Community Organizations

For Oliva de Leon, a housewife and mother living in an area where drug dealers peddle their wares from bicycles and gang wars puncture the silence of weekend nights, the last straw came when gang graffiti began appearing inside the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church. Though she speaks little English and had only a scant formal education in her native Mexico, the defacing of her church was enough to catapult the 44-year-old mother of two boys into the role of a public crusader.

Their Occupy-like grievances were familiar as activists staged a day of protests throughout California to oppose income inequality and other issues. Their choice of locations was not. Rather than parks or other public venues, these protesters demonstrated outside the well-tended homes of executives from some of California's largest corporations. The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an offshoot of the embattled national group ACORN, organized the protests outside the homes of the well-known, such as Hewlett-Packard chief Meg Whitman in Northern California.

This is a eulogy for ACORN as we knew it. Our premier anti-poverty organization has been forced into a massive reorganization, and its future is unclear. If we care about democracy, we should study the story of what happened to ACORN, or the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It is true that in its rush to recruit people and build its organization, ACORN was sometimes sloppy and should have supervised its people more closely. But those faults could have been corrected and ACORN's singular contributions to our polity sustained.

ACORN, a national organization whose mission included registering and turning out low-income and minority voters, announced on this election day that it was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Founded in 1970, the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now had in recent years become a target of conservatives who accused the group of engaging in widespread voter fraud. It was forced to scale back its efforts after a scandal erupted, centered around undercover video footage that purported to show ACORN staff helping young activists posing as a pimp and prostitute engage in illegal activity.

Bank of America Corp. is suspending its work with the housing affiliate of community organizing group ACORN. The decision comes as three Republicans in Congress ask Bank of America and 13 other financial institutions to give Congress a complete accounting of their dealings with the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now or its affiliates. In a statement, Bank of America said it would not enter into any further agreements with ACORN Housing Corp. until the bank is satisfied all issues have been resolved.

Two nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping teen-age runaways are accusing each other of uncharitable behavior in a bizarre feud that includes allegations of threats, beatings and dirty tricks. The feud pits Van Nuys-based Children of the Night and its renowned executive director, Lois Lee, the subject of a "60 Minutes" profile and a television movie, against a one-man teen rescue organization in West Hills called Thursday's Child.

Re "The war on ACORN," Opinion, Oct. 22 This Op-Ed article is disconnected from reality in its intellectually dishonest arguments in favor of the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Nowhere does Peter Dreier refer to the fact that he was an unpaid consultant to ACORN. Also, Dreier's claim that the investigations into and accusations against ACORN of voter fraud are all part of a right-wing conspiracy is as cliched as it is disingenuous. Should voters be forced to subsidize an organization that may be breaking the law?

Four years ago, Maria Alvarez was a shaken woman. Drug peddlers and gang members had taken over her west Costa Mesa neighborhood. The 5-foot-3 single mother of four knew she had to act. So she summoned her courage and walked from her Shalimar Street apartment to confront a group of 40 gang members. She was alone and afraid. They told her in no uncertain terms that she had better watch out because they knew where she and her children lived. If she caused any problems, they would get her.

When Les Jones drives the streets of the Willowbrook neighborhood of South Los Angeles where he runs a Boys & Girls Club, he doesn't see the kind of small businesses he believes are needed to serve as role models for young people. "Unfortunately, in this community it's either chains, or liquor stores, or check cashing or fast food," Jones said. "Kids can't get an idea that when they grow up, they could create their own positive thing. " He hopes a youth entrepreneurship program to be offered at the Watts/Willowbrook Boys & Girls Club next year will start changing that.

This is a eulogy for ACORN as we knew it. Our premier anti-poverty organization has been forced into a massive reorganization, and its future is unclear. If we care about democracy, we should study the story of what happened to ACORN, or the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It is true that in its rush to recruit people and build its organization, ACORN was sometimes sloppy and should have supervised its people more closely. But those faults could have been corrected and ACORN's singular contributions to our polity sustained.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said in a report Thursday that the community organizing group ACORN engaged in "highly inappropriate behavior" in the state but violated no criminal law. Brown's office launched an investigation of ACORN's California operations at the request of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September, after the release of videos that appeared to show ACORN employees advising people about how to engage in prostitution and other illegal...

Liberals still don't buy the Bush administration's explanation for the Abu Ghraib scandal -- that the humiliation and torture of prisoners at the Iraq facility was the work of a handful of misguided U.S. troops, not the result of a culture and policies put in place by those higher up the chain of command. Yet many seem willing to accept a strikingly similar defense by leaders of the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now following an attack by the right. After a lame attempt at damage control, ACORN announced Monday that it was disbanding.

Southern California's small but tightknit Chilean community scrambled Sunday to contact loved ones affected by the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck their homeland Saturday, and began organizing to help victims. "We have a lot of anguish," said Jorge Rojas, 44, whose family is from Talca, a region hit hard by the quake, which was centered offshore of the southern city of Concepción. "You can't see your family. You can't even talk with them." Rojas' San Bernardino group, Club de Huasos, which celebrates Chilean cowboy traditions, planned to meet with the consul general Monday to ask how club members might help.

California ACORN has broken away from its embattled parent organization to form a new nonprofit group, a move that observers say might foreshadow other defections that would seriously undermine one of the nation's largest and most politically powerful community organizations. The new group will have the same mission, will be staffed by many of the same employees who worked for ACORN, and will be funded by most of the same donors, said Amy Schur, the former head organizer for California ACORN.

ACORN staffers were suspicious of the young couple that swaggered into the community organizing group's downtown Los Angeles office last summer seeking tax help, one claiming to be a USC student, the other a prostitute on the run from an abusive pimp in Miami. When the woman refused an offer to be taken to a battered women's shelter, the staffers dismissed the incident as a "joke" and asked the pair to leave. Nobody alerted other Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now offices of the strange behavior because staffers couldn't fathom that the incident might be a part of something larger, said Nathan Henderson-James, ACORN's online organizer.

About 40 Sepulveda-area homeowners and representatives of businesses, schools and community organizations met Tuesday night to discuss ways to clean up the community and combat crime. The group, which gathered for an organizational meeting of the Sepulveda Community Coordinating Council, also talked about the need to create alternatives for youths who might otherwise become involved in crime.

Tommy Jacquette, who channeled a simmering rage to become one of South L.A.'s most important social activists, died this week of complications from cancer, his daughter said. He was 65. Jacquette died Monday at his home in Watts, not far from where the violence that shook his city began more than 40 years ago, an event that he said shaped his life of community organizing. He helped create programs for youth in Watts, worked tirelessly with neighborhood groups and helped found the annual Watts Summer Festival in 1966.

Re "The war on ACORN," Opinion, Oct. 22 This Op-Ed article is disconnected from reality in its intellectually dishonest arguments in favor of the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. Nowhere does Peter Dreier refer to the fact that he was an unpaid consultant to ACORN. Also, Dreier's claim that the investigations into and accusations against ACORN of voter fraud are all part of a right-wing conspiracy is as cliched as it is disingenuous. Should voters be forced to subsidize an organization that may be breaking the law?