Mexico City   A highlight of the year is always getting the reports of ACORN International affiliates around the world and hearing about the progress and the challenges members, leaders, and organizers are facing.  The obstacles are legion, but so are some of the surprises.

Vinod Shetty from [...]]]>

Jill O'Reilly gives ACORN Ottawa report to attentive organizers

Mexico City   A highlight of the year is always getting the reports of ACORN International affiliates around the world and hearing about the progress and the challenges members, leaders, and organizers are facing.  The obstacles are legion, but so are some of the surprises.

Vinod Shetty from Mumbai started the ball rolling with a clear Skype connection as he delighted everyone with the news that the ACORN India Dharavi Project band composed of some of our recyclers is being featured on MTV in coming weeks.  He topped that off by reporting continued progress with the Blue Frog jazz club partnership and the album they are doing of acts visiting Dharavi with us that will be a fundraiser for ACORN India.  Vinod also reported that we are running a school for our people now with 70 in attendance, which was a development I had not realized had gone so far.  Later reports from Dharmendra Kumar in Delhi focused on the huge struggle around FDI (foreign direct investment) in retail that brought Parliament to a standstill in recent months, but Delhi also reported that they continue to run a homeless shelter for some of our displaced members.   Bangalore reported on a full menu of action and activity!

In Honduras Dilcia Zavala delighted people with the news that the land rights had been returned to the squatters the delegation had visited in the rain in Tegucigalpa and they were going to be able to rebuild their homes.  Luis Martinez from San Pedro Sula gave a report that led all others in details on membership growth down to the fact that they have now knocked 10, 756 doors at some level in the several years of organizing!

Dilcia Zavala gives ACORN Honduras report on Tegucigalpa

For the first time people really understood how groundbreaking the tenant-landlord campaign and model is that we are building in Rome.  There was an education provided from Prague of the huge unrest around the current government that rivals the Velvet Revolution in 1989.  Orfa Camacho had me showing a map of Peru when she announced new cities in Peru where we are now organizing and the ongoing development of our partnership with FENTAP, the water workers union.

You get the picture?  It was fantastic!

Importantly the meeting also focused on developments with the Remittance Justice Campaign.  ACORN Canada reported that a bill to cap the rates will be introduced in Toronto for the Ontario province on May 31^st with British Columbia following later in the year.  Honduras ACORN shared the news that they had a commitment for a bill to be introduced before the elections next February 2013 at the latest.  Working with our intern from the Clinton School of Public Service there was optimism that we would lay the groundwork for progress in Mexico.

Good work has been done with more to come!

Honduran organizers work with Dine Butler of Local 100 and Jill O'Reilly of Ottawa ACORN on bank draft procedures

Suresh Kadashan and his wife give report from Bangalore on ACORN India's work there

By Michael Volpe

10:56 PM 11/24/2011

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder and Service Employees International Union organizer Wade Rathke acknowledged that the [...]]]> ** Below is an article taken from The Daily Caller, a right wing news site & blog of an exclusive “interview” with Wade **

By Michael Volpe

10:56 PM 11/24/2011

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) founder and Service Employees International Union organizer Wade Rathke acknowledged that the tea party movement has been more effective than Occupy Wall Street in influencing American politics.

Rathke was unequivocal about the Occupy movement, telling TheDC that “in no way has it had the political impact that the tea party movement has.” Yet because Occupy organizing is “still in its embryonic stages” while tea partiers have been organizing for more than two years, he cautions that “comparing the tea party movement to OWS is apples and oranges.”

While watching ACORN implode in the United States, Rathke has thrived in his new role as community organizer to the world by remaking ACORN International, known as Community Organization International in the U.S., into a worldwide community organization with near-global reach and power. And former ACORN board members say Rathke’s remarkable global turnaround is proof that most observers completely missed ACORN’s bigger picture and its broader goals.

Rathke generally had positive things to say about both the tea party and Occupy movements. “They are substantially mobilizing individuals around a set of principles,” he added. “It’s fascinating that they’re both appealing to many of the same people.”

