2010 Voter Information Guide, which features information about registering to vote, finding your polling place, sample ballots, election dates and much more,

and, for those of you who feel a greater responsibility than I do to vote for every down-ballot item (such as all the judicial elections):

Meet and Learn about Judicial Candidates, offers information about a May 20 forum (sponsored by Southwestern School of Law and the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles County – and featuring the Honorable Judith McConnell and KCET’s Val Zavala) to meet the 21 candidates running for 6 Superior Court seats in Los Angeles County.  The event is  free, but registration – by May 17 – is required.

I could remember little of the book, except for the author’s observation about the saturation of commercial advertising in contemporary society: while ubiquitous in our culture, it was unknown in previous times.

Chapter 7 opens with these words:

“In the cities in which we live, all of us see hundreds of publicity images every day of our lives.  No other kind of image confronts us so frequently.

In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.”

I drive through West Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard nearly every day – past billboard after billboard towering overhead, supergraphics draped around buildings, and a digital billboard that cycles through a repertoire of fleeting commercials.  Let’s grant that this garish homage to commercialism may have a place.  The Strip has more in common, after all, with Las Vegas or Times Square, than with my Los Feliz neighborhood.

But, with the activists at the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight and Scenic America, I hope we can preserve and restore the better part of our natural world and the neighborhoods we live, work, and play in – as well as most of the streets we traverse (if not Sunset in West Hollywood) – from the pervasive presence of commercial images and messages.

If West Hollywood wishes the Sunset Strip to be a showcase of commercial billboards, so be it. But this represents a social choice, not an immutable law of nature, or a constitutional right of outdoor advertising companies.  That choice is what’s at issue in the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight’s campaign to reclaim our public spaces.

(Image of a pair of billboards towering over Sunset Boulevard in the heart of West Hollywood.)

Win or lose, Obama has pursued health care reform as tenaciously as any president has pursued any domestic initiative in decades. Health care has now been his presidency’s central domestic focus for a full year. That’s about as long as it took to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, originally introduced by John F. Kennedy and driven home by Lyndon Johnson. Rarely since World War II has a president devoted so much time, at so much political cost, to shouldering a single priority through Congress. It’s reasonable to debate whether Obama should have invested so heavily in health care. But it’s difficult to quibble with Emanuel’s assessment that once the president placed that bet, “He has shown fortitude, stamina, and strength.”
The fight has opened a second window into Obama. The key here is his 2008 campaign assertion that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America” more than Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton did. The health care struggle suggests that Obama views changing that trajectory as the ultimate measure of a presidency’s success. His aim is to establish a long-term political direction — one centered on a more activist government that shapes and polices the market to strengthen the foundation for sustainable, broadly shared growth. Everything else — the legislative tactics, even most individual policies — is negotiable. He wants to chart the course for the supertanker, not to steer it around each wave or decide which crates are loaded into its hull.
– Ronald Brownstein, “Obama And The Supertanker: The Constant in Obama’s Presidency has been His Determination to Chart a New Course,” National Journal, Saturday, March 20, 2010.

(Image from YouTube video of interview with Reno Gazette-Journal.)

Near the end of our interview I asked Amy Schur what her biggest challenges were – and what was in store for ACCE going forward.  Here is what I learned:

The organization is taking great pains to focus on organizational development, putting into place strong financial management and governance structures, human resources staff systems, and staff and board training programs.

Early in our interview she offered a summary of ACORN’s mistakes, which began with the failure, as the organization grew and acquired a measure of power, to invest in the quality infrastructure both to support its work and to adequately defend itself against attacks.

The steps ACCE is taking are designed to remedy this failure.  (Note that her critique matches the assessment of the Harshbarger report, while her focus for ACCE in the coming months overlaps with the roadmap the Harshbarger report lays out for ACORN.)

“Beyond that, we’re focused on what we do,” she told me, explaining that the organization’s leadership believed that it had freed itself in some measure from the ACORN controversies.  So, at this stage, it could draw on what had been California ACORN’s strengths, while leaving behind the encumbrances.

