Cardiff     Whether the leadership of ACORN International, led by President Marva Burnett from Canada, meeting under the shade, appropriately of an oak tree, or the organizers from around the world, joining the leaders, in talking about our directions for the future sitting in a circle on floor-seats in a yurt, it was clear we had grown by leaps and bounds during the past year.  Membership and dues were up everywhere.  Campaigns and victories were stirring and significant from Delhi to Tegucigalpa, from Lima to Newcastle, from Toronto to Paris to Bristol to Glasgow to even Detroit and Cleveland.  It was exciting to be part of the discussion.

We were not only growing in the cities where we had staff, but everywhere we were facing a challenge:  we were drowning in opportunity.  On one hand we had new cities where we had committed to building organization like Montreal in Canada and Montpelier in France, but we also had three new groups in Tunis where we needed to tighten down our supply lines.  We had affiliated our partners in Liberia but were trying to see if we could expand by uniting noncommercial radio and direct organizing in Kampala and other cities in Uganda.  We had added new groups in Manchester and Brighton successfully and seen our chapters in Birmingham begin a revival, but had twenty or more invitations from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and throughout cities large and small in England and Scotland asking for assistance and wanting to join ACORN.  We were training and developing initial plans to expand in Belgium and Bulgaria and trying to figure out how to support our allies in Greece and Slovakia, but everywhere we faced critical need and urgent requests, but we’re stretched to breaking in our ability to respond robustly.

Over and over again the discussions would hit ceilings and walls.  Common themes continued to emerge.  Every project, large and small, needed more staff and more money.  The leadership had discussed how to start to create a procedure for evaluation affiliations and facilitating expansion.  The staff started to grab the bull by the horns to discuss not only how each national affiliate could train staff and resource its program by how we could develop training centers and pool our more limited resources to raise the money to expand and answer the demands from so many other communities and countries.

Nothing sounded simple.  We had to smooth out the structure.  We had to keep the doors open.  We needed to figure out how to standardize our training programs in Canada, France, and England for new organizers and operations.  We were unsure how we could finance even the efforts to bootstrap to hire a development person to raise more money.

Nonetheless by the end of the meeting there was an emerging consensus on what needed to be done to stop the “moaning” and embrace the future.

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Please enjoy Kinky Friedman’s Autographs in the Rain.

Thanks to KABF.