Americans joined together
to demand benefits they were entitled to but often denied.
By 1966, these small local groups had banded together to
become the National Welfare Rights Organization. Their
campaign attracted young activists who called themselves
community organizers, and in 1970 the movement gave birth to
ACORN, which set out to organize a broader swath of low-
income Americans.
Sarah Palin and her ilk mock the term "community organizer"
because they are blind to the vision of an inclusive
democracy that lies behind it. The community organizers at
ACORN were deeply committed to expanding our democracy to
include people whose interests and needs otherwise get short
shrift. They were highly effective in reaching out to people
in poor and working-class neighborhoods, identifying their
concerns and fashioning strategies to resolve them. Their
small victories built community organizations, ultimately
making the group a force not only in local politics but in
state and national politics as well. ACORN held a profoundly
optimistic view of democratic possibility in
those who ridicule that vision do our country a serious disservice.
ACORN's most extreme critics have attacked the group as a
tool of some Marxist cabal intent on overthrowing American
democracy. There is irony in this. ACORN's campaigns were
inspired by nothing so much as faith in the potential of
American democracy. As far back as 1972, ACORN's
neighborhood organizations in
parks and better schools, for fair distribution of community
development funds and for an end to racially discriminatory
real estate practices. And through it all, the group
registered voters as part of a goal to increase
participation in government by low-income citizens.
The political climate of the Reagan era was hostile to an
organization devoted to building power among working and
poor people. ACORN nevertheless persevered, launching
campaigns against predatory lending and for low-cost
housing, environmental justice, a living wage and school reform.
One study by an independent analyst put the monetary value
of legislative and other victories won by ACORN in behalf of
its constituents at $1.5 billion a year between 1995 and
2005. Meanwhile, ACORN campaigns nurtured an amazing cadre
of proud local leaders, most of them African American women.
In 2004, in the battleground state of
developed a strategy to increase the electoral participation
of poor Floridians by helping put a referendum on the ballot
to raise the state's minimum wage, which at the time was
$5.15 an hour. Organizers hoped the lure of a ballot
referendum to raise wages would mobilize more liberal
voters, who would also then cast a vote in the presidential
race. In the end, George W. Bush beat John Kerry by 381,000
votes in
electorate, voted for the minimum-wage increase.
ACORN's success in the
cost. Conservatives and business leaders who opposed the
initiative took aim at the organization in hopes of
discrediting a political enemy. An alleged whistle-blower
claimed knowledge of an ACORN conspiracy to fraudulently
register voters; a major Republican law firm with ties to
the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests
launched lawsuits; and government investigations ensued. But
while there were lapses on the part of some of the people
ACORN paid to register voters, the organization was not
found to have deliberately done anything wrong.
Having Barack Obama in office does not negate the need for
an organization like ACORN. A progressive president needs a
mobilized base, and ACORN knew how to mobilize a base.
Today, the circumstances of low-income Americans are
worsening, and public policies or their absence are a large
part of the reason. As in the Depression, and again in the
1960s, we once more need wide-scale protest movements to
save American democracy. It's a shame ACORN won't be around
to help organize them.
Frances Fox Piven is on the political science and sociology
faculty at the Graduate
Copyright c 2010, The
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