Listen to ACORN's Voice

Campus Report ^ | August 11, 2009 | Mytheos Holt

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Listen to ACORN’s Voice

by: Mytheos Holt, August 11, 2009

On August 4, Campus Progress, the youth arm of the Center for American Progress (CAP), released a document to its subscribers entitled “A Guide to In-District Lobbying,” which is designed to give young voters tips on how to fight for particular public policy issues. And while the Center’s bloggers recently denounced town hall criticism of the Obama health care plan as being “coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms,” its “Guide” includes instructions which were developed with the help of radical persons inspired by the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).

On page six of the document appears a list of 12 “Tips for Effective Grassroots Organizing” with the following attribution: “This section was developed with the help of trainings from Wellstone Action. You can learn more about Wellstone Action at Wellstone.org.”

According to said website, “Wellstone Action’s mission is to honor the legacy of Paul and Sheila Wellstone by training, educating, mobilizing and organizing a vast network of progressive individuals and organizations to engage in their tradition of politics.” The group was founded by Jeff Blodgett, a former volunteer and campaign manager for the late Senator Wellstone (D-MN).

Prior to Wellstone’s run for the Minnesota Senate, he had served both as a professor at Carleton University and as a community organizer with the Organization for a Better Rice Country (OBRC), as detailed in his 1978 book entitled How the Rural Poor Got Power: Narrative of a Grass-Roots Organizer, now available in a 2003 reprint from University of Minnesota Press and online with Google books. However, then-Professor Wellstone’s work as a community organizer was by no means exclusive to OBRC....