Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » ACORN International

Quien Digo Miedo?

jstuart — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:52:52 +0000

San Pedro Sula It was a coincidence that we were in Honduras almost exactly a year after the elite coup that toppled the populist, democratically elected President of Honduras and installed an illegitimate puppet government after fierce opposition and international condemnation of the process. The story is well known by now. President Zayla was extricated from the country, tried to return along the border, eventually was ensconced in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and finally exiled after an equally condemned rump election installed a new president, who because of this flawed coup has still not been recognized by other countries in the region. The United States role in all of this has been consistently bad, and a surprising blemish on Secretary of State Hilary Clinton from start to finish. A year later we could not help noticing that feelings are still raw and protest seems only a scratch beneath the surface.

In an important meeting not long after we arrived in the municipality of Cholomo, abutting San Pedro Sula to install provisional officers to facilitate the process of legal registration of ACORN Honduras references to the last painful year kept coming up as various members spoke of issues in their community and their hopes for what ACORN International might be able to accomplish. A widely represented group was proud to accept the responsibility, but the discussion of democratic process in the registry laws were raw concerns. One woman gave an impassioned speech after the appointments were completed that was clear in its passion and disappointment over the political dispossession of so many people and their voice during the last year.

After a meeting much later with the head of the university sociology department where we were arranging for volunteer placements in the fall to assist our organizing, we all jumped in two cars to see if we could still catch a new documentary movie that was on everyone’s tongues about the last year called Quien Digo Miedo? Who Said Fear? The movie was playing in an open space in a huge room in the central part of the city for free. In the dark when we arrived there were more than 300 people sitting on plastic chairs, standing along the back and sides of the room in the sweltering heat, and following every word. Frequently various comments and scenes led to outbreaks of applause throughout the crowd.

The movie was powerful in a way that news reports had never been. To be looking over the cameraman’s shoulder as he founded and filmed a dead protester, shot by Honduran soldiers, as the President tried to return to his country at Paradiso from the Nicaraguan border was devastating. Weeks later as marchers in the narrow streets of the capital were attacked by tear gas and arrested and beaten, senseless and without reason, by soldiers and police was shocking. Rage was steadily trumping fear, and both were still deeply embedded in the room, and now tinged by the sadness of defeat and the small hope for a more democratic future.

It was hard not to be humbled as we begin our organizing as servants to such a dream.

Forty Years and Counting

dine — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:57:39 +0000

New Orleans I was a couple of minutes late and walked into a speech by long time New Orleans community leader Beulah Laboistrie’s remarks about her decades of leadership in ACORN and now A Community Voice, which has arisen from the ashes of the organization in Louisiana, so I was looking sidelong at the wide grins of 50 local leaders and friends of the organization. The spirit was powerful in the room as they announced an award named after long time leaders Gerri Bell, dead now several decades but a legend in that room and represented by her daughter and son, Beulah Laboistrie, who mentioned she would be 90 this year, and Lanny Roy from Lake Charles, who has been a rock in southwest Louisiana.

Greetings were read from ACORN Canada and ACORN International. Mildred Edmond, President of Local 100 of the United Labor Unions, was there and in the thick of the celebration. I wore my new “Tenants Vote” t-shirt from Toronto ACORN with its big maple leaf in the middle of their design of the ACORN button, which elicited comments and appreciation from many of the leaders in the room.

This was a gathering of a community foraged in the steel of struggle from decades of neighborhood and citywide campaigns, fights for the living wage, heroic struggles to lead the post-Katrina recovery, and now the heartbreak of having to build a new organization again. Watching the smiles as leaders hugged Vanessa Gueringer and Gwen Adams as they marched up to get their certificates and listening to their remarks sometimes brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t help thinking about the indomitable spirit and will of the members, which trumps money every time.

Here is a place where the name, the experience, the “brand” of ACORN is still golden in the streets and community centers of New Orleans just as it is in so many other cities in the country. It’s not a “word” but a shared experience that lights the flame guiding the work going forward. Beth Butler spoke about her father having told her when she went to work for the organization in Little Rock to make sure she worked with “strong leaders” and many were in this room. Mark Moreau, head of New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation, brought the crowd to peals of laughter after receiving an award, saying he had been with them for more than twenty years and would be with them forever “no matter what the name.”

In fact the truth of the old chant is indisputable: the people united shall never be defeated!

