Nairobi There’s no way to tell the founding story of building ACORN or even my experiences with the National Welfare Rights Organization before that without offering some thanks to the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program and the leg up it gave fledgling organizing efforts in staffing or providing “slots” that might pay organizers …
Tag: VISTA
Visiting with the Old Hands: Sue Hanna Marquess and Melva Harmon
New Orleans For a couple hours it was a stroll down memory lane, first with lawyers from legal services in Arkansas where I had poached some of my first support from the idealistic and committed VISTA and Reginald Heber Smith lawyers there, and then with two of the VISTA women I had repurposed to work for …
Remembering the Great Art Martin
New Orleans In 1974 when ACORN could hardly break into the Arkansas Gazette there was a front page story about how the organization and its members had engineered a “takeover” of the Pulaski County Quorum Court, which at that time was the governing body of the County holding Little Rock and North Little Rock. The …