That’s a point on which Matthew Vadum, a conservative investigative reporter whose book-length deconstruction of ACORN hit stores in May, disagrees. His book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers, opens with the provocative question, “How many dead Republicans does it take to satisfy the bloodlust of ACORN founder Wade Rathke?” referring to his contention that Rathke’s “progressive comrades-in arms” planned “to kill delegates and police” at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota, before a turncoat helped law-enforcement dismantle the plot.*

Vadum sees a world of difference between right-wing tea partiers and left-wing occupiers. “The only point upon which both agree is their hate of bailouts,” he told TheDC. “But that’s it. Zuccotti Park is a small park … The tea party attracted thousands and tens of thousands to their rallies; OWS attracts tens and maybe hundreds. When the tea party rally was over, the tea party left. OWS refuses to leave.”

Rathke said scenes of tea party activists shouting down politicians at town hall events reflected poorly on their movement. But he also acknowledged that scenes of public defecation, drug use, fighting and other violence also left an indelible impression.

“You never let anger get in the way of your tactical position. Anger is a tactic. When you don’t control the anger, you don’t control the tactic … Out of control anger leads to some of the things you mentioned.”

Rathke offered this piece of advice to occupiers and tea partiers alike: “Make sure that the issues you represent are laid out clearly to the public.”

That’s advice the Occupy powers-that-be may want to take to heart. A Gallup poll released Tuesday morning showed that 56 percent of Americans are generally indifferent to OWS protesters and their activities.

T.V. Reed, a Washington State University professor and author of a book on the culture of progressive social movements, told USA Today that Americans find it difficult to understand the Occupy movement since it lacks a cadre of leaders who can consistently articulate their objectives.

Rathke said he was closely following the Occupy movement, and is sympathetic to many of its ideals, but dismissed the idea that he had a hand in making it go.

“Some people think I’m organizing the OWS movement,” he told The DC, “but we know better than that.”

While Rathke hasn’t been tied directly to the occupiers, his former organization has. A Fox News investigation in October found that New York Communities for Change, basically New York’s ACORN contingent operating under a new name, hired around 100 ACORN workers from other cities and paid some as much as $100 per day to attend and support Occupy Wall Street protests.

New York Communities for Change is run by John and Steve Kest, brothers who served as two of Rathke’s chief ACORN deputies. Rathke says he has nothing to do with any ACORN campaigns or day-to-day operations now.

Name changes in the ACORN universe are common now, since its brand is now so toxic. Rathke himself conveniently changed ACORN International — domestically, at least — to Community Organizations International.

ACORN isn’t nearly as well known internationally, and certainly not in the countries where Rathke is gaining a foothold. It’s not very likely the average poor person living in a Nairobi slum has any idea that ACORN has been implicated in criminal activity in the United States.

Rather than retreating quietly into the world of left-wing philanthropy and union organizing that forms the rest of his professional identity — the Tides Foundation and SEIU’s New Orleans local, both of which he founded — he has quietly built a growing worldwide community organization. Its potential seems nearly limitless.

ACORN International already has a presence in twelve countries across five continents. Rathke is just as likely to be tooling around his native New Orleans as camped out in the slums of Nairobi, roaming the streets of Mumbai, or making the rounds in Dominican villages.

Rathke’s resurgence, say multiple critics, is proof American conservatives won the domestic ACORN battle but lost the global war.

“We tried valiantly to tell people three years ago,” former ACORN board member Marcel Reid told The DC about Rathke. “People should have focused on his organizing efforts inside and outside the U.S.” Instead, says Reid, most observers limited themselves to dissecting a host of voter-fraud allegations.

“People let him get away,” Reid said, “and now that man has taken over the world.”

In the fall of 2008, Reid and seven other ACORN directors became whistleblowers against corruption by obtaining a court order forcing their organization to open its financial books to its board members. The rest of the board pushed back with delays and postponements, and eventually removed all eight from their positions.

They formed a counter-insurgency of sorts, the “ACORN 8,” to caution politicians, labor organizers, and members of the media that ACORN’s size, the scope of its activities, its chameleon-like nature, and its almost certain involvement in criminal activity made working with the organization a risky proposition.

That caution extends to ACORN’s global expansion.

“We see all of this as extension of what ACORN and Wade Rathke always intended,” ACORN 8 spokesman Michael McCray told TheDC.

Rathke retained control of ACORN International, at the time just a rag tag bunch of disparate organizing groups sprinkled throughout the world. But three years later, with Rathke’s organizing focus directed toward his global federation, that group’s growth is no less than astonishing.

