LA Philanthropy Watch

Post #7 – Scott Harshbarger’s report “An Independent Governance Assessment of ACORN: The Path to Meaningful Reform” poses steep challenges for ACORN.

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

Post #6 – A look at ACORN’s good works.

The controversies that have engulfed ACORN in the past two years – the embezzlement and cover up, the allegations of voter fraud, and the hidden camera videotapes – have overshadowed the organization’s accomplishments over the past four decades.  The news media has not made much of an effort to step back and gain a balanced picture of this grassroots group.

“That’s what’s so tragic about what’s going on,” Amy Schur, formerly California ACORN’s chief organizer and now executive director of ACCE, told me when we spoke earlier this month.  She noted that there are few effective organizations working on behalf of low and moderate income people.

“Acorn is now well known, but what most Americans know about it is wrong, based on controversies manufactured by the group’s long-time enemies,” John Atlas and Peter Dreier suggest (”The Acorn Scandal Offers Key Lessons to All Charities,” Chronicle of Philanthropy, December 10, 2009).

What has ACORN accomplished?

ACORN has been highly effective at organizing families who possess neither wealth nor influence.  These folks join together to make better lives for themselves.  Often – perhaps most often – the focus of ACORN’s efforts is on the immediate neighborhood.  “ACORN’s primary work,” notes Barbara Osborn of Liberty Hill Foundation, “which takes place in low and moderate income neighborhoods, helps residents build organization and develop community leadership so that they can work effectively as a community to take on quality of life issues.”  Better lighting, repaved streets, revitalized parks, textbooks in their children’s schools – each of these issues might be a cause to rally around.

In December, Scott Gold reported in the Los Angeles Times (“A good move for South L.A. neighborhood,” December 22, 2009)  on a campaign that began 14 6 years ago with the concerns of a young immigrant from Jalisco, Mexico, a mother whose two daughters suffered from asthma, nose bleeds, and a variety of other respiratory problems.  When she started knocking on doors, she found that these ailments also afflicted other children in the neighborhood.  She suspected that the heavy metal plating factory across from the school was the problem, though officials assured her that it posed no health hazards.  (More recently, the company has been subject to fines and criminal prosecutions related to hazardous wastes, airborne pollutants, and illegal dumping.)

A decade and a half later, after this concerned parent joined forces with ACORN and eventually become president of her neighborhood chapter, the Times’ report suggests that a settlement may be near – with the factory moving into an industrial area.

ACORN wages more high profile battles as well – stretching beyond local neighborhoods, including successful efforts (in California and elsewhere) to raise state minimum wages and for cities to adopt living wage ordinances.  ACORN has won campaigns for affordable housing and against predatory lending practices and foreclosure scams.  And (of course) ACORN has registered more than 2 million voters in the last three election cycles.

Its successes on behalf of low and moderate income people – at the expense of banks, insurers, and polluting companies, among other powerful interests – is the reason it has generated so much opposition.  Any fair-minded assessment of ACORN must include acknowledgement of these successes.

While ACORN has been slandered by its fiercest critics – it has certainly stumbled.  A report by Scott Harshbarger, which was commissioned by ACORN and characterized as a whitewash by critics, paints a damning portrait of the organization.  My next post in this series highlights the Harshbarger report: The Harshbarger Report: ACORN’s Roadmap for Reform?

Previous posts in this series:

• 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

[July 10, 2010 update: This comment explains the correction, changing 14 years to 6, in the post above.]

Post #5 – Seeing is not always believing.

Initially I had no intention of devoting more than one post to the hidden camera videotapes – but reviewing the San Bernardino tape several times (for my previous post) has offered occasion to reflect on the issue of selective editing.

On my first viewing of the San Bernardino video in September 2009, the ACORN employee’s foolish talk (about an escort service and a shooting) was so outrageous that I wasn’t concerned about quotes being taken out of context.  In fact, I was loath to spend even a moment giving the matter a second thought.  I had seen enough: case closed.

But, in watching the video again and considering the broader picture, I have come to appreciate that context is critical.  Film editing, often referred to as the ‘invisible art,’ is essential to storytelling.  And the ACORN videos were edited to tell a story.  Unless we are confident of the integrity and good judgment of James O’Keefe and his allies, we can’t trust what we see.

Edit out, for instance, “Let’s role play,” or, “All right, if you guys are going to spin wild tales, so will I” and everything portrayed on tape looks different.  Is it unlikely that any such exchange took place?  Perhaps.  But consider another possibility raised by Appendix D of Scott Harshbarger’s report, which suggests that the staff member captured on tape was suspicious of the story she heard, fearful for her safety, and responded by spinning an outlandish story; after persuading the trio to leave with a neighbor, she locked up the office and left.

Cast in this light, the encounter begins to look more like bullying – with the activist-provocateurs intimidating a woman who responded by playing along with – even joining in – their outlandish storytelling.  To make sense of this, consider a thought experiment: Imagine an accomplished manager (perhaps a woman with an MBA or JD and experience in the corporate world) who finds herself alone in an office with a trio boasting of their criminal plans – crazy plans.  She might experience fear in such a situation, yet succeed in presenting herself in a confident, polished manner because her professional persona is second nature to her.

I know nothing (beyond what I’ve seen on this tape) about the employee at the San Bernardino office.  But it appears that she lacked the experience and presence of mind to respond as we would expect of someone possessing a broad repertoire of professional skills.  Would playing along in a fearful situation be a wildly irrational response?  Would it be understandable?

Remember, this employee did nothing to advance any illegal activities – she just offered foolish talk and posturing.  Might she have been telling the threesome what she thought they wanted to hear, while hoping for the chance to get them to leave?  (Might an unedited version of the tape reveal bullying?  Or anxiety and fear?  Or anything else that would change our interpretation of what we see?)

