The ACORN organizing model

Does anyone familiar with ACORN's methods of organizing communities have any opinions about it?

I have mixed feelings. The do have some successes over the years that they can point to.

However, I wonder if their organizing model isn't becoming outdated. Isn't it past time when a group of primarily white middle class people should be given the task of organizing low income people of color?

Doesn't their habit of organizing people in a community with little experience, without engaging existing community leaders, give inordinate amount of power to the organizer, rather than to the people in the community? If you gather together a group of people who have never been engaged politically, then the organizer, who was sent from outside the community, is going to be listened to and given deference. ACORN encourages community members to take charge of the local organizations, but if you work exclusively with people who have little or no leadership experience then power within the local group will rest with the organizer, even if the organizer tries to give the impression that he or she isn't running things.

Is there a better balance between ACORN's push to organize the unorganized in a community and the Alinksy approach of bringing together existing community leaders and groups?

Finally, can a group that collects dues that are sent to a national office truly be considered a community organization? Might some communities be better off collecting dues that stay in their community instead of sending them to be spent on an organizer from the outside or to support an office building with paid staff?

I'd be interested to know if anyone familiar with ACORN has thoughts on this.

but in communities where the leaders have sold out, you gotta start somewhere else...

Take religious leaders who have sold out to bush in the catholic and black communities.

I had noticed the issues you mention, especially some of the money going outside of the community. Also, I had an unsettling feeling I wasn't being given the whole picture.

That was a good instinct. New organizers aren't given the whole picture. I'm not sure there's anything sinister or wrong about that. There's only so much you can tell about an organization in a short amount of time to someone who may or may not have much experience or background in organizing methods. But you were right about that.

I've heard most organizers they hire are fired or quit in the first 3-6 months, so that may have something to do with it as well.

ACORN has some issues, most notably with the same problem that besets the conservative craft trade unions, namely the bueracracy of people on top who determine what is best or isn't for the poor people down below. It's mildly authoritarian and sometimes does things that are more for its own itnerests than its own members.

In my community, the ACORN organizer is black, I don't know his economic background, and he has been working in our community for some time. I can't comment on how effective ACORN's organizing model is, I work with them only peripherally. But the fact is, no one else is stepping up to do what they do, so the question seems kind of moot.