Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » ACORN Canada

Biblioteca, Center for Global Justice, and Via Organico in San Miguel de Allende

Mariehurt — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:46:14 +0000

Ronnie from Via Organico

San Miguel San Miguel de Allende is a picturesque 500 year old colonial town in the central highlands that played a major role in the Mexican Revolution against Spain and more recently is known as an artistic and ex-patriot center for North America. I first visited at the founding meeting of Enlace a dozen years ago and always enjoyed my time here. On our last visit in January 2010, close to 50 folks had packed the patio of the offices of the Center for Global Justice to hear about ACORN International’s work, so we were excited to be able to return to the Biblioteca, a nonprofit library touted as the largest such institution in Mexico and perhaps North America, where Judy Duncan of ACORN Canada and Dilcia Zavala of ACORN Honduras would join me in updating folks here on ACORN International’s progress.

After Cliff Durand of the Center introduced the discussion and our presentations the questions were interesting and focused on everything from what we had learned from the ACORN experience in the USA to Occupy San Miguel to whether or not it was practical to organize effectively around economic development in rural areas of the developing world. It was great to have some of our friends ask for updates on the Remittance Justice Campaign who had been with us in San Miguel in 2010. Before the end of May, we will post the session on ACORN International’s YouTube channel upon our return.

After a last look at the Biblioteca and a wave towards Juan of our favorite San Miguel coffeehouse, Juan’s Café, complete with a can of Café du Monde coffee & chicory commemorating his own visit to New Orleans, we joined Ronnie Cummins for a fantastic lunch and deeply educational tour of the Via Organico café and sundry operations. Ronnie is a fellow traveler on the activist path who originally hails from the homeland around Port Arthur, Texas, and after a stint at Rice in Houston jumped into the maelstrom as many of us did to oppose the Vietnam War and, as they say, the rest is history. He ended up making a career of advocating around food and other environmental issues and now heads a 850,000 strong Organic Consumers Association based in Minneapolis where he lives part of the year and Via Organico, the Mexican counterpart, where he is based in San Miguel. The Via Organico nonprofit is in many ways a demonstration project for an all-organic operation as well as a combination store, café, brewery, classroom, storage facility, and rooftop farm operation.

And, a heckuva operation at that! Lunch was fantastic and some of our number felt it their duty to try the beer brewed by Via Organico from cactus among other things while others had a dessert to die for that included homemade ice cream and later lime popsicles. Ronnie gave us a full tour of the entire operation along with the warehouse and brewery. He did such a great job, he made it feel like it might be possible to duplicate it, but as organizers, we all knew how difficult bringing projects like this to fruition really are.

Alex McDonald of Ottawa ACORN trying a cactus beer

Among the more interesting things Cummins showed us is was the rooftop growing area where the old ways that Mexican farmers used gourds were in use for growing produce in this dry, high, arid land by conserving the water they had collected. They would plant large gourds at intervals among the vegetables and refill the gourds with water through small caps on the gourd. Because the gourds were fired from the more porous clay, as the ground dried, the soil would literally suck the water out of the gourd and into the dirt nearby in order to water the plants to good health and yield. Amazing!

Anytime you can have a great dialogue with people, share what you’ve learned, join others successes and experiences, and learn something as well, it has to count as a great trip all around. As we hugged our old companera, Ercilia Sahores, who had organized all of these events for us, we said hasta luego, but in our hearts we could hardly wait to return for more.

All Organic Operation

Gourd Watering System

Wal-Mart Reneges on Healthcare and Teaches Old Lessons Again

dine — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:21:17 +0000

Kingston The last several days it feels like I have been reliving the organizing we did through the Wal-Mart Workers Association and WARN (Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now) from 2004 through 2008, largely in central Florida and California. That experience was the heart of the discussion with our brothers on the national Steelworkers staff and an hour long interview and background briefing for a Nation reporter trying to assess organizing efforts and impact on Wal-Mart for a coming feature. With the support of the Atkinson Foundation we are launching several pilots in 2012 in Toronto through ACORN Canada to test out alternative labor organizing models and foundations, so I found myself directing a workshop for a couple of hours in Kingston, an historic and pretty old town along the St. Lawrence River, with the ACORN Canada new organizing staff in Ottawa and Toronto. With Wal-Mart too often again in my mouth and mind, I should not have been surprised to see a long piece on their massive retrenchment on healthcare for their workforce reported in the New York Times by Steven Greenhouse and Reed Abelson.

In recent communications with their workforce (“associates”), Wal-Mart lowered the boom by eliminating any access to healthcare insurance for any worker averaging less than 24 hours per week – and from our experience that would be a vast majority of their 1.4 million workers! Additionally for employees who remain eligible the costs went up marginally on a weekly basis but the co-pays and deductibles went through the roof, sometimes moving from $1000 to as high as $5000. Under the new Wal-Mart plan if you smoke, you croak. Any admitted smokers would be required to pay additional huge premiums. Other incentives that Wal-Mart (and may other large corporations) had supported to encourage coverage or savings for health care were substantially reduced or eliminated.