Rathke is no longer focused on organizing low-income urban Americans and registering them to vote. Instead, he’s pressuring foreign governments to better fund education in Africa’s slums, pressing for microfinance reforms in the Third World, and organizing Indians to respond when big retailers set up shop in neighborhoods accustomed to conducting commerce with street merchants.

He’s deeply involved in international remittance, the process by which expatriates send money back to their home countries. Community Organizations International operates in many countries with weak banking laws, crooked governments, and little oversight. This, say his critics, is a recipe for graft and corruption.

“Of course we should worry about that,” said Reid. She was part of the original three-person investigative committee that unearthed what she called widespread commingling of funds among now-famous ACORN affiliates like Project Vote and ACORN Housing Corporation. It’s those financial crimes that she says Rathke and those around him are likely to repeat.

With its global reach and in-your-face tactics, the Occupy movement has grown largely by using the same tactics that made Rathke successful, Reid told The DC. Comparing the ACORN founder to Saul Alinsky and his “Rules for Radicals” tactics, she added that “the tea party practiced Alinskyism of organizing while OWS is practicing Wadeism.”

Both McCray and Reid said they participated in campaigns where hundreds of volunteers camped out front of the homes of corporate CEOs who were unwilling to play ball with ACORN. Hundreds of ACORN activists, they recalled, were sent to home addresses to intimidate ACORN targets.

During their time with ACORN, they said, the community-organizing giant redefined and perfected many of Alinsky’s tactics — with a far more aggressive edge.

ACORN’s downfall coincided roughly with Rathke’s reinvention, and it began with guerilla tactics of a different sort, practiced by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe. His series of 2009 videos showing ACORN employees and volunteers attempting to facilitate prostitution and human-smuggling proposals from walk-in members of urban communities — in fact, O’Keefe himself and his cohort Hannah Giles. Shortly thereafter, Congress froze ACORN’s federal funding. The IRS and the U.S. Census Bureau later terminated their ACORN contracts.

McCray, who was booted from ACORN’s board months earlier, tipped his hat to the young agitator. “There’s no better practicer of Alinsky tactics than James O’Keefe,” he told The DC.

*An earlier version of this report incorrectly cited Matthew Vadum as having contended that “ACORN leaders” sought to “kill delegates and police” at the 2008 Republican National Convention. “[ACORN founder Wade] Rathke had nothing to do with the bomb plot. He did, however, express disgust that a fellow community organizer had foiled the plot by alerting the FBI,” notes Mr. Vadum in a blog post citing the mistake. We regret the error.
Original article at: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/24/left-wing-organizing-kingpin-tea-partiers-out-organized-occupy-wall-street/#ixzz1fE31lHE3

New Orleans President Obama continues to sightsee and glad hand his way across India on his sales trip for US business interests, soft shoeing around the issue of jobs being outsourced to India, even as he argues to the US press that by meeting his sales quota [...]]]>

Indian Protesters burning FDI poster at demonstration

New Orleans President Obama continues to sightsee and glad hand his way across India on his sales trip for US business interests, soft shoeing around the issue of jobs being outsourced to India, even as he argues to the US press that by meeting his sales quota over there, he will create jobs over here.  What’s really up on the subcontinent?  Thanks to ACORN International’s Dharmendra Kumar who directs our Delhi operations and the work of the India FDI Watch Campaign, which has long been one of our signature efforts in India, we have a pretty clear view.

Dharmendraji shared a report filed by Maulik Vyas Maulik in Sunday’s Economic Times on Obama’s remarks to Mumbai business leaders:

President Barack Obama today said India should lift restrictions on foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail, saying old concerns that small shopkeepers would be impacted ignore today’s reality.

Mr Obama, while addressing the US India Business Council summit in Mumbai on Saturday, Obama flirted with the issue that raises bogey in India by saying, “Here in India, many see the arrival of American companies and products as threats to small shopkeepers and to India’s ancient and proud culture. But these old stereotypes, these old concerns ignores today’s reality.”

“Going forward, commitment must be matched by steady reduction to barriers in trade and foreign investment from agriculture to infrastructure and from retail to telecommunications,” he said.

Those present including commerce minister Anand Sharma and planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia would have surely taken note of the US President’s hint that opening up the retail industry among others could mean better bilateral trade between the two countries.

A “hint” from POTUS is hardly persuasive and simply saying that restriction on FDI for multi-brand retail “ignores today’s reality” is hardly going to change the debate in India or sway any opinions one way or another in the Parliament.  If this was the boost that business was hoping to get from Obama, they were definitely left holding a big fat hot air bag.

