As ACORN Grew, so Did Its Clout and Its Clout
by: Barbara Barrett
Mcclatchy Newspapers: Sept. 18, 2009
Washington - Long before two conservative young activists strode into an
ACORN office wearing a hidden camera, the grassroots organization had been
racking up kills in its decades-long quest to protect working-class people
from what it saw as wrongheaded corporate interests.
ACORN - the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - was
founded in 1970 by a 21-year-old organizer who wanted to try a new way of
lifting up low- and moderate-income workers.
It grew over the years, mushrooming from a one-man operation in Arkansas
to 400,000 members working in 105 cities - the largest community organizing
group in the nation.
According to Republican investigators and a top ACORN official, the
group has received some $53 million in federal funding since 1994. Other
funding comes from members' dues and foundations.
Along the way, activists helped pass state laws requiring living wages
from companies contracting with state and local governments, and raising
minimum wages. They helped monitor banks and lenders on the illegal practice
of steering minorities into certain neighborhoods. They forged deals with
corporations such as H&R Block to protect low-income earners. And they
called attention to the rising scandal of subprime lending and the
foreclosures that followed.
The non-partisan group also has helped register 1.7 million voters since
2004, many of them African-Americans and Hispanics in urban neighborhoods
who were more likely to vote Democratic.
"(ACORN) has given a voice to people who would otherwise be politically
powerless," said Peter Dreier , a professor of public policy at Occidental
College in Los Angeles who has written about ACORN's work. "And it's rubbed
the powerful forces in American society - particularly the Republican Party
and big business - the wrong way."
In recent years, the organization also found itself accused of voter
registration fraud after some of its canvassers turned in fake names to
election offices in some states. And last year, the organization's board
pushed out its founder, Wade Rathke , after learning that he had concealed
for eight years the embezzlement of nearly $1 million by his brother.
Internal ACORN notes obtained by Republican investigators found some of
the agency's top leadership worried about news coverage and angry at the
actions of Rathke.
"Leadership has no faith in staff," read the minutes of an August 2008
meeting. "Wade betrayed them."
Rep. Darrell Issa , a California Republican, used the minutes as part of
an 88-page report in July outlining what he called questionable - even
criminal - practices by the group.
The GOP staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
, of which Issa is the top Republican, accused the organization of evading
taxes, obstructing justice and improperly engaging in partisan political
activities.
Weeks after the Republican House report, two undercover conservative
activists began visiting ACORN offices across the country posing as a
prostitute and her pimp.
In many of the offices, ACORN workers kicked the couple out and called
police. But hidden-camera videos released earlier this month show ACORN
workers at a handful of offices offering tax advice that appeared to
encourage illegal activity.
Washington lawmakers reacted with fury, pushing to deny ACORN the right
to receive much of its federal funding in separate votes last week in the
House and Senate .
President Barack Obama's spokesman called the video's findings
"completely unacceptable." ACORN fired the offending employees and ordered a
halt to all new customers at its offices.
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck urged listeners to call their local
newspapers and demand that the ACORN stories be put on the front page.
Republican lawmakers lambasted the group as corrupt.
"Every day we continue to allow ACORN access to federal funding is
another opportunity for this troubled organization to misuse and abuse
taxpayer dollars," said House Minority Leader John Boehner .
Rep. David Price , a North Carolina Democrat, said the group bears
watching.
"I want to see ACORN police itself; I want to see the federal government
police ACORN," said Price, who was one of 75 House members voting against a
motion to strip federal funding because of what he considered partisan
posturing.
"It may well be there will be serious cutbacks on direct or indirect
contract work that ACORN does," Price said.
The massive community group never was launched as a national effort.
It was founded in Little Rock, Ark. , in 1970 by Wade Rathke , who had
previously worked as an organizer in Massachusetts .
"We were going to work very locally," Rathke recalled Friday in an
interview. "I'd hoped that I could build an organizing model. I knew the
chances of failure were huge."
Within a few years, the group expanded to South Dakota , then Texas and
other states, 28 in all.
Robert Fisher , a professor of community organization at the University
of Connecticut , said ACORN and its budget grew significantly during the
second Bush administration as society became more stratified.
"ACORN was being a force for progressive change," said Fisher, editor of
an upcoming book, "The People Shall Rule: ACORN, Community Organizing, and
the Struggle for Economic Justice," due out next month from Vanderbilt
University Press .
ACORN succeeded in part, he said, because it worked as a blend of local
activists backed by a national structure.
"In their campaign against H&R Block , they were able to hold
demonstrations at Block offices at 55 different sites around the nation
simultaneously, so they could get the attention of a Fortune 500 company,"
Fisher said.
The group saw itself as both radical and practical.
When H&R Block began allegedly over-charging poor workers to help them
get their Earned Income Tax Credit, ACORN picketed the group, but also
encouraged state attorneys general to take action.
Eventually, ACORN and the company signed a deal to settle their
differences and work together to educate low-income earners.
In one high-profile protest, a group of activists in Oakland, Calif. ,
padlocked themselves to a house being foreclosed on earlier this year,
working on behalf of a homeowner who was a victim of a "rip-off loan," said
Dreier of Occidental .
The group has worked within the mainstream political and economic system
as well. Last summer, ACORN chief executive officer Bertha Lewis appeared
with big-city mayors at a Washington press conference to tout mandatory
settlement conferences between lenders and borrowers prior to foreclosure
sales.
Around the country, workers at ACORN offices offer tax advice, loan
counseling and housing assistance in low-income neighborhoods - some of it
with federal funds.
In 2007, the group received $1.9 million from the Department of Housing
and Urban Development for housing counseling, resident support services and
Section 8 housing assistance, according to the database FedSpending.org.
ACORN officials say their impact has been significant.
An independent study done on behalf of ACORN found that the organization
had brought monetary benefits worth $15.2 billion from 1994 to 2004 to
moderate-income families through its work.
"Our mission is to help communities get more of a voice to better their
lives, be it through better housing, decent schools or better
neighborhoods," said Brian Kettenring , ACORN's deputy director of national
operations.
But in recent years, the organization faced difficulties as it grew, say
some observers.
"All of a sudden they had this infusion of money," Fisher said. "They
became much more of a national force. ... They needed to become more
formalized and more careful about what was going on, and they made errors."
According to the GOP investigation of ACORN, an outside legal firm
warned the agency in 2008 that it could be improperly co-mingling financial
accounts.
Meanwhile, local district attorneys in several states charged some ACORN
workers with voter registration fraud. In one highly publicized case, forms
were filled out with such names as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck .
Dreier said most of those cases were revealed after ACORN brought the
fraudulent registrations to officials' attention.
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