One Hypothesis about the Decline and Fall of ACORN

After 38 years of longevity (1970 to 2008), including huge growth over its last decade, in 2008 and 2009 the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was rocked by an embezzlement scandal and two controversies and declined precipitously. By the spring of 2010, all city and statewide ACORN operations had either disaffiliated from the national organization or collapsed altogether, and in November 2010 ACORN filed for bankruptcy. Because ACORN was widely considered the nation's largest and most powerful group organizing the poor, the organization's breathtakingly swift destruction warrants analysis. This commentary analyzes one hypothesis that might have contributed to ACORN's vulnerability to smear campaigns: the organization's long-time practice of combining direct action organizing with individual service provision. THE IRONY OF ACORN'S RAPID DEMISE In early 2008, by most empirical measures of organizing strength, ACORN appeared to be a strong and powerful community organization. Over the preceding 10 years, ACORN had been instrumental in numerous campaigns and victories on a wide range of issues such as winning living wage ordinances (Luce, 2009), increasing the minimum wage (Atlas & Dreier, 2006), fighting predatory lending practices of major financial institutions (Hurd, Donner, & Phillips, 2004), winning a guarantee of affordable housing in the Brooklyn Atlantic Yards mega-development (Atlas, 2009) among dozens of other neighborhood, statewide and national victories. ACORN Housing was helping over 6,000 moderate-income families per year purchase their first homes. In 2008 ACORN Service Centers filed income taxes at no charge for over 50,000 people, resulting in over $65 million dollars in Earned Income Tax Credit/Child Tax Credit returns to low-income families (Rathke, 2009). ACORN was considered the only community organization in the United States that had the ability to coordinate campaigns from the neighborhood to cities and states, all the way up to national policies and corporate campaigns (Dreier, 2009). An independent study by Ranghelli (2006) of the National Center for Responsible Philanthropy, using conservative assumptions, estimated that ACORN campaign victories and services over the 10-year period between 1995 and 2004 resulted in over $15 billion of direct economic development for low- and moderate-income ramifies. According to ACORN's former Chief Organizer Wade Rathke (2009), by 2005 ACORN's combined operations (organizing, housing and tax preparation services, research, and voter registration) employed over 1,000 people, in 85 offices; serviced 400,000 dues-paying members; and raised and spent around $100 million dollars a year. It is beyond the scope of this commentary to analyze all the factors that contributed to ACORN's demise, but from spring 2008 to fall 2009 ACORN was rocked by three separate scandals or controversies that resulted in a public relations disaster for the organization. Most foundations decided to stop funding the organization, and dozens of government bodies (city, state, national) voted to stop funding any ACORN-affiliated organization. Although ACORN fired staff and made numerous internal reforms, it was unable to win the public relations battle in both the mainstream and right-wing media. Because two of these issues (an internal embezzlement of almost $1 million and controversies around voter registration drives) have already been analyzed (see Atlas, 2010), this commentary briefly describes and analyzes one aspect of the final controversy that ACORN encountered, the videotape smear campaign conducted by Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe. This analysis addresses this question: Did ACORN's organizing model of combining direct action organizing with service provision make it more vulnerable to smear campaigns? Because O'Keefe has recently institutionalized his model of "citizen journalism," other progressive organizations should try to learn from ACORN's demise to avoid a similar fate. …