ACORN

The Sixties were an important time in the history of American politics. The decade witnessed struggles for freedom for low-income people and minorities across the nation as well as a war that deeply divided all Americans. Amid the confusion and conflict, some important lessons were learned by those who cared deeply about America and her people - lessons that would endure and make a lasting impact on the nation.

One of the groups that took risks, explored new ideas and developed a unique formula for a politics of justice in America was the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), led by George Wiley. Wiley developed and led the National Welfare Rights Organization in the mid-sixties to become a national force for the needs and rights of low-income people. By 1966, the NWRO had 170 groups in sixty cities across the nation. Despite the very real needs of its members, the NWRO was destined to remain a small minority with limited power in American politics unless it could build a network of friends and allies. When this reality became clear, Wiley began an experiment that would explore the possibilities of a larger constituency for economic justice. He sent Wade Rathke, his young and highly talented organizer, to Little Rock, Arkansas to apply his creativity to the problem.

Rathke's task in Little Rock was monumental. He had to create a movement that would bring NWRO organizing to groups that should support it yet had little sympathy for its cause, such as conservative, low- and moderate-income Southern whites. Even worse, he had to do this in a state that was deeply racially divided, fundamentally conservative and run by a wealthy political elite.

But, because Wiley, Rathke and the NWRO took the cause of economic justice seriously and studied and respected the traditions of social justice movements in American history, they saw possibilities and opportunities where others did not. They founded a movement that would unite races, join neighborhoods and unify the interests and efforts of low- and moderate- income people wherever they lived or worked.

When Rathke arrived in Little Rock in 1970, he began a campaign to help welfare recipients attain their basic needs - clothing and furniture. This drive, inspired by a clause in the Arkansas welfare laws, began the effort to create and sustain a social justice movement that would grow to become the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now - ACORN.

The goal was to unite welfare recipients with working people in need around issues of free school lunches for schoolchildren, unemployed workers' concerns, Vietnam Veterans' rights and hospital emergency room care. Thus, an idea was born that would grow and adapt, thrive and flourish, and become a powerful movement from coast to coast.

The broad vision of ACORN as a movement to unify the powerless in pursuit of economic justice was not shared by all the members. The inclusion of many groups in a single coalition came with costs. These costs, however, proved to be a necessary part of the struggle to become a force for social justice in America. In particular, many welfare rights members wanted a strictly welfare rights group and withdrew from the organization, fearing that they would lose control. After the split, the organization diversified further with the addition of the Vietnam Veterans Organizing Committee (VVOC) and the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee (UWOC).

The following year, ACORN leaders organized a "Save the City" campaign in Little Rock. The campaign addressed blue-collar homeowners' concerns that their neighborhoods were being destroyed by traffic problems in the Centennial section, and by unscrupulous real estate agencies who engaged in blockbusting in the Oak Forest section. ACORN members dealt with the traffic problems (the Centennial neighborhood won a park and a stoplight to ensure the safety of their children), the expressway intrusion (families were relocated and provided other social services) and blockbusting (stopped in its tracks). ACORN, through the "Save the City" campaign, had established itself as a force in Arkansas politics.

ACORN began growing geographically, as well. It organized outside of Little Rock, establishing six regional offices in the state. Campaigns were developed around issues of concern to small town and rural Arkansans and the foundations were laid for statewide campaigns. One of the ACORN's major statewide targets was Arkansas Power and Light. AP&L's plan to build a huge coal-burning power plant in White Bluff presented a danger to farmers in the area. Sulphur emissions threatened to destroy their fields unless something could be done. ACORN began organizing farmers on the issue.

The farmers, organized into the Protect Our Land Association and Save Health and Property, demanded a $50 million damage deposit against AP&L's potential destruction of farmers' fields. Then, ACORN groups applied pressure on Governor Dale Bumpers, and Harvard University, a stockholder in AP&L. These pressures resulted in a Harvard-financed study on the hazards of sulphur emissions and a Public Service Commission ruling to decrease the size of the plant by one half. As a result, AP&L dropped the plan altogether. ACORN proved that it could organize in any setting and that ACORN members could contend effectively with even the big corporate players.

Source: Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Inc.

Wade Rathke is the founder and Chief Organizer of ACORN and SEIU Local 100. He began his career as an organizer for the NWRO (National Welfare Rights Organization) in Springfield, Massachusetts. After working with the NWRO, he left for Little Rock, Arkansas, to found a new organizing effort designed to unite poor and working class families around a common agenda.

This community organizing initiative in Arkansas eventually grew into ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) the largest organization of lower income and working families in the United States, with 175,000 dues-paying families spread across about eighty-two staffed offices in American cities. The ACORN family of organizations includes radio stations (KNON and KABF), publications, housing development and ownership (ACORN Housing), and a variety of other supports for direct organizing and issue campaigns, such as Project Vote and the Living Wage Resource Center. ACORN International has recently opened staffed offices in Lima, Peru, and Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. Several Mexico offices are slated to open in 2005.

Wade Rathke is also founder and Chief Organizer of Local 100, Service Employees International Union, which is headquartered in New Orleans with operations in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. Founded in 1980 in New Orleans as an independent union of Hyatt employees, the union became part of SEIU in 1984. Local 100 organizes public sector public workers, including school employees, Head Start, and health care workers, as well as lower wage private sector workers in the hospitality, janitorial, and other service industries.

His work in the labor movement includes three terms as Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO. He is the president and co- founder of the SEIU Southern Conference, and a member of the International Executive Board of SEIU, and Chief Organizer of HOTROC (the Hotel and Restaurant Organizing Committee) a multi-union organizing project for hospitality workers in New Orleans sponsored by the AFL-CIO and its president, John Sweeney.

Three years ago, Rathke also created the Organizers' Forum, which brings together senior organizers in labor and community organizations in dialogues about challenges faced by constituency-based organizations, such as tactical development, organizing new immigrants, using technology, utilizing capital strategies and corporate campaign techniques, or understanding the impacts and organizing challenges of globalization.

Since 2004, Rathke has directed the Centre for Community Leadership, based in Vancouver, British Columbia and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A project of the Columbia Foundation, the Community Leadership Centre works to build a more progressive democracy in Canada and the Americas by training organizers to build partnerships between community organizations and labor unions. The Centre will: 1) identify and train community leaders and organizers to initiate and implement campaign-based initiatives on critical community issues, and 2) assist in the formation of sustainable local community or campaign-based organizations capable of effecting social change at the local, provincial/state or federal level.

Wade Rathke is a longtime member of the Tides Foundation Board of Directors, and Board Chair of the Tides Center, which provides core management services to new and existing nonprofit organizations promoting social change. He is also the publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy, a magazine that explores issues, campaigns, and challenges in labor and community organizing.

He lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.