California ACORN Helps Stop Ballot Measures That Threatened Schools, Unions
State Treasurer Phil Angelides speaks next to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at a Get Out the Vote rally.
On November 8th, the hard work of California ACORN members and union members around the state paid off when four harmful propositions were defeated in the state's special election. The propositions would have placed crippling restrictions on school funding and teacher tenure, taken authority to redistrict from legislators, and curtailed the political voice of union members.
Two days before the election, Los Angeles ACORN helped lead a rally of over 350 people in attendance. ACORN leader Sara Araiza spoke to the crowd, assembled labor leaders, and elected officials about the devastating effect the propositions would have on our schools and urged the crowd to work hard to get out the vote.
In the campaign to defeat these propositions, 300-400 California ACORN organizers visited potential voters each day in the week before election day, and 670 ACORN election workers hit the streets on November 8th. California ACORN knocked on 191,689 doors to contact 84,208 voters in over 600 precincts. This Get Out The Vote (GOTV) effort represented California ACORN’s largest voter mobilization in its 20-year history, and was ACORN’s contribution to the largest labor/community, grassroots GOTV field program ever conducted in the Golden State.