“People are hopeful,” she told me.  “It’s thrilling to be on the ground floor” creating a new organization.  She expressed confidence that they would succeed.

I asked her about whether there had been disputes with national ACORN.  (I believe that Illinois ACORN’s break from the national organization had not been amicable.)  She said that the national organization had been supportive.

“They wish us luck.”  ACORN has passed a resolution that they will not compete with ACCE in California.

I noted that the ACCE office in Los Angeles had been the ACORN office before the split, and asked about conflicts over assets.

ACORN terminated the lease – which is now held by ACCE – after the state board decided to break away.  ACCE will purchase computers, office furniture and other assets from ACORN at fair market prices – being negotiated by attorneys.  (As our interview began a few minutes late, Amy Schur remarked that she had been spending quite a bit of time on the phone with attorneys.)

Did she expect other states to follow California’s lead and break away?  Had she had calls from ACORN leaders of other chapters?

She acknowledged that other states might be exploring their options.  (New York ACORN, of course, has subsequently split off from the national group to form Communities for Change.)

When we spoke there was an interim board of directors in place – ‘interim’ because of plans to establish a deliberately bottom-up structure for ACCE.  The board of directors will be composed of elected officers of ACCE’s chapters throughout the state.  ACCE members were meeting the first weekend in February to draft by-laws.  A range of decisions had to be made.  (For instance, should city boards consisting of grassroots leaders – dues paying officers – have one delegate each on the state board, or should there be proportional representation?)

ACCE has also established an advisory council – consisting of nonprofit and civic leaders with experience in management, oversight, and training issues – to guide ACCE in developing a viable organization with the strengths that ACORN lacked.

Amy Schur was heartened by the help the organization has received.  She meets with a transition oversight committee every week – setting up operations.  The group has been highly engaged and helpful.

“I’ve been amazed,” she said, noting that in a time of crisis, you have to reach out to your friends and supporters.  Many people shared “a desire to help ACCE succeed.”

In a previous post I offered a long list of doubts about whether ACORN was likely to succeed.  Subsequent events – related to New York ACORN’s split – have reinforced those doubts.

I have few doubts about ACCE’s prospects for success.  I have been impressed by what I’ve learned about this grassroots group.  The bottom-up structure, commitment to democratic principles, and focus on local neighborhoods are great strengths.  The leadership is committed to developing more robust tools for financial management, governance, and training for staff and boards.

I believe ACCE will prove its effectiveness as an independent organization giving voice to low- and middle-income Californians.

ACCE is a 501(c)(4) organization: a nonprofit public benefit corporation incorporated in California on December 8, 2009.  A separate affiliated organization, a 501(c)(3), the Community Empowerment Education Fund, was incorporated on the same day.

(The image is a photograph of the building that houses ACCE’s Los Angeles headquarters.)

Previous posts in this series:

• Fourth post: California ACORN Was Unified in Deciding to Break Away
• Third post: California ACORN’s Choice: Stay with ACORN or Go It Alone
• Second post: Simmering Dissent Within ACORN Preceded Break Up
• First post: The Birth of ACCE: First Post in a New Series

• “The level of controversy had become a significant distraction for us,” said Schur, who said members raised the idea of forming a new organization at a statewide board meeting in Oakland in October.  (“California ACORN breaks off into new nonprofit group,” Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2010)

In reading this LA Times’ account of the founding of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, I was intrigued by the reference to the October 2009 board meeting.  Roughly three months had elapsed between the meeting of the state board of ACORN and the launch of ACCE.  That is not a lot of time to reach a decision to break away, and then do everything required to get a new nonprofit up and running.

Furthermore, I would have expected thorny disagreements about severing ties with the national organization.  Wouldn’t community leaders who had been affiliated with ACORN for many years be resistant to leaving?

When I sat down to interview Amy Schur in February, I anticipated hearing that at least a faction of loyalists had opposed the proposal to split off from ACORN.

Instead, I learned that while these engaged activists had invested much of themselves in California ACORN, they reached consensus about breaking away without protracted disagreement.

