I read that Congress has voted to cut federal funding to ACORN . The group received federal funds to help residents prepare income taxes.
If only Congress acted so fast with all the corporate crime that Defense Contractors and KBR, Haliburton-like organizations.
Recent allegations of security contractors running brothels and orgies in Afghanistan did not get much of a response from Senator John Cornyn.
According, CorpWatch, Halliburton paid $382 million in fines to the U.S. Department of Justice as part of the settlement of a controversial KBR gas project in Nigeria in which the company admitted to paying a $180 million bribe to government officials.
What remains for community organizers are lessons. There must be internal controls to prevent stuff like this from happning. ACORN is the largest membership organization in the US and the bigger you get the harder it is to internal police. Nevertheless, there are lessons we can learn and a few bad apples should not plague a whole organization.
My question, with the closing intake on forclusure assistance, who will be taking up the slack in this great service to the poor.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
It's been a while
It's been a while since I posted to this. But I decided to begin posting on the current organization I'm with and my uphill battle to turn it into more than just a service-oriented organization.
Organizing Women
One of the main things that come up when I arrived at where I am at was that a very powerful women's organization had folded about a year before I arrived. It was a lesson in leadership development and training. But it also had to do with immigration and the transition from undocumented to resident. It seemed at least to the women in the group, that as members got their residency, they drifted a way from the group. I'm wondering if this has happened in other group around the country.
Other aspect involved the leadership training. I seemed that when the organization was under one grant, it recieved a lot of resources in capacity building including recruitment, retention, one-on-ones, and the like. Then this stopped. I'm not sure if the decline started at this point.
The women's organization was a promotora model, not really a traditional CO. So i'm interested in the intersection of the promotora model and the CO models. Well, write in and let me know.
Organizing Women
One of the main things that come up when I arrived at where I am at was that a very powerful women's organization had folded about a year before I arrived. It was a lesson in leadership development and training. But it also had to do with immigration and the transition from undocumented to resident. It seemed at least to the women in the group, that as members got their residency, they drifted a way from the group. I'm wondering if this has happened in other group around the country.
Other aspect involved the leadership training. I seemed that when the organization was under one grant, it recieved a lot of resources in capacity building including recruitment, retention, one-on-ones, and the like. Then this stopped. I'm not sure if the decline started at this point.
The women's organization was a promotora model, not really a traditional CO. So i'm interested in the intersection of the promotora model and the CO models. Well, write in and let me know.
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