Happy anniversary to a peoples’ struggle that will continue unbroken!

International Reports Via Skype

jstuart — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:26:06 +0000

Lima In a bold experiment at the ACORN International staff meeting we tried to schedule and link our far flung offices together via free Skype connections to be able to hear reports from India and Kenya and introduce staff and leaders to each other. As the expression goes in Spanish it was mas a minos!

On our end in Lima webmaster magician, Josh Stuart from ACORN Canada, tried to get the projector and speaker to work on four different computers before getting my baby, cheapo Acer to do the job, sorta. In the process we lost connect with Vinod Shetty of Mumbai calling from Europe. We were finally able to hear Dharmendra Kumar and Om Pradash from Delhi and they could see us, but we could not see them on the web camera.. We kept getting emails from Kenya but for whatever reason were unable to find them on line even though their Acer was the same as mine. Frustration was setting in until we finally got a big win in Bangalore.

Suresh was right on time and he could see us and we could see him. A projector beamed him up to the wall and the excitement and enthusiasm was amazing. He could also see us, though in a somewhat blurry fashion. When Kay Bisnath, ACORN International president from Toronto, sat in front of the computer and was able to question Suresh about the work and progress, it was truly transforming how we could imagine the power of the communications and this new and accessible tool.

Pioneering is hell, but worth every bit of the journey!

ACORN! Mabadiliko Sasa

jstuart — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:44:38 +0000

Nairobi It took more than an hour for the members to arrive for the official launch of ACORN Kenya in Korogocho, but once they were all in there were more than 200 and every time one of the speakers said, “ACORN!” the called response was “Mabadiliko Sasa!” meaning “Reform Now!” I fell in love with that chant.

If there’s one thing that organizers like me believe like life, it is that conflict is necessary to clarify positions and allow a full grafting and binding in strength from previous wounds. The leaders had been calling the organizers throughout the evening, saying they were good now, they were satisfied, they were ready to do something different. In organizing the meeting yesterday was “testing,” and it’s always “pass/fail.” In this case we had passed by standing firm that we were a poor peoples’ organization run by dues that wouldn’t buy or be bought. It was going to be a new day.

There were many highlights to the meeting, but besides what is now the Kenya ACORN chant of Mabadiliko Sasa, there was one beautiful sight for all of ACORN International. I was asked to say something at the end of the program, and I gave greetings from the other countries of ACORN International. Before I began listing the countries one by one, when I finished the word “greetings!” the entire crowd raised their hands and waved back. They were waving to their brother and sister ACORN members around the world. I wished I had that scene on a movie camera!

The meeting left the leaders and organizers delighted. The crowd had been good and spirited. There was no outbreak about our not serving food and drink. Furthermore it was a break forward in terms of respect: 9 other nonprofits showed up and wished ACORN Kenya well, the Chief and two assistant chiefs came, spoke, and offered support, and in so many ways we “arrived” finally in Korogocho.

One of the traditions for a new organization’s founding is to plant a tree to measure the progress and growth of both the tree and the organization. On the Chief’s compound in the center of Korogocho we planted 5 trees. I got to plant the first to honor ACORN International, which was a special treat. Someone representing youth planted the second. A young radio broadcaster for the Korogocho FM station planted the third. The assistant chief the fourth, and the Chief the final tree within sight of her front door.

This is hard, dry ground. Trees are few and far between. The hole was three or four times the dept of the roots on the seedling to plant more dirt and to fill the hole with gallons of water. The members are right. Building an organization, just like growing a tree, is going to be hard here, but we are well off in the right direction after the launch.

Mabadiliko Sasa!

No Unions for Honduran Maquiladores

jstuart — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:46:53 +0000

San Pedro Sula In a little more than two hours from Houston, I landed at the smallish airport of this city of almost a million which is the second largest in Honduras and the industrial capital of the country. The Sula Valley is dotted with one huge fenced and barbed wired maquila plant after another, mostly specializing in textiles. These plants rise out of bucolic scenes filled with huge stands of bananas, sugar cane, pineapples, and other products of the industrial farming operations of Chiquita, Standard Brands and the like which have played big roles in the fertile and humid countryside around this area for a century.