Obama’s speech before Parliament in Delhi on Monday was even more general and obscure on this point.  This is all he said that came within a kilometer of pushing for FDI modifications in his speech:

Together, we can resist the protectionism that stifles growth and innovation.  The United States remains—and will continue to remain—one of the most open economies in the world.  And by opening markets and reducing barriers to foreign investment, India can realize its full economic potential as well.

It’s actually such a delicate carom off the bank that I should probably say that I think that was his pitch, and along with probably less than 20 Americans and probably more than one million Indians, I read every word.

FDI aside, where Obama obviously gave business what President Clinton once called in a conversation with me “a big wet kiss,” he clearly let the press go white hot on this while realizing that the “reality” of the politics in Parliament is still between “no go” and “go slow” on any modification in either multi-brand retail or finance (which was never mentioned anywhere at any time, so Wall Street, back of the bus, chumps!), and handled the politics accordingly both in the US and India.

The speech was actually well received in India and more interesting for other reasons to me at least.

In his Delhi speech Obama actually “represented” in a way that he has been unwilling or unable to in the United States in these polarized times.  The other day I was asked by a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor about how Obama might see India and our issues “as a community organizer.”  I had replied essentially that he was a long way from Kansas now and playing “a different game.”

In his speech rather than recoiling from his past as a community organizer, as he has over the last two years, he embraced it both humbly and eloquently:

Throughout my life, including my work as a young man on behalf of the urban poor, I have always found inspiration in the life of Gandhiji and in his simple and profound lesson to be the change we seek in the world.  And just as he summoned Indians to seek their destiny, he influenced champions of equality in my own country, including a young Martin Luther King [ Images ]. After making his pilgrimage to India a half century ago, Dr. King called Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance “the only logical and moral approach” in the struggle for justice and progress.

So we were honored to visit the residence where Gandhi and King both stayed, Mani Bhavan.  We were humbled to pay our respects at Raj Ghat.  And I am mindful that I might not be standing before you today, as President of the United States, had it not been for Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world.

Using the expression “urban poor” is a signal to the troops!  His comments on Gandhi and King restored a little, dare I say, hope, in place of my pique the other day when he was quoted widely as saying his visit to Gandhi’s Mumbai house and seeing King’s signature on the guestbook was “cool.”

The end of his speech to Parliament and to the Indian people was Obama at his best.  Importantly he chided the government on not standing up for democratic principles as much as needed, which is important.  On some of his partnership projects, I’m clueless, but the end of the speech is the kind of sentiment, I was hoping for.  I hope the President can put substance to it:

Now, in a new collaboration on open government, our two countries are going to share our experience, identify what works, and develop the next-generation of tools to empower citizens.  And in another example of how American and Indian partnership can address global challenges, we’re going to share these innovations with civil society groups and countries around the world.  We’re going to show that democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for the common man—and woman.

As the world’s two largest democracies, we must also never forget that the price of our own freedom is standing up for the freedom of others.  Indians know this, for it is the story of your nation.  Before he ever began his struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi stood up for the rights of Indians in South Africa [ Images ].  Just as others, including the United States, supported Indian independence, India championed the self-determination of peoples from Africa to Asia as they too broke free from colonialism.  And along with the United States, you’ve been a leader in supporting democratic development and civil society groups around the world.  This, too, is part of India’s greatness.

Every country will follow its own path.  No one nation has a monopoly on wisdom, and no nation should ever try to impose its values on another.  But when peaceful democratic movements are suppressed—as in Burma—then the democracies of the world cannot remain silent.  For it is unacceptable to gun down peaceful protestors and incarcerate political prisoners decade after decade.  It is unacceptable to hold the aspirations of an entire people hostage to the greed and paranoia of a bankrupt regime.  It is unacceptable to steal an election, as the regime in Burma has done again for all the world to see.

Faced with such gross violations of human rights, it is the responsibility of the international community—especially leaders like the United States and India—to condemn it.  If I can be frank, in international fora, India has often avoided these issues.  But speaking up for those who cannot do so for themselves is not interfering in the affairs of other countries.  It’s not violating the rights of sovereign nations.  It’s staying true to our democratic principles.  It’s giving meaning to the human rights that we say are universal.  And it sustains the progress that in Asia and around the world has helped turn dictatorships into democracies and ultimately increased our security in the world.

