I have two degrees from the University of Arizona (Political Science and Entrepreneurship). This isn't to toot my own horn, it's to say that had I wanted to, I could've gone any number of ways after college (graduated in 1998). As it is, I thrashed around for a bit working part time jobs and cobbling together a meager income before getting very active in politics just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As the plans for war were being rolled out, my girlfriend and I were rolling out a plan of our own to walk to D.C. in protest of the invasion. We returned in the chaos of the nascent occupation, amongst the vile defiling of Iraq's, nay, the world's, historic national treasures to the chaos of a presidential campaign, a Peace Movement in shock and awe, and a world reeling from the disaster in Iraq. This is the environment in which I began my relationship with ACORN.
We got back to Tucson and holed ourselves up in my girlfriend's Fox News watching, Republican "very conservative" grandmother's brick house, half an hour out of town in a dusty community around the corner from the middle of nowhere. Having just gone vegetarian (not too hard after you've seen the way cattle are raised in this country), I found a job in town, ironically waiting tables at a steakhouse. We had heard a little bit about some of the presidential candidates that were vying for the Democratic nod, so we did our research and picked a candidate. We found a group that was meeting in support of our chosen candidate and began going to their regular meetings. At a meeting after the February PPE (Presidential Preference Election), I announced that I was looking for work and one of the other volunteers referred me to ACORN.
I had no idea at the time what ACORN did, but after being poverty stricken and homeless for months and then having to claw my way back into regular society, $24K/yr plus benefits sounded good and I couldn't wait to get out of table service. So I went to interview with ACORN. I met a young man at a cafe where he handed me a stack of voter registration forms and told me to meet him back at the cafe in a few (two or three) hours. I figured that I had to get them all filled out, so I walked to the downtown library and got all twenty two or so filled out before grabbing some lunch and heading back to the cafe. I got back and the young man was shocked that I had gotten them all filled out. We rode back to the office together where I met and interviewed with the State Head Organizer. She told me of long hours, hard work and 3 months of training in Phoenix. Undeterred, she hired me on.
I worked for ACORN in Mesa, Phoenix and Tucson for about a year and a half all told, moving from Community Organizer to Head Organizer in short order. Arizona was considered a battleground state in the 2004 presidential election, and as such, all of the offices of Arizona ACORN were conducting a massive voter registration drives through Project Vote. We hired a whole bunch of people to canvass and collect registrations in a non-partisan drive. While ACORN is certainly progressive in it's policy stances, it is not a part of or under the sway of any political party. The concept of registering and turning out voters is often seen by progressive organizations as a way to get more progressive politicians elected.
In all this time, we had just a few bad apples who tried to pull one over on the organization and gave us registration cards that were not legitimate. The system that was in place to check against this was that we had an employee who would call each registrant to verify that they had indeed registered with one of our canvassers. When problems were found, we could easily tell if it was an isolated instance or a pattern of behavior and who was responsible because we tracked who turned in what. The problem people were fired and the problem registrations were flagged for review by the county. We registered over 20,000 voters in Pima County alone, and I'm darn proud of it.
I only go into this much detail to rebut the ridiculous campaign of outright lies and deception that the Republican Party and their handmaidens in the corporate media peddle. During my time working for ACORN, we also worked on campaigns to combat predatory lending both nationally and locally (what was that financial meltdown all about again?), increase the minimum wage in Arizona, and get slumlords to clean up their tenements. We cleaned up neighborhoods, fought for local issues (like opposing renters taxes and garbage collection rate hikes) and worked to get safer neighborhoods.
ACORN is the grassroots organization that is building the backbone of the progressive movement. They are to the poor what D-Kos is to the internet savvy, only more so because they actively reach out to those who are disenchanted, disempowered and disenfranchised. They organize lower and moderate income people to fight for their rights, their property, their concerns. They use innovative tactics of direct action (targeted specific actions with specified demands) that are effective and efficient.
One thing that has baffled both me and my girlfriend for years now is why the Peace Movement (and they're not alone) keeps using the same tired tactics that are ineffective and utterly ignored. There is a lot of power generated by 1000 people marching through the downtown streets of our city (we've since moved to Portland, so maybe that's an underestimate, but you get the point), why not use all that power? Why not harness it and direct it into a specific goal, like getting our Senators to filibuster or even just vote against war funding? Why not march 1000 people into their offices and force their hands? Why not?
ACORN is THE model for change if only we want to adopt it. They stand up for economic and social justice. They build our movement from the ground up. They are the object of Republican scorn. They are the best chance we have of creating change that empowers the people over moneyed interests on both sides of the aisle. They are taking on not just "the system", but the corporate beast that games it. For this reason, I'm calling my local chapter of ACORN tomorrow and joining.
In a world of government of, by and for the big corporations, who stands for justice? Who stands for equality and human rights? Quaint terms, I'm sure. Who will stand up for the rights of the average American to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Nobody but us, together.