Suyapa Amador, ACORN International’s head organizer in Mexico, had put together a lot of different meetings so that we could assess whether to it was practical to partner with other organizations, hire organizers, and open and office in Honduras. Sitting around the table before opening of a restaurant owned by the mayor of Villanueva, a town of 100,000 some 20 kilometers from San Pedro Sula and enjoying a delicious parrillada with her, it was surprising to hear her concern that there was simply no public health facilities that were accessible anywhere in her district. Passionate conversation around the table revealed that the only public hospital in fact in the whole region serving a huge part of the country was an overburden and inaccessible facility in San Pedro Sula. If you were rich there were three or four “doctor’s” hospitals, but many died just trying to get to the one public operation.

In the evening as television sets all blared a state ceremony for the newly elected politicians following the controversial election and undemocratic coup of the elected President, we were meeting with more than a dozen men and women who were union organizers and leaders in San Pedro Sula and the neighboring districts in the evening at the Gran Hotel Sula in the center of the city which joined the Cathedral and other landmarks abutting the central square and park. I listened to one expansive story after another about the difficulties faced in organizing workers, which is common whenever union folks get together, but there was a different twist to these discussions. None of them were really talking about problems that their own unions faced, as much as they were talking about the terrible working conditions, low wages, and constant abuse for workers in the maquilas, the ubiquitous fabrication plants that filled the city and countryside. Suyapa had them speak one after another. Many told of strikes. Others of the young women forced to take birth control to work there. Others of injuries and health risks. All of the fact that none of the workers had any human rights on the job.

It took me a while to finally understand that in Honduras where these brothers and sisters worked with unions, unions had been outlawed in the maquilas in order to attract the foreign capital and work. Workers could – and did – organize, but the unions they built could not be legally recognized thanks to the Honduran Congress and obviously the stated desire of the maquila operators many of which are from Korea and other countries chasing the work to the bottom. Here they pay about $250 per month for workers.

To great laughter all of the unionists told long and vivid stories of being redbaited and called communists for simply being union organizers trying to respond to workers who wanted unions. We all laughed because in that sense there was no difference at least between being in Honduras and being in the United States.

Voting Rights for Indian Poor

jstuart — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:18:43 +0000

New Orleans Recently in Delhi all of us as organizers of ACORN India greeted the news that the Delhi Municipal Corporation (DMC) was allowing the urban poor without home addresses to register for voting cards with great excitement. Dharmendra Kumar, Hina Sheikh, and Prachee Sinha all attended a meeting while I was in India to see what it would take to break the logjam of the 100,000 who had tried to register so that they could finally vote.

As organizers we knew the ramifications of this first-time experiment are huge. If it worked in Delhi, the nation’s capital, then we could begin campaigns in Mumbai, Bangalore, and elsewhere to try to force the same provisions to be enacted.

The impediment historically has been that without a fixed address that could be verified by the election commissioners, an individual could not vote. This effectively disenfranchised millions of the urban poor in India who were living as slum dwellers, pavement dwellers, and transient labor from place to place.

But this breakthrough could also represent more than a significant step forward in creating a voice for the urban poor and a progress in civic engagement. Winning rights for the homeless to vote in India also opens the door to a base level of citizen wealth for the urban poor in the country.

Simply put without a voting card which represents a formal identification, it is virtually impossible for a poor individual in India to obtain a ratio card. Getting a ration card means that finally a citizen can access what exists as a survival net in India (to call it a safety net would be absurd) since they can obtain minimal allotments of food and cooking fuel.

If we can get our arms wrapped around it, ACORN India sees this as a huge potential campaign that could benefit tens of millions in this huge country.

An article in the Indian press this week gives some sense of what it all means as the first poor, 500 citizens have pushed through to enfranchisement and gotten to exercise the vote.
New Delhi, May 7 (IANS) ‘I voted!’ said an excited 70-year-old Prithvi Chand after he cast his vote at the Ramnagar polling booth in Paharganj in central Delhi. ‘I just hope that change will happen for the good and that our issues would be highlighted by the politicians.
Our ally, Action Aid, hit the nail on the head in the same piece: “Parvinder Singh, communication manager, Action Aid, an NGO that works to end poverty, said: ‘The homeless people have no takers when it comes to political parties.”Without a permanent address, one cannot have a government issued identity card or voter card. This allows the candidates to neglect homeless people from their electoral considerations,’ he said.”

