http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-piven-20100422,0,1875085.storyWhy we need ACORN
The group, once a top anti-poverty organization, fought to empower those whose interests and needs get short shrift.Frances Fox Piven and Lorraine C. Minnite
April 22, 2010
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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 America, and 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 Arkansas campaigned for more 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.
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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.
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ACORN's success in the Florida minimum-wage fight came at a 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.
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Frances Fox Piven is on the political science and sociology faculty at the Graduate Center of City University of New York. Lorraine C. Minnite is the author of "The Myth of Voter Fraud."
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