Category: Community organizing
With bills due April 1, more than 400,000 demand Congress freeze all rent, mortgage, and utility payments
“Millions are wondering how they’ll pay their rent or mortgage by tomorrow. We need additional emergency action suspending rent, mortgage and utility payments for the duration of this crisis.” by Jake Johnson, staff writer More than…
‘Huge Victory’ for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as Federal Court rules DAPL permits violated law
“This is what the tribe has been fighting for many months. Their fearless organizing continues to change the game.” by Julia Conley, staff writer Wednesday March 25, 2020 A federal judge handed down a major victory…
Flagstaff Family Food Center updates request for help
The national and local response to COVID-19 is rapidly changing and the Flagstaff Family Food Center is being responsive to these changes. Here is our most recent update: To comply with CDC guidelines of avoiding gathering…
Six rules for organizing a grassroots regeneration revolution
We must think, act and organize locally, while simultaneously cultivating a global vision and global solidarity. by Ronnie Cummins Over the past five decades, as a food, natural health and environmental campaigner, anti-war organizer, human rights…
Nonprofit hospitals are “Confused” about charity and profits
New Orleans Over the last several years, ACORN International and the Labor Neighbor Research & Training Center have been collecting and analyzing the IRS 990 forms filed by tax exempt, nonprofit hospitals in Arkansas, Louisiana,…
There’s no Duck-and-Cover with automated warfare
Kansas City I can still remember my third grade teacher walking us through the duck-and-cover exercise and announcing as we prepared to march to the corner single file that she would be standing on the…
The Billionaire and Right-Wing’s racist lies about Redlining
New Orleans With the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency leading the way to gut the Community Reinvestment Act along with some other federal regulators, the last thing we should be doing is having to…
Field testing voter purges and “drops”
Columbus As the Voter Purge Project moves forward, we are now analyzing the voter files on more than a dozen states on our way to double that number in coming weeks, many of them include the…
Ohio battles to protect the vote
Columbus Twenty-five people made their way into the Vanderelli Room in Columbus. The art, performance, and all-around community space in the Franklinton neighborhood of the city near downtown had been offered to TrustVote and the Columbus…
Don’t mourn, hit the doors!
New Orleans What a week! It was pretty much a full-on-Trump-arade! Rarely have we read or heard so many pundits wringing their hands and tearing their hair since they were forced to walk-back the headlines…
Cooperatives need to get broadband to the countryside
New Orleans How can I say this plainly? Electric cooperatives have become increasingly less cooperative, and, frankly, not even all that electric. What was a huge breakthrough in taking electricity the last mile into rural…
Trump is right – the Democrats are a hot mess
Greenville It’s like the line about a broken clock is still right two times a day. President Trump is right that the Democrats look like the gang that can’t shoot straight and might not be competent enough…
What’s the matter with Iowa?
New Orleans I’m not one of the political junkies that stays up late on the night of the Iowa caucus to see the results. Forty years ago, ACORN organized at the Iowa caucuses. I’ve followed them…
Sorting out social and other media
New Orleans On the last day of the ACORN family’s North American Year End / Year Begin meeting several of the workshops and group discussions centered on how to do a better job with social…
Learning from King’s last campaign
Before he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. joined a campaign to unify working people of all races. Today, nothing could be more powerful. Before he died, Martin Luther King, Jr. joined a campaign to unify working…
Tenants and communities organizing in Ireland
Dublin A change in plans pushed Tunisia off of my plane ticket and found me jumping instead from Manchester, England, to Dublin, Ireland, to meet with the officers of ACORN’s newest affiliate, CATU-Ireland or Communities and…
‘We Have so much more to do,’ youth climate activists declare as global elite close out Davos forum
“It is time to get out of our comfort zones.” by Andrea Germanos, staff writer Youth climate activists marched through the streets of Davos, Switzerland Friday as the World Economic Forum wrapped up in a Fridays…
Taking on the buses in England
Sheffield ACORN in the United Kingdom is known largely as the ACORN Tenants’ Union, and no matter where we have organized, the affordable housing crisis has come to the forefront even though there is a long…
‘Our planet is seriously burning and the adults keep letting us down’: Ninth Circuit throws out youth climate case
“Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation,” wrote Judge Josephine Staton in a scathing dissent opinion. “My colleagues throw up their hands,…
The refinery disaster
Toxic refinery leaks imperiled Philadelphia residents. By Corbin Hiar / E&E News and Lisa Riordan Seville / NBC News This story is part of Toxic Zones, a series about communities near refineries co-produced with E&E News…
The cynicism of emergency aid for Puerto Rico
Newark There seem to be no limits to the vengeful pettiness of President Trump and his administration. Nowhere is that clearer than looking at the deliberate obstacles placed in the way of Puerto Rico’s recovery –…
The big, fat, long tail of neighborhood segregation
Manchester The “long tail” is a tech-marketing concept that pundits and futurists promote with some enthusiasm. The heart of it is that some businesses, especially enabled by the internet and the Amazon world view, could make…
Fight for $15 is fight for 14 euros in Europe
Amsterdam In the second meeting of what we are now calling the “The Organizing Forum” or TOF, which I choose to pronounce as TOUGH, more than forty organizers from the Netherlands, France, Brussels, the United Kingdom,…
How one Utah community fought the fracking industry — and won
Kanab, a small Utah town that’s home to the famous Best Friends Animal Society, took an unconventional path to face down a frac sand mine that threatened the region’s aquifer. By Tara Lohan, The Revelator A…