Wal-Mart’s argument was straightforward and simple: it’s their economy, stupid! Premiums had gone up and their profits were flat in the recession, so it’s so long, Charlie, and goodbye. Will it hurt their workforce? Hell, yes!!! Was that a factor, hell, no! The company, which had been glad to herald its expanded coverage several years ago (though we questioned the veracity of their reporting!), now was very close mouthed about how many people were affected and how many would remain covered and actively insured. Relatively speaking, I would bet from our experience that the numbers would plummet to less than 10% of the hourly, non-supervisory workforce, though Wal-Mart is always slick about the way it merges the salaried and supervisors into all figures about average wages and healthcare coverage.

Greenhouse indicated that some of the material on this change was supplied by OUR Wal-Mart (Organization United for Respect at Wal-Mart) and was clear that part of the original “reform” by Wal-Mart had been the result of widespread labor and community pressure, but it seemed to me that the company was once again reminding all of us how transient our efforts had been in the past and how irrelevant current programs like OUR Wal-Mart are to them in their current calculations. Those of us who worked to organize Wal-Mart in recent years at least liked to try to rationalize all of our work by hoping that we had created the leverage that had led to some reforms, even if we thought the leverage was sold short and stubbed out when it could have yield more dramatic results.

An advocacy and communications campaign with a company as large as Wal-Mart certainly has some value, and ACORN International continues to aggressively and substantially support the work in India of our India FDI Watch Campaign which has kept Wal-Mart and other big box retailers bottled up and at bay on their expansion efforts in this huge market, so we understand why it is important. Nonetheless Wal-Mart seems not to mind rubbing our noses in the dirt and reminding us that without deep and permanent organization inside the company of their workforce, the rest is just public relations and politics to them, entered based on their will and exited at their whim.

For all of the smoke and mirrors, sound and fury, unless there is a sustained, permanent effort to create a viable and internally powerful workers organization at Wal-Mart, the worlds’ largest private sector employer, nothing will check the ability of this company to give and take away based on whatever it deems expedient. That simply does not work for its workforce, and when the giant roars others will follow, so the big footprints of the company will be dug deeper by other large and small firms moving to curtail benefits and protections in the wake of this action. The company cannot be organized “old school,” and the UFCW and others have not yet mastered how to mobilize the resources, support, and commitments to successfully create the infrastructure that will build organization inside the company for the long term.

Wal-Mart keeps throwing down the gauntlet and proving one generation of labor leaders after another that they have the staying power and that any deals with them are temporary and contingent. It’s all about them and the devil take the hindmost.

We need to make a commitment to organize this company come hell or high water, and finally mean it, not for a couple of budget cycles but until the job is done.

ACORN Canada, ACORN International, Many Others Banned from FEMA Funding

dine — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:00:27 +0000

New Orleans Props to Dave Weigel of Slate.com for bringing to the public a better understanding of how the Republican U. S. Congress is so consumed by hater-ation that they can’t see the desperate needs of victims of disaster because they are still blinded in the fog of their ghostbusting of the tragically defunct ACORN. Yesterday Weigel redacted a long, long list of groups banned by the U.S. House of Representatives included in the funding appropriations bill for FEMA. Perhaps nostalgia, but I can’t tell you how proud I was to read that list. It was an Honor Roll! It was also totally bizarre!

Here’s the honor roll of banned groups:

“None of the funds made available by this Act shall be made available to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Acorn Beneficial Assoc., Inc., Arkansas Broadcast Foundation, Inc., Acorn Children’s Beneficial Assoc., Arkansas Community Housing Corp., Acorn Community Land Assoc., Inc., Acorn Community Land Assoc. of Illinois, Acorn Community Land Association of Louisiana, Acorn Community Land Assoc. of Pennsylvania, ACORN COMMUNITY LABOR ORGANIZING CENTER, ACORN Beverly LLC, ACORN Canada, ACORN Center for Housing, ACORN Housing Affordable Loans LLC, Acorn Housing 1 Associates, LP, Acorn Housing 2 Associates, LP, ACORN Housing 3 Associates LP, ACORN Housing 4 Associates, L.P., ACORN International, ACORN VOTES, Acorn 2004 Housing Development Fund Corporation, ACRMW, ACSI, Acorn Cultural Trust, Inc., American Environmental Justice Project, Inc., ACORN Fund, Inc., Acorn Fair Housing Organization, Inc., Acorn Foster Parents, Inc., Agape Broadcast Foundation Inc., Acorn Housing Corporation, Arkansas Acorn Housing Corporation, Acorn Housing Corp. of Arizona, Acorn Housing Corp. of Illinois, Acorn Housing Corp. of Missouri, New Jersey ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc., AHCNY, Acorn Housing Corp. of Pennsylvania, Texas ACORN Housing Corporation, Inc., American Institute for Social Justice, Acorn law for Education, Rep. & Training, Acorn Law Reform Pac, Affiliated Media Foundation Movement, Albuquerque Minimum Wage Committee, Acorn National Broadcasting Network, Arkansas New Party, Arkansas Acorn Political Action Committee, Association for Rights of Citizens, Acorn Services, Inc., Acorn Television in Action for Communities, Acorn Tenants’ Union, Inc., Acorn Tenant Union Training & Org. Project, AWA, Baltimore Organizing Support Center, Inc., Bronx Parent Leadership, Baton Rouge ACORN Education Project, Inc., Baton Rouge Assoc. of School Employees, Broad Street Corporation, California Acorn Political Action Committee, Citizens Action Research Project, Council Beneficial Association, Citizens Campaign for Fair Work, Living Wage Etc., Citizens Consulting, Inc., California Community Network, Citizens for April Troope, Clean Government Pac, Chicago Organizing and Support Center, Inc., Council Health Plan, Citizens Services Society, Campaign For Justice at Avondale, CLOC, Community and Labor for Baltimore, Chief Organizer Fund, Colorado Organizing and Support Center, Community Real Estate Processing, Inc., Campaign to Reward Work, Citizens Services Incorporated, Elysian Fields Corporation, Environmental Justice Training Project, Inc., Franklin Acorn Housing Corporation, Flagstaff Broadcast Foundation, Floridians for All PAC, Fifteenth Street Corporation, Friends of Wendy Foy, Greenwell Springs Corporations, Genevieve Stewart Campaign Fund, Hammurabi Fund, Houston Organizing Support Center, Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Org. Council, Iowa ACORN Broadcasting Corp., Illinois Home Day Care Workers Association, Inc., Illinois Acorn Political Action Committee, Illinois New Party, Illinois New Party Political Committee, Institute for Worker Education, Inc., Jefferson Association of Parish Employees, Jefferson Association of School Employees, Johnnie Pugh Campaign Fund, Louisiana ACORN, New York Communities for Change, Affordable Housing Centers of America, Action Now, Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change, Arkansas Community Organizations (ACO), The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, New England United for Justice, Texas Organizing Project, Minnesota, Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, Organization United for Reform, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, A Community Voice, Community Organizations International, Applied Research Center, or the Working Families Party.”

Weigel was looking at the bill to try and understand how Congress was going to shift resources that would have been spent in Joplin, Missouri, still suffering from their tornado damage, to help folks on the East Coast who were battered by Hurricane Irene. There is a huge story that is covered my appendix about Lessons from Disaster in my book, Battle for the Ninth Ward: ACORN, Rebuilding New Orleans, and the Lessons of Disaster (available www.socialpolicy.org), but that, as they say is another story, though it is the same story with simply another verse of governmental inaction and incompetence at the highest levels.

Some of the list is simply overkill. ACORN International is banned by both that name and our other name, Community Organizations International. ACORN Canada is banned though it doesn’t even work anywhere but Canada, duh.

Much of this is simply meanness. The poor Applied Research Center is banned I assume just because they are my friends, and I have spoken supportively of them. Oh, that and their founder was the great Gary Delgado, the first organizer I ever hired after founding ACORN, so sins of the fathers, I guess for the hater clan in Congress appearing near year on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

But among the elected Congressional haters accuracy is not the point after all. One of the things I loved about reading this Honor Roll is that though they banned six or seven different entities that are component parts of Local 100, United Labor Unions, in fact Local 100, if it were of a mind, could go crazy applying to FEMA to help disaster victims, as could a number of other entities I direct that are not on the list.

Given that Congress sure isn’t helping disaster victims since the FEMA bill is stuck now between the House and Senate, maybe that is exactly what we should do. Years ago I listened frequently to a story from my ex-mother-in-law (may she rest-in-peace) as she would say, “Wade, let me tell you what’ I’ve learned raising five children. Never tell one of them not to put a bean up their nose. As soon as you do, you’ll catch one of the little scudders in the kitchen doing just that!”

Seems to me like the Republicans in Congress are trying to put a bean up our noses now.

Lower Remittance Fees Now!

dine — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 12:29:26 +0000

Ottawa In the final event of the first ACORN Canada Convention members gathered in front of the National Bank of Canada, assembling to raise the demand to lower bank and money transfer fees for remittances. With Parliament looming over them car after car honked in support of lower bank fees. Hardly a struggling immigrant driving a cab along the street didn’t lean on their horn, understanding the issue precisely.

A popular radio broadcast on politics on CBC had interviewed Kay Bisnath of ACORN Canada and ACORN International shortly after 8 AM in a national broadcast. A piece had run in the daily paper, Ottawa Citizen, made the campaign clear.

The nearly 100 protests left the Bank of Canada, responsible for regulations, to make the same demand at the offices of the Finance Minister Michael Horgan. We didn’t get far. Police blocked the doors and locked them quickly, as the members chanted below and beat the plastic trash receptacles to a drum beat, calling on the Minister to “come down, meet the people!”