Promoting shared prosperity.  Preserving peace and security.  Strengthening democratic governance and human rights.  These are the responsibilities of leadership.  And, as global partners, this is the leadership that the United States and India can offer in the 21st century.  Ultimately, however, this cannot be a relationship only between presidents and prime ministers, or in the halls of this parliament.  Ultimately, this must be a partnership between our peoples.  So I want to conclude by speaking directly to the people of India watching today.

In your lives, you have overcome odds that might have overwhelmed a lesser country.  In just decades, you have achieved progress and development that took other nations centuries.  And now you are assuming your rightful place as a leader among nations.  Your parents and grandparents imagined this.  Your children and grandchildren will look back on this.  But only you—this generation of Indians—can seize the possibility of this moment.

As you carry on with the hard work ahead, I want every Indian citizen to know: the United States of America will not simply be cheering you on from the sidelines.  We will be right there with you, shoulder to shoulder.  Because we believe in the promise of India.  And we believe that the future is what we make it.

We believe that no matter who you are or where you come from, every person can fulfill their God-given potential, just as a Dalit like Dr. Ambedkar could lift himself up and pen the words of the Constitution that protects the rights of all Indians.

We believe that no matter where you live—whether a village in Punjab [ Images ] or the bylanes of Chandni Chowk…an old section of Kolkata [ Images ] or a new high-rise in Bangalore—every person deserves the same chance to live in security and dignity, to get an education, to find work, and to give their children a better future.

And we believe that when countries and cultures put aside old habits and attitudes that keep people apart, when we recognize our common humanity, then we can begin to fulfill the aspirations we share.  It’s a simple lesson contained in that collection of stories which has guided Indians for centuries—the Panchtantra.  And it’s the spirit of the inscription seen by all who enter this great hall: ‘That one is mine and the other a stranger is the concept of little minds.  But to the large-hearted, the world itself is their family.”

This is the story of India; it’s the story of America—that despite their differences, people can see themselves in one another, and work together and succeed together as one proud nation.  And it can be the spirit of the partnership between our nations—that even as we honor the histories which in different times kept us apart, even as we preserve what makes us unique in a globalized world, we can recognize how much we can achieve together.

Big finish!  We’ll try to hold him to it at home and abroad!

ACORN Canada members Preeti and Pascal with Wade.

Vancouver At Douglas College in New Westminster, hard by Vancouver, more than 30 ACORN Canada members and friends, gathered to watch the Dharavi documentary, WASTE, on ACORN International’s organizing of waste pickers, and to dig deep in their pockets to support our organizing in Latin America, [...]]]>

ACORN Canada members Preeti and Pascal with Wade.

Vancouver At Douglas College in New Westminster, hard by Vancouver, more than 30 ACORN Canada members and friends, gathered to watch the Dharavi documentary, WASTE, on ACORN International’s organizing of waste pickers, and to dig deep in their pockets to support our organizing in Latin America, Africa, and Indian mega-slums.  It was a special honor to be introduced by Pascal Apuwa, one of our British Columbia leaders, who it turned out was from Korogocho where ACORN Kenya is organizing and in fact knew some of our organizers and friends with COPA-Kenya from his own time there as a community organizer.  It seemed we had our own kind of “globalism” of organizing working here!

The support helps us move forward on ACORN International’s campaigns around the Commonwealth Games impact in Delhi and the larger Remittance Justice Campaign we are preparing to launch in December to another level.  Pascal confirmed that he pays $17 CN on a transfer of $100 CN to his family in Korogocho, plus they pay more to pick the money up in Nairobi as well.

Just as people were stepping up to help people all over the world, it was a pleasure to finally drag my whipped butt back to crash and see that billionaire George Soros strapped up with a million dollar donation to Media Matters to match some of the millions that Rupurt Murdoch and Fox have been pushing towards hate speech, Glenn Beck, and the Republicans.  This was no pussy foot thing where he sent an anonymous note over to someone with a check.  This was an “in-your-face, sonuvabitch” contribution directly aimed at supporting the accountability campaign directed at Fox advertisers who are supporting the madness – and violence – being advocated by Beck and the rest of their talking heads.

We won’t win this fight as some kind of “battle of the billionaires” between Murdoch and Soros (and no, my right wing buddies, I’ve never met Soros or raised a dime from him!), but leveling the playing field as this campaign gets ready to take some major steps forward is a good thing.