Amy Schur advised me that these community leaders (all volunteers – “They don’t get a dime”) put in a huge number of hours every week – in addition to jobs and families and everything else in their lives.  Many, she told me, say that “ACORN is like their second family.”

“It was extremely painful,” she said of the decision to break away. “It took a while to get there.” But the state board, she, and other staff members all came to agree that leaving ACORN and going it alone was best.

When I asked about dissenters, she replied that there was a “united front.”

“The work on the ground,” kept the group the group focused on what was most important: serving ACORN members.

“It speaks well to the principles we’re grounded in,” she said of the unanimity about continuing the organization’s work in low- and moderate-income communities.  “It is a tribute to ACORN.”

“We never strayed from our mission.”  She suggested that Wade Rathke should get some credit for that steadfast focus.  Leaders are in neighborhoods, not in board rooms.  They remain grounded in principles important to them.

“We worked very hard to keep our organization democratic,” she continued.  “I think it helps significantly when it comes to making difficult decisions.”

As it turned out, the decentralization of ACORN – alluded to in September 2009 as a reason California ACORN offices wouldn’t close – ensured a smooth transformation of the organization into the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (much as Illinois ACORN transformed into Action Now).  Those offices (now ACCE offices) stayed open, of course.

Democratic decision-making and autonomy at the chapter level, plus an unwavering focus on neighborhoods, made the break from ACORN – and birth of ACCE – possible.

Next post: ACCE’s Challenges and Its Prospects for Success

(The image is a photograph taken in a small community in San Luis Obispo County by ghindo via Flickr.)

Previous posts in this series (after an interview with Amy Schur):

• Third post: California ACORN’s Choice: Stay with ACORN or Go It Alone
• Second post: Simmering Dissent Within ACORN Preceded Break Up
• First post: The Birth of ACCE: First Post in a New Series

On September 19, 2009 – just over a week after the first of the undercover videos had been released – P.J. Huffstutter and Kate Linthicum reported in the Los Angeles Times (“ACORN scaling back or shutting down in many cities”) that ACORN offices across the country had been shut down; cities without an ACORN presence – where there had been one before – included Chicago, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, and Omaha.

There was no ACORN office in Chicago because Illinois ACORN had broken away from the national organization nearly two years earlier and been transformed into Action Now.  Madeline Talbott, the leader who had initiated this transformation, offered an above the fray perspective on the continuing turmoil roiling ACORN.  While empathizing with ACORN’s leaders (her former colleagues), she expressed a sigh of relief at not being stuck in the mess that ACORN was still mired in.

“I’m so relieved not to be part of the organization anymore, and so sad because they are trying to clean things up.”

At that point California ACORN showed no signs – at least publicly – of bolting from the national organization.  Amy Schur (lead organizer of California ACORN at that time; now executive director of ACCE) expressed confidence that California ACORN’s 12 offices would remain open, remarking for the Times’ report that membership had increased and funding was stable.

Membership and funding were closely linked for ACORN because, as Ms. Schur explained to me when we spoke on February 2, individual membership fees were a primary source of funding.  Active members of California ACORN, including all community leaders serving on city and state boards, paid dues of $10 a month.  Many members, she told me, had their dues deducted automatically.  So this was a reliable source of operating revenue.  (And much more significant than the federal dollars that Congress cut off following the hidden camera controversy; she advised me that in 2008 only 7% of California ACORN’s funding – money for foreclosure prevention – was from the federal government, while the figure for ACORN nationally was roughly 10%.)

During our interview, she noted that at ACORN (a national organization with state chapters) some functions were centralized, while others were left to the states.  She described this division as “an interesting mix,” while noting, “There was tremendous autonomy around program,” for the states.  Each chapter’s elected community leaders set the direction of the organization and its activities.  Every city with an active ACORN chapter had a board; representatives of each board sat on a state board.

In speaking with the Times in September, she had pointed to this decentralized structure as ensuring that turmoil for ACORN in one part of the country would not inevitably lead to trouble elsewhere.

“Our organization is under attack,” she was quoted in the Times’ September 19 report.  “But we’re going to come out of this just fine.”