Finally using police as embassaries, Marva Burnett, outgoing president of ACORN Canada and other leaders were able to get their message up and get the answer down. The deputy finance minister agreed to study the issue and issue a response. The finance ministry communication director came down and parsed a few words indicating they had read the Citizen and heard the news, and would “study the matter.”

A mild response, but a step forward because truly this is an issue where there is every indication that the government is totally clueless of the issue despite the huge impact. Back-of-the-envelope figuring had put the cost of excess fees, defined as fees above the G-8 and World Bank target of 5%, sent by immigrant and new Canadians back to families and communities in their home countries as being over $500,000,000 per year!

Members had prepared a “giant invoice” as chant leader, Pascal Apuwa, called it and after the Finance representative slinked away, a chant rose for the giant invoice to be left and collected. Marva Burnett placed it pointing inside the locked doors of the ministry. I am categorically clear that a small piece of history was made here, since I am confident that in the history of social movements over thousands of years, these members may have been the first to chant “GIANT INVOICE!”

Nonetheless, the chant makes the point. This is a huge bill, now past due, that needs to be repaid to the poor and migrant works and immigrant families around the world, being exploited by money transfer organizations and banks on a daily basis at the price of billions.

ACORN Canada Convention: Happy and They Know It!

dine — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:48:16 +0000

Ottawa Once the members put on their t-shirts, grab their packets, and start struggling to find dorm rooms on campus, classrooms for workshops, and auditoriums for the plenary sessions with maps in one hand and agendas in the other, the smiles come out and I know it’s an ACORN convention. The weather was picture perfect, warm with a steady, but gentle breeze. Spirits were good. Numbers were holding, and the one b

ig bus from Toronto was early…does it get better than this?

Yes in fact it does when the reports were being given during the Saturday evening session from each of the offices in Toronto, British Columbia, and Ottawa. People were proud of their campaigns, their victories, and their struggles even while still engaged. They were also just plain personal in a way that as surprising and moving. A delegate from Toronto introduced his sister who had been the stead force pushing him along and enabling his participation. She waved to the crowd. One of the key Toronto leaders thanked everyone for “changing her life.”

This was Natalie Hundt who with her two daughters had visitedwith me in the hallway before the meeting once she put together who I was. She asked me if I wanted to hear a story about the way “this thing you started so long ago saved my life?” How would I have ever wanted to hear anything else?!? She was from Kitchner in Ontario and had ended up in Germany with her family. These things happen. She fell in love, left school, and had two children. Almost as quickly, it didn’t work out and she was in Scarborough in a low income high rise apartment raising those same children with precious little money, no prospects, and the entire place literally falling down on her head. She was angry, frustrated, and didn’t know what to do. She had thought about a petition, but didn’t know how to go about it. A young woman knocked on her door and asked her if she knew about ACORN and the fact that it was organizing in her building and others in Scarborough. Natalie looked at me and laughed, and said she literally grabbed the organizer by the arm and pulled her into the apartment and say, “I’ve been waiting for you!” I loved this story. I’ve trained hundreds of organizers that behind every door are “natalies” waiting for them, if they do the work and get there, so to have real live witness ready to testify is always a gift.

Natalie told the rest of the story quickly. She got involved. She was forced to speak up at a meeting and survived. It happened a second time, and it wasn’t so hard. By the third time she was called on to speak about her issues, she had realized, “I can do this.” After that it didn’t stop. She ended up going to help out on an ACORN Canada supported GOTV effort with some New Democratic Party (NDP) campaign, was invited back to help more, and has now run twice as for her riding winning on the NDP line winning 16% the first race and going past 30% several months ago against a 16-year incumbent. Her work with ACORN and now the NDP, combined to connect her to a job, and you know the rest of the story, her life has changed, and she is comfortable saying so. At the end of her report on the work ACORN is doing in tenant campaigns in Toronto, she closed by telling everyone how much she appreciated ACORN and everything it had done for her. Having heard the back story, I knew what she meant, and could clap even harder, knowing how much her story meant to me!

Kay Bisnath lives in Scarborough as

Kay Bisnath

well and closed the reports with greetings from all of the countries in the ACORN International federation. President Bisnath spoke movingly of solidarity and the “scarlet threads” that held all of us together and united us in fights for justice all over the globe. After closing to rousing applause she asked the crowd to join her in a song. She then led people in the classic tune that linked ACORN and how all of us were happy in the organization.

We were happy. We did show it!

Forty-one Years of ACORN: Celebrating a Day in the Work

jstuart — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:01:27 +0000

Ottawa Having founded ACORN in Little Rock, Arkansas forty-one years ago today, it is hard not to reflect on how fortunate I have been to be a part of ACORN in one form or another all of those years, first as Chief Organizer of ACORN in the United States for thirty-eight years and now adding another three to the seven I have served as Chief Organizer for ACORN International. Here in Ottawa on the eve of the first membership convention of ACORN Canada after seven years of organizing successfully in this country and watching the members arrive yesterday and today, the privilege of being a part of this work on a daily basis is overwhelming.