Some people find it hard to believe which underscores the fight in front of us: “Zile Singh, who begs at Moti Bagh flyover, said that he has never voted and he doesn’t think he ever will. ‘I don’t have a home. No permanent place to stay. How will I get a voter card? It’s just a dream.”Even If I get the card, what will happen? My life will not change. I will still live on the street,’ he said.”

Campus International Chapters

wade — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:01:09 +0000

Toronto After an early morning meeting with our friends at SEIU Canada discussing where organizing and our partnership should go, Judy Duncan and I were off to Guelph about an hour and a half from Toronto.
I had met three young and dynamic women from the University of Guelph when they happened to volunteer in the rebuilding of New Orleans several months ago. They had quickly convinced me that the University of Guelph was the epicenter of volunteerism in Canada with over 70% of the student population participating in volunteer and service projects throughout the year. They had also dangled the magic notion in front of me about whether or not we might want an ACORN International Chapter at the University of Guelph. On that slim reed Judy and I were trekking to Guelph, where it turned out that neither of us had ever visited, in order to see how we could put together the next steps.
We met our three friends — Nikoletta Papadopaulos, Deniz Ergun, and Meghan Pistchik –at the Guelph Volunteer Centre near the middle of this 100,000 population, picturesque college town. We were quickly joined by a new recruit to the cause, Leah Serafini, and after a brief meeting with the Volunteer Center staff, we were off for a cup of coffee and a chance to start taking notes and making the plan. We had definitely stumbled onto the right organizers, although all of them were on the verge of graduating this semester, they were well connected and committed to making this happen with us.
It turned out that there was an international program at Guelph as well as a Latin American department. Both encouraged and required internships, so work with ACORN International in our various offices would be a gift for both of us. As an added benefit, two of the women were from Hamilton and were interested in helping out James Wardlaw in getting this newest ACORN Canada office up and running. Furthermore, they told about a waiting list during “reading” week and at other times where students from the University of Guelph were trying to work in the recovery of New Orleans and would be delighted to get to volunteer with New Orleans ACORN on projects down there as well. We had hit the volunteering trifecta or better since this seemed to be working four ways rather than three.
There seemed to be lots of ways to go in setting up our first ACORN International Chapter at the University of Guelph. Our UG organizing team was going to check the rules but thought it was a simple matter of 20 signatures which they could get in about 30 seconds flat, but they weren’t sure we would even want to mess with the bureaucracy. We might want to simply form the chapter with their contacts, start putting out the word about the opportunities to work with ACORN International in Canada and abroad, and then go from there.
Judy and I liked the way these women from Guelph thought about the world. I asked at one point where there any men that went to Guelph? They all laughed. Not many got in the way of progress at Guelph, since the ratio was about 7 women to every man there, so they were ready to tackle the world and had all the confidence and gumption we had hoped to find, so we were ready to tackle it with them!

Life is Not a Beach

wade — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:05:16 +0000

Puerto Playa       After more goodbyes and last minute meetings about plans and problems, we were off in a van offered by the general secretary of an island-wide, 50,000 member transport workers union that we were fortunate to meet our last night in Santiago thanks to one of the organizer’s ingenuity (props to Steffan Lajoie!). This trip was smooth and quick sailing on the main highway rather than the picturesque mountain roads when we first journeyed to Santiago. We had hoped to see the beaches on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic near Puerto Playa before heading off to the still chilly spring in Canada.
   We were not disappointed. The driver drove us through a gated, vacation community near the coast to a still public beach called Treasure Cove by the hopeful developers that was popular with Dominicans. We were the only haoli’s.
   The cove was beautiful. The overcast sky made the water seem cooler than it really was for the first minutes, but once past a then band of rocks, probably planted for a meter or so as a beach protection, the sand was smooth under foot, the waves mild and rolling, and the water a blessing as a few of us took a swim.
   Life is not a beach though, and the reminders were quick in coming in this idyllic setting. The restaurant was run by a white foreigner, and he tried to charge for the banos, defeating the claim to easy living on the coast. The souvenir shop was run by a Haitian. The dishwasher in the restaurant was a Haitian woman. Immigrants were unmistakably on the top and the bottom here.
   The issue of migrant workers from Haiti into the DR is huge here. We met at some length with John Service of the Catholic Relief Service about ways to partner to deal with workers’ rights issues for such workers when we met him in Santo Domingo on Friday. We were all relieved to hear Katia Soriano report on the relative harmony in the neighborhoods between lower income Dominicans and Haitians living side by side.
   Nonetheless it was not a surprise to me as I took my last walk around the beach to see that there was a recycler working along the edges of the crowd, picking up plastic, bottles, and whatever might be sold.   Of course, it was also a Haitian.

