ACORN’s Nutty Regime for Cities

City Journal ^ | Spring 2003 | Sol Stern

[Hobsonphile]

If you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation’s inner cities, and you’re likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12-hour days to “organize the poor” and bring about “social change.” The largest radical group in the country, ACORN has 120,000 dues-paying members, chapters in 700 poor neighborhoods in 50 cities, and 30 years’ experience. It boasts two radio stations, a housing corporation, a law office, and affiliate relationships with a host of trade-union locals. Not only big, it is effective, with some remarkable successes in getting municipalities and state legislatures to enact its radical policy goals into law.

Community organizing among the urban poor has been an honorable American tradition since Jane Addams’s famous Hull House dramatically uplifted the late-nineteenth-century Chicago slums, but ACORN and Addams are on different planets philosophically. Hull House and its many successors emphasized self-empowerment: the poor, they thought, could take control of their lives and communities through education, hard work, and personal responsibility. Not ACORN. It promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor. As a result, not only does it harm the poor it claims to serve; it is also a serious threat to the urban future.

[Hobsonphile]

As a former Baltimore resident, I shudder to think what will happen to an already declining Baltimore if ACORN really does succeed in pushing its agenda there.

[Hobsonphile]

Urban ping!

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[AppyPappy]

Better read this first

ACORN is a sweat-shop

[Illbay]

I'm having a hard time believing this. NOW has maybe 5,000 dues paying members, and you never hear a thing about any "woman's issue" but that they are consulted.

If any Leftist organization had such a membership and such clout, you'd hear about 'em every single day. Rush would make them the focus of every show.

This is poppycock.

[Hobsonphile]

NOW attempts to influence national policy- it appears that ACORN's focus is local. Perhaps that might explain why those who live outside urban areas haven't heard of the organization.

CJ is based in New York City, which is why they discuss issues that seem foreign to some.

[Hobsonphile]

They mention ACORN's hypocrisy on that front in the article.

[PrincessB]

I'd be curious to see what happens when there is litigation. Some of these laws are nutty and will hopefully be thrown out by judges.

[Illbay]

It is not in the interest of groups like this to be ignored. NOW has clout far outside its numbers because it works hard to get noticed.

I'm simply saying that this 120,000 number is probably from an ACORN press release. I feel sure it is nowhere near accurate.

BTW, N.O.W. claims it has "more than half a million contributing members" on its website, but NEVER releases official figures. Watchdog groups put the REAL number at about 5,000.

By rule of thumb, I'll bet your ACORN has no more than 2,000 or so.

[Hobsonphile]

You may be right. Perhaps I can talk to CFBF about investigating this group.