Yesterday was not necessarily a typical day and in fact I might even say it was an extraordinary day, but whatever kind of day it was, it gave good cause to celebrate how special a day in the work as an organizer continues to be.

Start the day writing the Chief Organizer Blog and expresses some thanks to FairTrade Canada and the prospects of a breakthrough for the partnership of COMUCAP and ACORN International in Honduras. If it works, it could be a big step towards the self-sufficiency of our Latin American affiliates in the future.
Write the preface for Global Grassroots: International Perspectives on Organizing, second book to be published by Social Policy Press and due out by July 4^th.
Take the draft minutes for the ACORN Canada board meeting and then the Annual General Meeting (AGM) required by Canadian charity law, enjoy the serious deliberation of the leadership and head organizer, Judy Duncan, and occasionally get pulled into the discussion on our joint Remittance Justice Campaign.
Finalize the confirmation with the organizers of the Palermo Movement in Sicily to visit with them and the Simeto River organization in Catania in early October to discuss partnership and affiliation after the Organizers’ Forum delegation completes its work in Cairo.
Agree to meet with the Urban Affairs Department of the University of Memphis at the Highland Center in mid-October to assist with their planning.
Get the call that we have a tentative agreement to accept a donation to ACORN International of a mobile bio-diesel station for New Orleans that will be ready for pick-up in Santa Barbara, California within the month!
Spend an hour in a conference call with organizers for four different groups in Springfield, Massachusetts sharing the lessons from our Katrina work and discussing immediate steps necessary to organize and assist survivors in winning forbearance and rebuilding after the devastating tornado recently in that city.
Have a couple of juicy burgers with Kool-Aid hosted by one of the leaders of Ottawa ACORN for the British Columbia members already here and get to discuss with her husband some of his thoughts after having read Citizen Wealth.
Sit in on the final details staff meeting for the ACORN Canada convention at 11 PM, run the ACORN International “bootleg” fundraiser, and participation in the stress and camaraderie.

I’ve been one of the luckiest people in the world to get to do something that I love and that makes a difference every day and all of my life.

A day in the life of an organizer may be hard issues, but it is “good times!”

Vote “Mobs”

dine — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:09:13 +0000

New Orleans We read daily about another global democratic “spring,” and we actually have an election nearby in Canada. Some of you are stifling a yawn!, but it’s an important election particularly if another country can be pulled back from the conservative abyss through a timely realignment. One of the most interesting tidbits emerging out of this election is talk of “vote mobs.”

A fellow named Rick Mercer, a TV personality in the north, caught fire with something he called a “rant,” which upon listening seemed just like normal commentary to someone living in the 24/7 roar of television speech in the USA, about all kinds of groups being targeted to turn out to vote, except the more than 3 million youth who could make a difference. Some people watched it on YouTube and students started flexing their fingers on Twitter and Facebook and joining the call to vote.

Twisting the texting phenomena from a couple of years ago called “flash mobs” where friends would receive and then forward a text saying be at X in Y minutes and do Z, usually something silly in a public place, but, hey, anything to break the boredom of daily life is a good thing, students on more than 20 campuses around Canada started organizing “vote mobs.”

Our friends at LeadNow.ca did a great YouTube video with some students at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver that started and ended with a message to go vote in a bottle and then with the Police singing the song of the same name in the background preceded in lively fashion to run around, chase the ballot box, and dramatically make the point that it was time to go out and vote on May 2^nd. A “vote mob” is a GOTV rally with feeling.

John Anderson, ACORN Canada’s head organizer in British Columbia, forwarded me an article from The Star where several professors were quoted either affirming or denying whether these “vote mobs” would make a difference in the turnout or were just eager beavers who were already going to vote, proselytizing others to do the right thing. The article featured two great quotes, one startlingly absurd, and the other dramatically insightful.

Tamara Small, a political science professor, wanting to outdo “Debbie Downer” said the following and I quote: “The relationship between technology and voter turnout is that there isn’t one.” Wow! Is that startling or what?!? TV, radio, telephones, computer databases generating turnout lists and targeting, all creatures and features of voter turnout and modern technology, have no relationship to each other. If she had thought for a minute, she would be embarrassed, so let’s not pile on.

Jamie Biggar on the other hand, one of the co-founders of LeadNow.ca had a zinger: “Vote mobs are a way to turn desire into action,” he said. Who could disagree?

In fact turning “desire into action” is the motivating principle of much of all politics, and to tell the truth life itself. All of which makes me root for “vote mobs” and anything else that will get people moving towards the polls, because despite the fact that the key to the right’s success everywhere has been proven to be suppressing the vote, the key to our victories in Canada and elsewhere in the world is our ability to get our people out to vote. When we do so, we always win!