But just as we’re trying to link members in Canada and members in Korogocho and Dharavi to  create power and a stronger fight, because that’s our strength, I wish Soros would really step up and contribute not just money but something from his strength.  Given Soros legendary skills with currency and financial markets, I would love for him to spend a couple of days looking at the numbers behind the New Corporation and the Murdoch empire and seeing what it would take to give that tree a really hard shake.

That would hurt Murdoch where he sits on his wallet.  A million dollar contribution provides good symbolism and real resources, but looking at how to hit Fox, Murdoch, and the New Corporation hard and heavy would be a global contribution to people and politics throughout the world.

Vinod Shetty, director of the ACORN Foundation (India) in Mumbai and ACORN’s Dharavi Project and I wrote [...]]]> New Orleans Recently in the wake of his impending new book, Prince Charles of England made headlines throughout the UK and India, by holding up the Dharavi mega-slum in Mumbai as a “model” for sustainable development.  An interesting observation.

Vinod Shetty, director of the ACORN Foundation (India) in Mumbai and ACORN’s Dharavi Project and I wrote an op-ed that is circulating among papers in these countries arguing that the issue is not just “how green our valley” may be, but perhaps more importantly the need to link housing with work, residence with livelihood, which is at the heart of the development questions for Dharavi and other poverty reduction and housing schemes around the world.

Take a look:

The Real Lessons of Dharavi Sustainability

by   Wade Rathke, Chief Organizer of ACORN International and Vinod Shetty, Director of ACORN Foundation (India)

Prince Charles recently stirred up headlines in India and the United Kingdom with his controversial praise for Dharavi, the huge mega-slum in the hear of Mumbai where we work, as a “model” of sustainability for towns and cities in England and the rest of the world.  He was certain that despite his “call for a revolution” in his upcoming book, he would be accused of “naivety” for holding up our slum as a model for much of anything.

Prince Charles in our view – and experience – is actually onto something, perhaps even more profound than he realizes.

ACORN’s Dharavi Project which has organized a union of hundreds of recyclers in Dharavi who use our sorting center to process tons of gathered products and plastics from the surrounding slums, housing colonies, and more than 30 schools and assorted corporations who are our partners is a perfect example of exactly the kind of “green” sustainability project that the Prince trumpets.  Our recyclers, following our four “R” program of “Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, and Respect,” have seen their efforts to survive and make a living in the wake of Slumdog Millionaire suddenly less an object of scorn than a source of admiration.  Specials on our work by the National Geographic and news and magazine articles in India and abroad have called us “green heroes,” “green worker,” and “invisible heroes.  It is hard to express how proud we are of the praise, we just wish it paid better.

And, that is perhaps the hidden message of sustainability that the Prince and many others might be missing, especially since the very future and existence of Dharavi is at risk to the billion dollar plans of a queue of developers for what is now our valuable acreage in the center of Mumbai.   Dharavi works because it is not only the home of our recyclers and more than a million others, but especially because this is also where they work.  The heart of sustainability is not simply full utilization of what we produce in a constructive way, but it is also livelihood.  Dharavi works because so many of us are  able to make a productive livelihood where we live.

The lesson lost on so many planners, urbanists, and developers both for the poor and other people, is that the farther livelihood is separated from living, the more unsustainable a community becomes.  The resettlement plans in Delhi that have moved recyclers and others 30 to 40 kilometers from their former slums have forced constant contradictions as recyclers move back to even worse conditions, because they cannot create a livelihood two hours away from their work.  In Bombay the new housing schemes that eradicate slums and  provide 200 meter housing units are bleak places, quickly abandoned by many who need the space to work where they live, and find there is no longer room for the their work where they are forced to reside.

This problem is not unique to Dharavi or India.  The abandoned housing tracts filled with foreclosures outside of Phoenix in the United States or the bleak acres of council housing that the Prince decries do not work partially because they are so removed from employment that they simply fester and rot, stranded by lack of transportation, and stifled by a paucity of opportunity.  The bustle of small industry physically located in Dharvi, is at the heart of why Dharavi is a model for many commmunities.

