ACORN Responds to Attack on Community Organizing

Cincinnati ACORN board chairperson James Moreland and national ACORN president Maude Hurd issued the following statements in response to Palin's and Giulani's remarks.

James Moreland’s statement: “As a member of Cincinnati ACORN, I’m baffled as to why someone would belittle the crucial work that organizers do. This kind of thinking – the idea that organizing doesn’t matter – is exactly what’s wrong with our country, and what’s right about organizing. In Cincinnati, ACORN members and organizers are fighting to stop foreclosures, to keep the Walnut Hills Kroger open, to improve low-income apartment buildings, and to fix the health care system. Community organizers, despite what Palin and Giuliani imply, are actually doing the hard, daily work of changing our communities to benefit and empower low- and- moderate income families.”

Maude Hurd’s statement: “ACORN members, leaders and staff are extremely disappointed that Republican leaders would make such condescending remarks on the great work community organizers accomplish in cities throughout this country. The fact that they marginalize our success in empowering low- and moderate-income people to improve their communities further illustrates their lack of touch with ordinary people. Every great movement in the history of the world has community organizing.

"ACORN has been building organizations and developing leadership among low- and moderate- income residents in neighborhoods throughout the United States for 38 years. During that time, ACORN chapters have worked individually and collectively to organize innovative grassroots campaigns on a number of critical issues.

"As the nation’s largest grassroots community organization with more than 400,000 member families, ACORN employs 400 organizers that carry a huge responsibility of helping disenfranchised people in their communities.

In the past 10 years, ACORN has helped more than 30 million American families through our various organizing campaigns: better schools, financial justice, living wages, community improvement, environmental justice, immigration, healthcare, predatory lending, voter engagement and utilities.

"The total monetary value of recent victorious ACORN campaigns was quantified in a 2006 report, entitled “ACORN Wins”. Over the last decade, ACORN’s victories amount to $15 billion, an average of $1.5 billion per year going directly into low- and moderate-income communities to help strengthen working families."