Ushahidi, the White African, and the Power Tools for Community Organizations

dine — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:36:51 +0000

Judy Duncan, ACORN Canada, sharing with ACORN International Kenya Organziers

Nairobi We met the future, and it is us!

Ok, calm down, it’s not that easy, and it will take awhile to get there, but my Paladin Partner, Drummond Pike, the ACORN Kenya staff, Sammy and David, ACORN Canada’s Judy Duncan, and me sat down with Erik Hersman (@whiteafrican) of Ushadhidi, an amazing tech nonprofit company, at their iHub project in Nairobi for what turned out to be a 90 minute speed meeting brainstorm: candidate for top meeting of the year! Let me give you a better look through the window, so you can follow my enthusiasm for the possibilities here.

First on Erik. Lifelong Kenyan from missionary parents who knew the meaning the of words commitment spending 20 years learning a tribal language, developing alphabet, translating a bible, and so on…thank god the rest of us have an easier lift! He’s also a full-on, one man band for the Nairobi tech community as the pride of not just Africa, but in some areas world beaters. Sitting in the less than one year old space for iHub, we were surrounded by computers and folks banging away who were a small subset of the 3000 vetted members of iHub who prove their chops to an advisory crew of techies and then are winnowed down to a batch of 250 that gets on going free access to the space, the fiber optic internet connections, and, you get the idea.

Drummond Pike and ACORN Kenya organizers looking at the "matatu" bus map on the iHub wall

But, Ushahidi is the real deal and, bear with the techno-peasant here, is at the top of the line in having figured out how to use “crowd sourcing” to map all manner of trouble from violence after the last Kenyan election originally to a tool that has now been useful in lots of election monitoring, disaster recovery, rescue, and response from Haiti to now Japan, and any number of other things where the open source software is accessed, downloaded, and put the street. The “crowd sourcing” is the key because it focuses on folks sending in sms text messages on their cellular phones to central repositories,which then plug it in the map creating information, transparency, and, potentially, a latent capacity for accountability as well.

Wrap your mind around that much and you start to get it. Take the tool (which with Erik turns out to mean every daunting problem is “easy” to fix!), the increasing ubiquity, even in the slums, of cell phones, and the decreasing costs of text messages, and add what ACORN International has in all of our countries, people in the streets with feet on the ground plus the ability to do something about in terms of not just taking names, but taking action, and you have a potential to totally change the game! You can get around the bureaucracy, document the issues, and pin them on the map to specific departments and right down to the desk of the responsible bureaucrat (“it would be easy!”). You can leapfrog over corruption and political alliances to document what is happening and therefore confront what is supposed to have happened or should have happened.

In organizing and political theory the role of “voice” and “agency” are critical. In the slums voice is silenced. One can easily see how the combination of these tools and membership organization, create a voice that could no longer be ignored. With the organization such irrefutable information is not power, but with organization, you have the ability to achieve collective action, and that’s agency, baby!

ACORN International organizers with matatu map and iHub wall

With Erik we didn’t have to explain ACORN International’s Remittance Justice Campaign. He got it and was there. Before long we were talking about how to create a tool that would link all of our members around the world with mobile phones and SMS messages to document the rates from both directions and how our members could find out in real time on a weekly if not daily basis the cheapest rates. We can’t create the nebulous theoretical “competition” that the World Bank, banks, and MTOs talk about as the only “solution” to predatory pricing, but by driving traffic of real folks who remit to the cheapest sources, we start to create an immigrants “money” market where price and fair dealing is the determining factor not the rest of the babble and bull. As Erik said, “it would be easy” to create the tool. Within minutes he was talking about convening a “hack-a-thon” to rough out a tool for us over a wild weekend. Hey, team, Tuskers on us!

The applications for such tools in our hands are endless, and go way past the slums into everything from documenting neighborhood issues, tenant complaints, police response, election monitoring, and, well don’t get me started, but in the developed world this would really be easy, too.

Get this tool in our hand, and it’s not as simple as our suddenly having a hammer and every problem is a nail, but we’ve got something more in our hands than a hope and prayer.

Canada Leads the Way in Demanding Remittance Regulations!

dine — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:39:40 +0000

New Orleans By late Tuesday night the last report was in from Vancouver putting a cap on actions across Canada in Hamilton, Toronto, and Ottawa in freezing and rainy weather as ACORN Canada (www.acorncanada.org) members stepped out to demand of federal authorities in Ottawa and provincial administrators in Ontario and British Columbia that the costs of remittances simply had to be regulated to put a stop to predatory pricing. The actions were widely covered on Global TV, Chinese and other language papers, the Metro Ottawa with a front page picture, and as far away as The Fast Forward Weekly in Calgary. Migrant and immigrant workers and families understand that this issue is huge, costly, and demands immediate resolution. (Details in the reports posted at www.acorninternational.org entitled Past Time for Remittance Justice and the supplemental report, Looking the Other Way: The Absence of Remittance Regulation)

Importantly in Vancouver there was a commitment from the chief staff person in the Finance Ministry to meet directly with ACORN Canada leaders to see what needed to be done to vet the issue and move forward. With a new Premier taking office this week, members are crossing their fingers that they might actually be heard on this huge issue dealing with money transfer organizations like Western Union, MoneyGram, and others.