Whether or not Amy Schur and California ACORN activists had already begun to consider breaking away at that point – they might have noted wistfully that their former colleagues from Chicago were no longer weighted down with ACORN baggage.

This was, in any case, only nine days after release of the first surreptitiously filmed video. By the time of ACORN’s October 2009 state board meeting – as the repercussions from that episode continued to play out – the situation had become “a huge distraction,” Amy Schur told me.  She also mentioned the national organization’s financial crisis and the “brand damage” ACORN had suffered.

Whatever reasons there might have been to stay, the reasons for breaking away had grown more compelling.

Next post: California ACORN Was Unified in Deciding to Break Away

Previous posts in this series (after an interview with Amy Schur):

• Second post: Simmering Dissent Within ACORN Preceded Break Up
• First post: The Birth of ACCE: First Post in a New Series

“As is often the case at nonprofit groups, one act of a wrongdoing can be a symptom of other problems at an organization.
Acorn has been grappling with questions about the role of Wade Rathke, an exceptionally able and charismatic organizer who founded the charity in 1970 and recruited a talented cadre of young and loyal organizers, many of whom, along with Mr. Rathke, have worked for the organization throughout its entire history. That loyalty is impressive — but it also caused big problems when the organization faced serious challenges.”  (Pablo Eisenberg, “After an Embezzlement, an Advocacy Group Seeks to Regain Trust,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, October 2, 2008 [Subscription required])

When I spoke with Amy Schur, I learned that what Pablo Eisenberg referred to as ACORN’s “grappling with questions” about Mr. Rathke’s role actually began a number of years before May 2008, when the first controversy broke into public view.  Ms. Schur, who has spent more than two decades working for ACORN, was for several years one of ten senior organizers on the Management Council (a group that Mr. Rathke established to advise him).

The portrait of Wade Rathke that emerged from our conversation is consistent with other accounts, such as Mr. Eisenberg’s.  While Mr. Rathke was a talented organizer with the vision to build a powerful national organization, he was arrogant and “increasingly” (a word Ms. Schur used repeatedly in discussing Mr. Rathke’s flaws) he embraced with unshakable certainty “a belief that he knew best” – whatever the situation.  Unilateral decisions – without regard for the views of others, including the experienced organizers who comprised ACORN’s Management Council – became more frequent.

By 2006-07, there was “growing unhappiness among a broad swath of senior staff” at ACORN.  Concerns focused on a “shrinking of decision-making” – with a Management Council that lacked authority – and on “a lack of clarity and transparency,” especially regarding finances.

Amy Schur and others within ACORN organized their own conference in San Francisco to discuss their concerns.  Seventeen senior staff members from across the country attended.  Mr. Rathke was apparently not pleased.  Ms. Schur describes him as coming to regard her as “a threat.”

“He accused me –” Amy Schur begins in answer to a question, and then she stops abruptly and begins again.  “I’ve always had a problem with people who abuse their authority.”  She continues, “For whatever reasons, I didn’t hesitate to speak out.”

Pablo Eisenberg picks up the story here: “Questions about who should set the organization’s agenda were not limited just to the role of organizers and the board. Wade Rathke sought to put the national organization in control of operations of the group’s affiliates. For example, the organization’s bylaws gave him the power to appoint the head organizers of both local and state affiliates.
While local boards technically had the authority to overrule his appointments, they rarely did, according to senior staff members. They say Mr. Rathke refused to accept the decision of the board of Acorn’s Los Angeles affiliate to appoint Amy Schur, widely considered by Acorn insiders as one of the organization’s most capable organizers, as its head organizer. As a result, Ms. Schur left the network. Her departure prompted another highly respected organizer, Madeline Talbott, director of Illinois Acorn, to pull her organization out of the network.”

Amy Schur had devoted 21 years of her life to ACORN – stretching from Chicago and Detroit to San Jose and Los Angeles.  She led California ACORN during an era when its presence grew from two cities to the whole state.  She had also served as ACORN’s national campaign director.  At the end of 2007 she left ACORN or, more precisely, as she told me, “I was pushed out.”