Sustainability is about living in harmony with the land, but living is not simply a matter of residence as the people of Dharavi prove every day, but a matter of livelihood.  It is past time for planners and politicians to understand that the real lessons embedded in why Dharvi works are found in the balance of home and work.  ACORN has found over and over again in Dharavi and the other countries where we support community organization that the more work, and the better it is paid, then the more people will come and sustain the community.  Separate these things and life in the community shrivels and shrinks.

The Prince has a point here.  We hope he takes it the rest of the way and reminds his audience and the world that Dharavi works because of the work itself, not just because of how green we seem.

with ACORN Inte

rnational and ACORN India’s organizing of the Dharavi Project with ragpickers in this huge mega-slum has been a partnership called “Dharavi Rocks” between our ACORN Foundation (India) and the Blue Frog jazz club in the central part of the city. Vinod [...]]]> Mumbai      One of the more unusual, and innovative, of the programs associated

with ACORN Inte

rnational
and ACORN India’s organizing of the Dharavi Project with ragpickers in this huge mega-slum has been a partnership called “Dharavi Rocks” between our ACORN Foundation (India) and the Blue Frog jazz club in the central part of the city. Vinod Shetty, ACORN’s director in Mumbai, was able to fashion the partnership out of the imagination and persistence of linking a friend of a friend of his brother (who also runs a new jazz club in Bangalore!) with one of the principals in the Blue Frog club which has become prominent in the music scene in the several years since in opened. The heart of the deal is that six times a year, the Blue Frog will provide the artists and ACORN will supply the audience and the venue in Dharavi. The idea had begun with a group of Tamil rappers and then advanced with the Blue Frog to include the Boxettes a lively women’s band from the UK and a Norwegian rapper when they visited the club, and the rest, as we say, is rock n’ roll!

Vinod is careful to give ample credit to the French-native who manages the club for having the energy and understanding of the impact, particularly on our young ragpickers, but also getting the fact that it would

resonate with some of the groups and artists the Blue Frog imports into the Bombay music scene particularly from the UK and Europe. There was no better example of this than the 90 minute musical workshop with about 40 of our kids that was put on by the well respected and highly talented saxophonist and rapper from Birmingham, England, Soweto Kinch.

Soweto’s musicianship, personality, and patience were on wonderful display at the Blue Frog

where the first
workshop was held. I wasn’t surprised though since UK-native Sue Crow, a great development volunteer for ACORN International, in a meeting the previous day was a huge gushing fan-girl of

Soweto Kinch and filled us in on his path from the councils (public housing) of

Birmingham to Cambridge and then his decision to move into music to connect and make a difference.

It was all great fun as Soweto blew the roof off with the sax and painstakingly with Vinod translating tirelessly moved our gang through various exercises designed to allow them to experience rhythm and appreciate how to make music with their feet, hands, and voices. It was a master’s course on rap in many ways given to our our crew of slum kids adept in the music and dance of Bollywood. Even after the workshop and without any common language Soweto continued to engage our guys in a form of universal communication which speaks volumes to the power of organizing just as it does music.

Soweto

The whole event was an unexpected treat for me on my last day in Mumbai before flying home. The manager asked me for pictures since all the professional photographers were shooting video, so I’ll have to hustle when I get back to the States to find some that are good enough for the Blue Frog and Soweto to share. And, as a final note, Soweto and I both were in Mumbai and both of us walked away with the t-shirt, his in red, mine in black: Dharavi Rocks!

From National Geographic Article

Mumbai      Vinod Shetty, ACORN India’s Director, and I had been meeting for hours along Juhu Road at the Sip ‘N Munch going through our work list of what needed to be done on campaigns around remittances, the Commonwealth [...]]]>

From the National Geographic article featuring ACORN International ragpickers.

From National Geographic Article

Mumbai      Vinod Shetty, ACORN India’s Director, and I had been meeting for hours along Juhu Road at the Sip ‘N Munch going through our work list of what needed to be done on campaigns around remittances, the Commonwealth Games, and multi-national food contractors and their labor law violations.  We had discussed the great progress of our Dharavi recycling center.  He had told me the good news that Joseph Campana’s project for us of producing a book that would support our Dharavi work finally had a publisher in Harper-Collins-India.  We had talked about the prospects for acquiring a set of scales and a crushing machine to be able to raise the prices for our plastic recycling and increase our waste pickers wages.  We had checked the dates and filings on our paperwork for the ACORN Foundation (India).  We had discussed our efforts to repackage and sell products being produced in Dharavi for Diwali and other festival dates to our school recycling partners like Eco-Mundial and the American School.  We had taken notes for reports owed to our friends at BCGEU and SEIU.  There were a lot of items ticked off the list.