An International Organizing Community

wade — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:51:11 +0000

Santiago   The leaders met all day from 9 until after 5 and then could be seen continuing the conversations later in the evening. The vision was gripping. They were building a cohesive federation in which they saw solidarity between low income and working families and lower income, regular and informal workers joining together not only in the emerging seven countries of ACORN International but beyond.
   The stage for the vision was set by the simple, but powerful stories told from San Juan Laragauncho, Boca, Santiago, and Toronto about basic victories won through hard struggle and constant persistence yield fundamental rights and, even more, some basic dignity to families and communities. Ester’s calm tale of winning the paving of the central avenida in Lima’s SJL that would unite 16 diverse communities, and then winning the building of stairs to scale the steep hills on which squatters have perched their dwellings, and finally ending with the opening of the Club ACORN in SJL next week in a community center that they forced the Mayor to build. He bluffed them by demanding that they produce 600 people to make the demand, and then they did. Ercilia Sahores in translating called these “infrastructure issues,” but listening closely, we were hearing victories around fundamental, basic human rights that provide minimum dignities to people regardless of income: education, potable water, safe and secure housing, and more. The leaders were telling what amounted to “life and death” stories though never expressed in such stark drama.
   The board of ACORN International had a resilience that would be impossible to comprehend if the same conversations were happening in the US or Canada or Europe. When looking at the budget and the ups and downs of income and the long gaps between now and sustainability or stability, there was no shrinking back, no fist-banging, and absolutely no fear for the organization, and having been a helpmeet to similar meetings for more than 40 years, none of that would have been unexpected, yet here never a beat was missed, never a cloud broke through the sky of the discussion, the leaders simply and plainly spoke of what more they would have to do in order to make the ends meet, because the organization had to succeed. Thinking later, I should not have been surprised. Fighting for water, lights, roads, and roofs, never succumbing to the “reality of no,” is something that has made these men and women leaders in their communities. They are dreamers unafraid of the daunting and oppressing reality of circumstance and situation, who force their wills upon problems to produce progress. The organization was in such good hands.
   The staff summing up later could feel the power on the meeting whether they had been there or not. They had sat through days of meeting and planning. They knew some were waiting for paychecks, some had not been able to make the trip, and that the work was tough everywhere, but they could also hear — and see when we visited the local groups in Santiago — all of the victories and the progress. There was a collective sharing that can only be found in the deep honor that comes from being allowed to share this work with a collective purpose and vision and to see the building of a foundation in an international organizing community in new ways with a new vision.
   The leaders and staff had worked to raise the money to make this trip possible and the strong bonds of shared sweat produced an equity that transcended worlds as different as social housing in Surrey or cinder block sheds along dirt roads in Santiago. There was a long list of what needed to be done and a commitment for more and different communication to build the community and make it work.
   Meeting in Lima in a year to do this all over again seemed like a highlight already enlivening the year. No one here in Santiago would want to be able to not report that they had done their best and won with the rest. Adding India and Kenya in a year and maybe even Indonesia or other friends, made it easier to look over the obstacles and see nothing but the best in the future.

Twitter Tutorial

wade — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:45:21 +0000

Santiago   Katia Soriano, Ercilia Sahores and myself jumped out early to drive to Santo Domingo to meet with the Catholic Relief Service to see what it would take to build a partnership. We got back mid-afternoon to catch up with a “get to know you” session that the leaders had run along with Judy Duncan and the rest of the staff. We then plowed into the meeting again to tighten down plans and programs for ACORN International.
   The highlight was a discussion facilitated by Josh Stuart from ACORN Canada on how ACORN International should use Facebook and Twitter. Our heads were spinning.
   Bottom line, number 1:   we are becoming fans! And, if you don’t know what we mean, you will see when we ask you to become fans of ACORN International.
   Bottom line, number 2:    We are all going on twitter so we can keep up and follow the work of all of the organizers around the globe in a cheap and easy fashion. Be there or be square!
   Turned out that Twitter is already wildly popular according the organizers in the Dominican Republic, but it also seems that is because the porners are sending web links. Hmmm. Someone got there first, but we’re going to catch up.