Edinburgh       It had been a minute since I had been in Edinburgh, I don’t think since the pandemic for sure.  It made sense to visit now on my way to Birmingham later in the week to attend the biennial conference of ACORN in England and Wales in coming days, because our international staff and board meeting is scheduled for November in Glasgow.  I schlepped from the plane to the tram to St. Andrews Square into an Uber with all my gear, luggage, and a separate hooply suitcase without a handle but holding 42.5 pounds worth of my new book, Fieldwork, to deliver to the office of ACORN’s affiliate, Living Rent.  To my surprise the “new” office was in the same building location as the “old” office; a warren of nonprofits, art groups and more in a giant, fraying building.

Gulping down a cup of coffee, within minutes I was in a staff meeting with the Edinburgh team in person and other organizers and staff from Glasgow, the Highlands, and elsewhere on Zoom.  Giddy-up, cowboy, time to ride hard!  They were a lively and attentive gang.  After a brief history of ACORN and our work, many had prepared questions, almost all good, and some intriguing, like one about the challenges of a largely single-issue group focused on tenants to become broader based and multi-issued, one of the great challenges of community organizing.

As I listened and we talked, I scanned the office. Much of it was classic ACORN.  The flag was prominent.  Various flyers from old campaigns were posted, as well as pictures on several walls right below the moulding on the ceiling.  It was a good look, but I couldn’t help thinking that it must have been difficult to put up there.  My eyes kept coming back to a number of posters, most circular, but some in the shape of stars, triangles and whatever, that had multi-colored posted notes with names on them in different rings of circles.  It had to be local chapters and the names must be members, but what was up with this?  At the end of the session, I finally said that I had a question:  what was this all of this?  The answer came back quickly:  the onion, remember, Wade?

And, of course, I got it then.  This was interesting to me, because it was a tool that I had seen once adapted to our work when listening to a training by one of our organizers in Bradford, England on a new drive, and clearly this had become commonplace in Scotland.  The roots were clear as well.  Some years ago, in an international staff meeting in France, some hours out of Paris, I had invited my comrade from the Netherlands, Lieke Smits, who I hade worked with there in an election and organizing campaign previously, along with Ron Mayer to attend, and she was doing a workshop to “pay for her dinner,” so to speak.  I was here, there, and everywhere, so only attended for a minute, but knew it had gotten good reviews from all reports, and it it had something to do with an “onion.”  Indeed, it seems to have also grown long legs.

Here’s how it works.  The circles or levels are like the various skins peeled from an onion.  The tabs with members names allow the organizers and leaders to plot the local group membership and their stages of development.  The goal is to move them closer and closer to the center of the onion as primary leaders, but for all members, the technique is useful for the team to plot the increasing engagement of members.  As they move from the outer rings, their “color” changes as well, but even if it is the same tab, at a glance when looking at the chart, one can chart the progress.

In this work, you never know what is going to stick, but Lieke’s onion stuck hard and now has become a permanent fixture in the work of many ACORN affiliates.  Thanks, my sister, we owe a debt, hopefully, it has been fully paid!