In relating her experience with ACORN, Amy Schur mentioned her work in Chicago with well-known community organizer Madeline Talbott.  (I gathered, though this inference may be mistaken – my notes do not confirm my recollection – that Ms. Schur may have regarded Ms. Talbott as a mentor.)  Ms. Schur’s comment, made in passing, suggested that Madeline Talbott was an exceptional organizer.

At any rate, I suggest that Madeline Talbott may have served as role model more recently.  In press reports this week, New York ACORN is characterized as following California ACORN’s lead in breaking away from the national organization to go it alone.  (”ACORN’s powerful New York chapter left to form the NY Communities for Change on Monday, following the lead of the California state chapter, which in January became the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment with 48,000 members.” – Matthew Bigg, Reuters, February 22, 2009) But (as Pablo Eisenberg’s comments suggest) Madeline Talbott was the trailblazer.  The former head of Illinois ACORN, she split off the chapter (”ACORN scaling back or shutting down in many cities, ” P.J. Huffstutter and Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2009) to found Action Now at the beginning of 2008.  California ACORN followed (under different circumstances) – with the launch of ACCE – two years later.

Editor’s note: Madeline Talbott also has the distinction of being featured in “ACORN,” a scary McCain-Palin campaign video.  “Obama … moved to Chicago, became a community organizer … met Madeline Talbott, part of the Chicago branch of ACORN … was asked to train the ACORN staff …”

Next post: California ACORN’s Choice: Stay with ACORN or Go It Alone

(Image of Action Now protesters in front of Chicago’s National City Bank.)

Previous post in this series: The Birth of ACCE: First Post in a New Series

The announcement that California ACORN, a state chapter of the national organization, had decided to split from ACORN and form a new organization, ACCE – the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, began by paying tribute to the thousands of Californians living near the poverty level who have “leveraged their significant numbers with coordinated grassroots organizing to achieve victory” in political battles over several decades as members of the California chapter of ACORN.  The statement by Amy Schur praises ACORN and its new leadership, acknowledges the national organization’s past mistakes, objects to attacks by ACORN’s political enemies, and then pivots:

“Nevertheless, those of us who have been working with ACORN in California believe that we can’t wait any longer to be in full control over our destiny.  The leadership and staff that were working with ACORN in California made the decision to break off from ACORN and launch a new organization here in California called Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). The organization will work to advance the mission of organizing and empowering low-income communities, and launch a statewide, multi-year campaign to win key policy changes that will break the cycle of continuous fiscal crisis in the state of California and cuts that hurt ordinary people and their communities.”

I suggested in my initial post on this announcement, “The decision to step away was clearly pragmatic – based on a clear-eyed assessment of how to sustain the level of effectiveness of the group’s community organizing activities throughout California.”  I have no reason to reconsider this assessment; the controversies ensnaring ACORN – represented as three strikes against the organization and, as Amy Schur put it, “a huge distraction” – just weren’t going away, providing ample reason to consider splitting off and starting anew.

But there was a history of simmering dissent within ACORN that preceded the first strike (the May 2008 revelation of the embezzlement and cover-up).  There had been rumblings among senior staff over the increasingly imperious control that Wade Rathke (pictured above) – ACORN’s founder and leader for nearly four decades – wielded over the organization.

On February 2, I interviewed Amy Schur – former lead organizer of California ACORN and now the executive director of ACCE – about the decision to launch ACCE, the history that led up to it, and challenges for the new group going forward.  I followed up my initial post on ACCE with a series on ACORN, beginning with three controversies that enveloped the national organization.  While these posts established a backdrop and offered perspective on ACORN nationally, they diverted us from ACCE.  Now I will circle back and begin (in this second series of posts) to look at the ACORN story from the point of view of the California chapter that has transformed into the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

ACORN’s presence in California goes back nearly two and a half decades – first in Oakland and Salinas – followed by expansion throughout the Bay Area and then Los Angeles.  Amy Schur led California ACORN during this era of growth.  What she had to say provides many insights into the schism that developed within ACORN and the problems it has struggled to put behind it.