Members in Toronto were literally locked out in the cold by police at the behest of the provincial government in Ontario at Queen’s Park. There seems to me more interest in the Hollywood concept of The King’s Speech than in Queen’s Park listening! Police and bureaucrats claimed the demand to meet with the Minister of Finance and present an “unauthorized” letter was past the pale, forcing the members with flags, bullhorns, and chanting to call out to supporters passing by and post the letter to the minister from in front of the government’s own building. “Hey,” politicians seem to be saying in Ontario, “what do we care about the problems of a bunch of new Canadian immigrants?” Indeed!

The report from ACORN Ottawa head organizer, Jill O’Reilly, elegantly and concisely describes what nearly 30 members faced at the federal level in pressing the demands:
“CUPW joined us with their national president. SEIU Canada local 2 staff joined us as well
We got press in Ottawa Metro, major free daily paper. We got local press in the Ottawa EMC, which publishes Thursday.

Leaders Michelle Walrond and Adrian Profitos went up with no trouble to commissioner’s office Ursula Menke at the FCAC. She wasn’t in or the deputy commissioner. So we spoke with their media relations person who tried to shove us off to the minister’s office. But members stayed firm and they promised us a meeting and to look at our info. We asked them to pass on the message to Ursula and her office that she needs to recommend a 5% cap on banks for remittance fees to the minister, etc.

The woman we dealt with was a little shaky and the press came up and took some good shots. the building management called the cops on top of the cops I already spoke with this AM. We turned out approx 11 cops. who were super nice and pissed that the building management called in more of them when we already notified them.”

All in a day’s work as other countries in the ACORN International federation also move to step forward with the same demand in the seven other countries where our members face the same issues.

Another step forward, as momentum continues to build around the world for remittance justice and it becomes clear there’s no stopping us now!

Demanding Remittances be Regulated by Governments

jstuart — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:52:40 +0000

New Orleans In December ACORN International released its study and survey of remittances entitled Past Time for Remittance Justice (www.remittancejustice.org) . The bottom line is that we demanded that banks and money transfer organizations (MTOs, i.e. Western Union and MoneyGram) reduce all charges and fees for transferring money from migrant workers and immigrant families back to their home countries to no more than 5% inclusive. This was hardly a radical request, since we were joining a similar call by the G-8 countries (including Canada and the USA) and supported by the World Bank that the 5% average charge be achieved by 2014. The report and actions done in Canada, Argentina, Mexico and other countries were picked up and reported in the Toronto Star, Canadian national radio, and other outlets in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and the big paper in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The response from banks and MTOs was minimal and defensive. The requests to meet and move forward were ignored, and that was by HSBC, Scotiabank, BMO, and Wells Fargo (responses also on the website www.acorninternational.org) , since in the main our letters and the report were circular filed.

Big problem though since it involves more than $368 Billion USD in transfers and banks and MTOs are skimming $44+ Billion USD in charges according to all reports. Why the impunity?

ACORN International researchers in Canada, the United States, India, and our other federated countries burrowed back down to look at the regulatory environment that is supervising the banks and MTOs to see exactly why they were allowing such predatory pricing. The results of this supplemental research went right past disappointing to the level of depressing. We have released Looking the Other Way: The Absence of Remittance Regulation on our website at www.remittancejustice.org in both English and Spanish, and will be distributing the report widely in coming days. The bottom line in looking at the regulations from the US Federal Reserve Bank, Canadian National Bank, and other national banking systems is that banks are not be regulated in this area at all. Oh, except for concerns about terrorists, but categorically not in any way to protect immigrant consumers! The MTOs are also virtually unregulated, though Canada and the USA they are supervised at the provincial and state level, which turns out to mean big licensing fees paid to state banking commissions (see 32-state chart at back of report compiled by researcher Larry Ginsburg from Baltimore). Some estimates are that it costs an MTO $2 million dollars to satisfy state requirements to enter business in the USA. Nonetheless, little to nothing is done at the state and provincial level to address the issues of costs so this remains an exploitive cash cow for all involved, except those remitting desperate dollars back home.

ACORN Canada is leading the way beginning with actions today in Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver to demand change and effective regulation of remittances. In Toronto members are banding together to at Queen’s Park to demand that the Minister of Finance promulgate regulations on MTO’s in Ontario. In Vancouver and Ottawa ACORN Canada members there are pressing forward the issue on the need for the federal government to come together and create the legislation necessary for the Bank of Canada to do the job of regulating the banks. Other countries will be following with similar demands.