Based on a selectively edited videotape, it is impossible to say for certain.  And that’s just the point: unless we can trust what we see – which requires us to trust the videographers and post-production editors of the video – we have no reason to accept the story as presented.  And there just isn’t any reason to put our trust in Mr. O’Keefe and company.

Yes – the video shows unprofessional behavior (condemned by Bertha Lewis).  Yes, ACORN should take steps (as Ms. Lewis announced) to assure that all employees are well-trained to present themselves professionally.  But – contrary to the story that James O’Keefe and his media allies on the right have told – we have no reason to draw any conclusion about ACORN’s aiding and abetting any criminal activity.  That and other broad-brush conclusions are stretched well beyond what we see in the edited videotapes.

Next post: What Can We Say on ACORN’s Behalf?

(Image of Karl Rove on Fox News via YouTube.)

Previous posts in this series:

• 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

Post #4 – The third controversy ensnaring ACORN is the most infamous – the secretly recorded videotapes.

“My name is James O’Keefe.  On August 7, 2009, Hannah Giles and I took our ACORN investigation to San Bernardino, California – one of the most highly foreclosed and economically desolate areas in the country.
Hannah posed as the prostitute, seeking to traffic in underage girls from El Salvador.  I posed as the up and coming local politician, who wanted to use illicit sex money from the underage girls to fund my future Congressional campaign.”

With this voiceover – accompanied by a strutting Hannah Giles playing dress-up as a streetwalker – conservative activist / provocateur James O’Keefe introduces a video, filmed surreptitiously at the ACORN office in San Bernardino – one of six videos released beginning on September 10, 2009 on BigGovernment.com and heavily promoted by Fox News after the pair visited ACORN (and ACORN Housing) offices in San Bernardino and seven other urban areas (Baltimore, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington DC).

As the video continues, Mr. O’Keefe advises us that the part-time worker the pair encountered in the ACORN office says she has had experience running an escort service.  We see her on camera saying,

“And, I ran a service, yeah …”
…
“I have some experience in, in, in how not to get caught.”

Mr. O’Keefe says the staffer also related how she had shot her husband.  We see her on tape saying,

“I shot him.  I shot him…”— Hannah Giles can be heard asking, “In self-defense?”— The ACORN staffer replies, “Yeah.”

This is enough, a mere 54 seconds into the video, to get a flavor of the dynamic duo’s undercover investigation / performance art.  Some quick points, based on observation, news accounts, and Scott Harshbarger’s report: The videotape was highly-edited – as the other released tapes appear to be.  We don’t know what was said in between the edited clips we see.  Unedited videos have not been released.  As we have learned subsequently, the undercover investigators were thrown out of a number of ACORN (and ACORN Housing) offices; no video has been released of these encounters.  Voiceover soundtracks were added after the videos were filmed. Mr. O’Keefe, who appears in all released videos dressed as a pimp, actually appeared in each office with button down shirt and slacks.  Ms. Giles wore the same streetwalker get-up at all the venues.  The videographers do not distinguish between ACORN, a 501(c)(4) community organizing group with local chapters across the country, and ACORN Housing, a separate 501(c)(3) that provides counseling for low and moderate income homebuyers.  Three of the released videos capture only ACORN Housing employees.  Finally, note that none of the ACORN staff or volunteers actually proffered any assistance to the poseurs.

While the videographers are hardly paragons of journalistic integrity in a quest for truth (as James O’Keefe’s subsequent brush with fame would attest), the tapes still present us with a damning picture of ACORN.

Indeed, ACORN has acknowledged as much.  In a September 16, 2009 interview with CNN’s Rick Sanchez (see accompanying video) in the aftermath of the tapes’ release, ACORN President Bertha Lewis says of the clips, “Pretty horrendous, isn’t it? … I mean, this would curl anyone’s hair. And it was outrageous, it was indefensible, even though we know these tapes — no one has shown totally unedited tapes, because you don’t see tapes where they were thrown out of ACORN offices. You don’t see tapes where people are told, you know, we can’t help you.”

Ms. Lewis, interviewed with Congressman Darryl Issa on Fox News Sunday a few days later, reacts to Chris Wallace’s suggestion that she had attacked Fox News when the videos first surfaced.

“Well, what did I do?  Immediately those folks were terminated.”

And in an exchange seconds later continues, “… And what did I also do? Make sure that we have an independent review, make sure that we suspended any walk-in activities so we could review what worked, what didn’t work.
In instances those folks were thrown out. I have an obligation to my board, to my members and to my other employees that actually did practice professional, good high standards. Those folks cannot work for me.”

In addition to the staff firings and Ms. Lewis’s attempt to get out in front of the story with media appearances, ACORN commissioned an independent inquiry of the circumstances surrounding the videos, evaluation of the management and governance reforms that ACORN began in June 2008, and proposals regarding ACORN management, oversight, and governance.

The resulting report by Scott Harshbarger refers to the video controversy as “the third strike against ACORN.”  The aftermath of this controversy was devastating.  In the wake of the public ridicule heaped on the group, the U.S. Census Bureau severed its relationship with ACORN, the U.S. Senate voted to deny HUD funds to ACORN , the House of Representatives voted to strip funding from ACORN, foundations pulled their funding (decried here and here), and ACORN’s natural allies in the nonprofit world fell silent.

The San Bernardino video, which provided the basis for this post, can be found here.

More in my next post: The Filmmaker’s Invisible Art – Editing to Tell a Story

Related Video: Bertha Lewis Speaks to CNN about ACORN Controversy

Previous posts in this series:

• 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