My February 5 post is the prequel to this series.

Next post: Simmering Dissent Within ACORN Preceded Break Up

(Image from a YouTube video of Wade Rathke, ACORN founder, on Fox News.)

I have defended ACORN against the untruthful, trumped up attacks of its political enemies.  Many charges the right wing echo chamber has flung at ACORN are scurrilous and unsupported. I have looked at the other side of the ledger – at the good works for which the organization can take credit.

But, while ACORN is not a criminal enterprise and, in fact, has much to be proud of – its failures are not close calls: they are conspicuous, systemic shortcomings that have damaged the organization.  In this post I will comment on challenges posed by the report commissioned by ACORN and conducted by Scott Harshbarger and Amy Crafts.   “With our recommendations in hand, ACORN now has a roadmap for reform.  Our experience tells us that these recommendations, acted on with a sense of urgency, are crucial to reclaim, maintain, and strengthen ACORN’s ability to serve its members and constituents.”  Is ACORN capable of righting itself?  Or to put it another way, is ACORN’s “reform leadership” up to this task?  This is not at all clear.

Proskauer, the law firm of Mr. Harshbarger (former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) and Ms. Crafts, was retained by ACORN to examine the hidden camera controversy, to evaluate management and governance reforms undertaken after the embezzlement was revealed, and to offer recommendations going forward.  (I do not intend to review the report: it is 18 pages long with 39 pages of appendices.  I commend it to any readers interested in learning more about the nature and depth of ACORN’s financial, governance, and management challenges.  It is an easy read – and will convey a sense of the magnitude of ACORN’s problems better than any quotes I feature in this post.)

The report’s findings related to the hidden camera videos are representative: “While some of the advice and counsel given by ACORN employees and volunteers was clearly inappropriate and unprofessional, we did not find a pattern of intentional, illegal conduct by ACORN staff; in fact, there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers. Instead, the videos represent the byproduct of ACORN’s longstanding management weaknesses, including a lack of training, a lack of procedures, and a lack of on-site supervision.”

ACORN’s defenders may be tempted to embrace the first sentence as a vindication and the second sentence as a call for a bit of tinkering – adding a training program and writing an employee manual, for instance.  I think this conclusion, in the first instance, suggests that the bar has been set way too low.  In the second instance, I believe (and I am confident that Mr. Harshbarger and Ms. Crafts would agree) that a more fundamental break with the past is required.

Their report (referred to hereafter as the Harshbarger report) makes reference to ACORN’s “reform leadership” – which must navigate the organization’s change in direction – in the statement of the second task:

“Evaluate the management and governance reforms that ACORN’s new leadership (the ‘reform leadership’) has developed since June 2008 …”

The hidden camera controversy came more than a year after revelations of the $950,000 embezzlement and nearly 10-year cover-up.  This failure was not manufactured by ACORN’s political enemies.

After making reference to the hidden camera controversy (“perceived by many as a third strike against ACORN”), the Harshbarger report continues, “It erupted just as ACORN’s reform leadership was about to complete an ambitious and professionally directed organizational and cultural transformation designed to revisit its mission, reshape its scope and charter, and meet squarely its legal, governance and compliance responsibilities.”

I would be remiss not to note evidence that strike one – the theft and concealment – appears to at least one observer, Wendy Kaminer, to have prompted a circling of the wagons, as much as a commitment to reform (“ACORN: A Cautionary Tale” September 24, 2009; see also her “ACORN and the Ethics of Leadership” December 8, 2009, both on the Atlantic’s web pages).

Perhaps a fundamental transformation was in the works, but the committed reformers just hadn’t yet had time to pull it off (as the report asserts).  ACORN’s history suggests why this might be regarded skeptically.

The executive summary continues, “The serious management challenges detailed in our report are the fault of ACORN’s founder and a cadre of leaders, who in their drive for growth, failed to commit the organization to basic appropriate standards of governance and accountability.”

