Remembering Springfield Years Later

ACORN Citizen Wealth Financial Justice

Springfield   I haven’t been back in Springfield, Massachusetts since 2009.  Driving from the airport in Hartford, nothing looked that different at 1 AM in the morning, but that’s pretty faint praise.  The Basketball Hall of Fame is prominently located along the expressway.  Mass Mutual Insurance company is still large enough to have its old highway …

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Answering the Hard Questions about Movements and Organizations

ACORN Organizing

New Orleans    In Lafayette, Louisiana after the screening of the documentary, “The Organizer,” a question was phrased differently than I heard in New Orleans or Woodstock, New York, when I fielded questions after people watched the movie, but despite the sentence construction, the sentiment was much the same.  A woman asked, given the excitement and …

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Paperwork and Bureaucracy as a Weapon Against the Poor

ACORN Citizen Wealth Financial Justice

New Orleans   Conservatives always complain about bureaucrats and the vast governmental bureaucracy. It is painful to realize how paperwork and bureaucracy are used as not-so-secret weapons to deny mandated benefits designed to help families and children from eligible, fully qualified families. Success is defined by the ability to put barriers in the way of families …

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