Finally at that point Vinod pulled out a staff of glossy magazines and newspapers with almost a blush.  The magazines ran the gamut.  One was the Clean India Journal which focused on environmental progress for companies, contractors, and others in India and featured our work in September in a piece called, “Waste Matters for Green Workers” about our ragpicker organization in Dharavi.  Another in a the “green” issue of an upscale fashion monthly called Jade and style magazine was entitled “Green Heroes:  Ragpickers or City Savers?”  (Access both on our website at www.acorninternational.org)   Later he forwarded me another piece published on several websites by a Londoner which was not quite as gushing but referred to our ragpickers as “invisbile heroes” in http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/3790-Invisible-heroes-of-Dharavi.  An article distributed for school children in a “weekly reader” style publication called Robin Age also contained a recent feature.

Looking quickly, the Jade piece by Sugatha Menon ended with the lines:

Ragpickers in the Dharvi Project

As I write this story, a message pops
in my mailbox, the US ambassador
to India is visiting Acorn’s waste
segregation center today… paucity of
time doesn’t permit me to go for the
event, but I sincerely wish for many more
mighty oaks for this Acorn.

Wow!  Feeling the love in Bombay!  What a pleasure to read for a beaten down veteran of the USA based searches like me which are dominated by right wing zealots, conspiratorialists, and general haterators.  Why doesn’t Google search worldwide for me?!?

Reading the Clean India Journal, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  A straightforward and accurate overview caught my eye:

Laxmi and several others form the recycling clan of Dharavi. And, they are all part of Acorn Foundation (India), Mumbai, a registered charity trust affiliated to Acorn International or the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now. Acorn International is a community based NGO working in 12 countries across the world. It has been fighting on issues like right to affordable housing, living wages, water, sanitation, education and healthcare in India. One of their projects – the Dharavi Project – Acorn aims to organise and train the ragpickers in scientific methods of waste handling, segregation and recycling. Besides Mumbai, the organisation also works to improve the lives of the ragpickers in cities like Delhi and Bangalore.

In the “Invisible Heroes” piece the last paragraphs are equally powerful by Delhi based Anna  da  Costa:

like many countries, especially in the developed world, India already has a skilled recycling and sorting workforce in place. “India’s recycling industry has the expertise and capacity to scale massively, but it needs to be properly valued, formalised and supported,” said Shetty as we sat in his Mumbai office. There are signs of change, “But these need to be magnified.”
I looked down at Shetty’s desk where a series of small ID cards were carefully laid out, identifying recyclers as members of the “Dharavi project”. An image of a young boy, who could not have been more than nine years old, gazed back at me, accompanied by a name in bold type: “Sameer”. For Sameer, this card is the difference between invisibility and visibility, anonymity and belonging. For India, it is a step on the long road to tackling the enormous waste challenge, and creating dignified, green jobs.

One article had such a “crush” line about Vinod that he would have to be careful showing his wife the piece.

It was great praise and a long way from building power, but as we rose it felt like progress in Mumbai for our rag pickers in this huge world capital of the poor.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39320649/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

Chicago As we pack to leave for Vietnam and another great Organizers’ Forum dialogue and then to India, the Commonwealth Games is on a death watch.  New Zealand, Scotland, and the Welsh put the games on alert.  Canada, which is crucial to the games and has been silently allowing all of the displacement [...]]]>

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39320649/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

Chicago As we pack to leave for Vietnam and another great Organizers’ Forum dialogue and then to India, the Commonwealth Games is on a death watch.  New Zealand, Scotland, and the Welsh put the games on alert.  Canada, which is crucial to the games and has been silently allowing all of the displacement to go forward, has now delayed its flight to the games during the death watch.  The head of the Games who has presided over this disaster is supposedly flying (according to the Guardian to meet with Prime Minister Singh.

This is all too little, too late.

The real death watch should have been looking at the body count of injured workers and tragic working conditions in the Games, which we have frequently reported at www.commonwealthgamescampaign.org.  The real watch and demand should have been for decent living conditions for all, not just some elite athletes from around the world.

Some years ago they changed the name of the games from British Empire Games to the Commonwealth Games.  Even with the name change, it still all seems the same!