We learn from the report that among the cadre of leaders on board when things went awry, many are still around, “The reform leadership, many of whom also served in the Rathke era, is now reaping what Rathke sowed, in combination from the fallout from their own failure to question or challenge him, and their inability to transform ACORN quickly and completely after taking over.”

The report continues, “There is a general consensus among leaders, organizers, and observers that, under the prior administration, ACORN grew large too quickly, and efforts were not made to grow in a reasonable, cautious manner or with an adequate infrastructure.”  Of course, nothing about ACORN – a tough grassroots group that challenges powerful, entrenched interests – suggests a reasonable, cautious manner.  Amy Schur told to me that political organizers committed to social justice are (unsurprisingly) not much interested in management (or, I would surmise, infrastructure).  The Harshbarger report makes the same point.

The report offers nine recommendations; implementing all of them represents a daunting challenge.  Some of the recommendations play to ACORN’s strengths and all the recommendations, taken singly, appear doable.  But the Harshbarger report urges implementation of every recommendation as part of an interrelated set of imperatives.

Taken as a whole, the recommendations call for a fundamental cultural transformation of the organization – requiring steps that rip against the grain – and quickly.  Mr. Harshbarger and Ms. Crafts emphasize that ACORN’s leaders must pursue reform with a sense of urgency.

Why does reform pose such a formidable challenge? First, because there is so much to do – “governance reforms, senior management reforms, financial reforms, structural reforms, and staff investments.”  Second, because there are so many ways that the reform effort could go wrong.

To follow up with the doubts expressed by Wendy Kaminer about reform leaders who were formerly Wade Rathke loyalists: When there is disagreement among the leadership about how fast to push for change or about whether a proposal is a step too far – what happens?  The old guard – savvy enough to have become the old guard – may have the upper hand.  And organizational inertia will be on their side.

Even with a genuine (and unitary) commitment, bringing about a cultural transformation would be a huge undertaking even for the most skillful, seasoned management team.  Is this the team in place at ACORN?

A cultural transformation – requiring “a significant infusion of professional oversight” and a focus on matters such as human resources, accepted procedures, professional development, staff training, and onsite supervision – will require deliberately shifting resources from neighborhoods with pressing needs to administrative infrastructure. This shift will be as grating to committed political organizers as fingernails scraping across a chalk board.  ACORN chapters – in neighborhoods or even whole states – may need to be shuttered as ACORN strives to develop the professionalism missing among staff and volunteers captured in the undercover videotapes.

Change is hard.  Reform isn’t cost free.  ACORN will lose something significant when it implements reforms.  An organization with “a reduced size and scope” is likely to result.

Even if the reform leadership is consistently committed, up to the task, and willing to follow through with tough decisions, the staff closer to the grassroots may not be on board.  Will reform efforts displace the “smart, capable organizers” the report acknowledges and put trained administrators in their places?  If there is room – and resources – for both, will political organizers stay put as change comes?

Lean and mean may be in ACORN’s DNA.  A charismatic local organizer with a passion for changing things in the neighborhood may be a more credible grassroots leader, than a professional nonprofit manager would be.  And such a leader, focused on social justice rather than on a career path (or on following the rules), may make successful organizing possible – even when resources are scarce.  ACORN’s entrenched “culture of hands off management” may be a powerful attraction as well.

I’m not suggesting that ACORN’s reform leadership will fail – but their climb is a steep one.

Update: This is the final post in this series on ACORN, the national organization.

The first post on the launch of ACCE (with perspective gleaned from an interview with Amy Schur) begins here: The Birth of ACCE: First Post in a New Series.

(Photo of Scott Harshbarger by rappaport center via Flickr.)

Previous posts in this series:

• Sixth post: Just What Can We Say on ACORN’s Behalf?
• Fifth post: The Filmmaker’s Invisible Art – Editing to Tell a Story
• Fourth post: Conservative Activists’ Sting: The Undercover Videos
• Third post: Mickey Mouse Registers to Vote (as a Democrat)
• Second post: Three Strikes – A Mighty Grassroots Group Goes Down Swinging
• First post: California Chapter Splits from ACORN to Form New Group