This is big business for the banks and MTOs, but finally justice has to come now for the working people saving their dollars to send small sums home which are essential for the survival of loved ones and communities, and in many cases the very economies of developing nations. Fair is fair, and justice has to finally be won.

More Tenants? More Rights!

dine — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 14:19:32 +0000

Toronto Given the housing and foreclosure crisis in the United States, it was not surprising to see that homeownership rates have fallen rapidly in recent years. The Wall Street Journal published an estimate saying:

The nation’s home-ownership rate is also falling, to 67% of U.S. households in 2010, after topping 69% in 2004, according to the Census Bureau, with further declines expected. Each 1% decline represents one million households moving to rentals, housing experts say.

Conservatively that means 2 million fewer homeowners in the USA. Where are they going? Into rentals. The same WSJ article estimates the following:

Renter households now top a record 37 million after increasing more than 3.5 million in the past five years, partly due to the foreclosure crisis. Green Street Advisors expects an additional 4.4 million rental households to be added by 2015.

Part of this increase is fueled by the transfer of owners to renters and part of it is undoubtedly fueled by the tightening credit markets that will produce longer term rents, particularly among the young in expanding markets.

It is hard not to think about tenants in Toronto. At best only 50% of the city is composed of homeowners and estimates are only a little better than 60% in the greater Toronto area. In the neighborhoods where ACORN Canada organizers virtually everyone is a tenant in one high rise complex after another. The longest running organizing campaign not surprisingly has been the effort to win what we call, “landlord licensing,” which would be a process of licensing (and de-licensing) based on inspections (which would lead to repairs and improvements) and finally assure our tenants safe, decent, and even affordable housing. In this long running battle the real estate interests cry like stuck pigs at our every proposal, but there has been sure and steady progress. Last year winning a better auditing and inspections process, even though far short of licensing, according to the City of Toronto housing department led to $100 million in landlord upgrades and improvements. Now ACORN Canada is trying to secure another small, but significant victory in this guerrilla campaign where a box would be required in the lobby of all major apartment complexes where the audit reports and improvements would be available to any tenant seeking to rent creating a transparency that would hopefully steer tenants towards better properties and shame landlords into making needed repairs.

There’s no way to imagine cities with burgeoning numbers of tenants who will no longer be seeing apartments as way stations to homeownership but increasingly as permanent addresses and not realize that the long imbalance where landlords have held the upper hand and tenants in most cities and states have been virtually stripped of any rights, as a time bomb ticking. New construction of apartment blocks is being accompanied by rental inflation, so there are bound to once again be calls for controls if (when?) greed laps past demand, but perhaps even more urgently there will need to be tenant rights campaigns, like the ones in Toronto, to secure basic housing decency for the millions and millions who now understand that apartments are central to the urban future.

Visiting with the Miami Workers’ Center

dine — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:00:46 +0000

Miami Here and there I had run into Gibran Perera, the director of the Miami Workers’ Center, and had heard of the operation over the years. He spoke at the Tides’ Foundation Momentum conference several years ago on the “right to the city” which held interest. Looking for a way to give ACORN Canada organizers a chance to get a glimpse at organizing in Miami during their Year End-Year Begin staff meeting held at Sunny Isles, I reached out for Perera and his associate, Quanita Toffie, who I had known as a close friend of my daughter’s for several years, to see if we could visit.

The Center itself is near ground zero in Liberty City, the historic center of the African-American community in Miami, and along with Overton Park the epicenter of the riots that broke out almost 30 years ago around police involvement in a murder of one of the young men in the area. The area right around the center was ghetto-rugged with abandoned store fronts, the worn signs in front of the old 60’s era Community Action Agency from the long abandoned “War on Poverty,” and the usual slow moving, barely surviving mom & pop stores speckled here and there. Hashim Benford, the deputy director mentioned early in his briefing that one could arguably say not much had changed since the riot. There had been promises, including large scale economic development, more housing, and business opportunities, but in fact most of this had been empty promises. In fact one ill conceived plan was going to level the area where the center was housed, but now had was in longer discussions and planning.

The Center offered some minimal services like a small meeting room and a coming computer center, but mostly this was a beehive for campaign-based advocacy in and around the core of the African-American community. More recently they had spent the last year helping found Florida New Majority in 2009 to increase civic engagement dramatically. Using targeted canvass programs in several urban areas around the state more than 15,000 had joined through that program and participated in civic activities leading to the mid-terms, thereby filling a vacuum in Florida, as Hashim mentioned, created by the dissolution of ACORN in the state. The activist core membership of around 150 dedicated people shouldering much of the work of the MWC would be interesting for the work being done in the rearguard of public housing destruction and effective advocacy for black communities in Miami, but the decision and investment in Florida New Majority makes the work much more interesting and significant for these communities and the state.

The ACORN Canada crew enjoyed the exchange, I finally felt like I had a better grasp for the outfit, and we all felt it was exciting to watch what might come out of this work in Miami in coming years by our new friends.