Citizens' group takes poverty fight on, without the help of politicians...

[marmar]

City by City, an Antipoverty Group Plants Seeds of Change
by Erik Eckholm

GARY, Indiana - The teller's eyes widened as a customer poured thousands of pennies onto the counter, an intentionally obnoxious way to pay a high heating bill. Still looming in line at the utility payment center, on a street of boarded-up buildings in this rusted city, were 10 more people carrying hefty bags of pennies, all wearing the red T-shirts of the national community organizing group ACORN.

It was a pinprick protest, intended to grab the attention of utility executives over what members of this newest ACORN chapter charged was the company's overly quick shut-off of strapped customers.


In Gary, Indiana, members of the antipoverty group ACORN picked up pennies recently after a bag split on their way to a protest at a utility company. (Photo / Sally Ryan for The New York Times)

That same day in Chicago, scores of ACORN members and volunteers fanned out in lower-income neighborhoods, gathering signatures in favor of a law that would require giant retailers like Wal-Mart to pay employees $10 an hour plus benefits. In dozens of other cities, members lobbied for the rights of Hurricane Katrina victims, protested "predatory lending" and registered low-income voters.

With offices in 106 cities and a membership reported to be 200,000, ACORN has emerged in recent years as the largest neighborhood-based antipoverty group in the country, using old-fashioned methods of door-knocking and noisy protests to push for local and national causes. It plans to open an office in 20 new cities each year for the next five years, an expansion in response to the strong grip conservatives have in Washington and to the travails of the working poor.

"We feel the ACORN program is popular wherever we go," said Wade Rathke, 57, who founded the group 36 years ago in Arkansas and goes by the title of chief organizer. "It's like a hot knife in butter."

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0627-08.htm