Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America's Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group [Paperback]

John Atlas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 2010

"There is more value on a single page of Seeds of Change than in a year's worth of Rush Limbaugh screeds combined with a lifetime of Sarah Palin sneers at community organizers." --Todd Gitlin


Seeds of Change goes beyond the headlines of the last Presidential campaign to describe what really happened in ACORN's massive voter registration drives, why it triggered an unrelenting attack by Fox News and the Republican Party, and how it confronted its internal divisions and scandals.


Based on Atlas's own eyewitness original reporting, as the only journalist to have access to ACORN's staff and board meetings, this book documents the critical transition from founder Wade Rathke, a white New Orleans radical to Bertha Lewis, a Brooklyn African American activist.


The story begins in the 1970s, when a small group of young men and women, led by a charismatic college dropout, began a quest to help the powerless help themselves. In a tale full of unusual characters and dramatic conflicts, the book follows the ups and downs of ACORN's organizers and members as they confront big corporations and unresponsive government officials in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Little Rock, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities.


The author follows the course of local and national campaigns to organize unions, fight the subprime mortgage crisis, promote living wages for working people, struggle for affordable housing and against gentrification, and help Hurricane Katrina's survivors return to New Orleans.


The book dispels the conservative myth that we can only help the poor through private soup kitchens and charity and the liberal myth that the solution rests simply with more government services. Seeds of Change, not only provides a gripping look at ACORN's four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy.

An offering of The Progressive Book Club.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...excellent history of ACORN's rise and fall..."
--The American Prospect

"Seeds of Change not only provides a gripping look at ACORN's four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy."
--thedeepening.com/greatnon-fiction/2010

"Atlas delivers a rare look into the machinery of a high-profile, controversial grassroots organization."
--Bostonia

"..an impressively detailed, thougtful, and honest history of ACORN..."
--World Wide Work

" 'Community organizer' has become a household phrase--sometimes a commendation, sometimes a slur. But the public knows little about it, or about ACORN, that lightning rod for right-wing abuse. No one has written more informatively about this difficult, necessary work than John Atlas." --Todd Gitlin, author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage


"Long before the 2008 election made ACORN either famous or notorious, depending on your political point of view, John Atlas was closely following the group over its decades of community organizing throughout America. A knowledgeable and empathetic observer, but never an apologist, Atlas has now written the definitive work on ACORN." --Samuel G. Freedman, author of Letters to a Young Journalist


"Seeds of Change is the definitive book on one of the most effective grass roots organizations of low income Americans. In an era when our President is a one-time community organizer, ACORN needs to be better understood and appreciated as a source of civic and political mobilization. John Atlas combines scholarship, political insight, and powerful narrative writing in this essential book." --Robert Kuttner, author, co-founder of The American Prospect magazine


"Seeds of Change is an exceptionally important book--a vivid, honest, and gripping look at the front lines, warts and controversies and all. John Atlas's story of ACORN is also a broader story of critical importance to the nation at this moment of change and transition. He tells the tale of a new populist movement of ordinary citizens beginning to emerge, taking on everyday issues of housing, health care, wages, and schools, and also the broadest question, the future and fate of American democracy itself." --Harry C. Boyte, founder and co-director, Center for Democracy and Citizenship


"Seeds of Change takes us inside the world of ACORN, perhaps the most complicated national progressive organization in America. By gaining access and trust where most reporters had failed, Atlas deploys his journalistic skills beautifully in this powerful portrait of people working to realize a vision of social prosperity." --Sudhir Venkatesh, Columbia University


"This timely and engaging book about one of America's most important antipoverty organizations is a must read. Couched within the broader context of American culture and politics, John Atlas' riveting stories about ACORN as an organization and its activities accomplishes the following: The reader of Seeds of Change gains an understanding not only of ACORN's success in the fight for social justice, but also why its efforts to empower ordinary people are viewed with alarm and have come under attack by conservative and reactionary forces in our society." --William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

About the Author

John Atlas, a longtime public interest lawyer, writer, and organizer, is a founder and current president of the National Housing Institute, which publishes Shelterforce. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The Huffington Post, The Star Ledger, The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Tikkun, The Nation, Dissent, New Jersey Reporter, and Social Policy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press; 1 edition (June 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826517064
• ISBN-13: 978-0826517067
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 6.9 x 10.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #915,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars ACORN's Kick-Ass Activism June 17, 2010

By Peter Dreier

Format:Paperback

Six weeks after the first oil spewed out of BP's wells in the Gulf Coast, President Obama said he was ready to "kick ass" to pressure the company to fix the damage. We don't usually associate presidents with kicking ass. That's the job of social movements. Indeed, the evidence so far shows that Obama, like most liberal politicians, is most likely to get tough on business when people are protesting in the streets demanding corporate responsibility.

That inside-outside strategy is how all progressive reforms - from the 8-hour day to the Voting Rights Act, from women's suffrage to the Clean Air Act, and from Social Security to the recent passage of universal health care - came to be. Liberal politicians need a well-organized constituency, even a movement, to give them room for maneuver. (The same is true on the Right, as exemplified in the Tea Party movement).

No group was better at kicking ass, and playing that inside-outside game, than ACORN. That's the story that John Atlas tells in his fascinating new book, Seeds of Change: The Story of ACORN, America's Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group, published by Vanderbilt University Press.

Seeds of Change is full of fascinating people, colorful anecdotes, and political drama, but it is really a story about the hard but hopeful work of bringing about progressive change. Atlas writes about activists, organizers, and ordinary people learning how to fight for, and win, better living and working conditions. It is a book about the poor that doesn't treat them as victims or stereotypes, but as people who, by joining with others in politics and protest, can shape their own destiny, by changing government policy and corporate practices....

Atlas shows how ACORN revolutionized the field of community organizing by creating an organization that could wage battles at the local, state, and national levels. He profiles Wade Rathke, a welfare rights organizer in Massachusetts who in 1970 moved to Arkansas to create a new inter-racial organization that would organize poor and working class people around jobs, veterans benefits, utility prices, and other issues. With the help of idealistic college graduates and up-from-poverty activists, Rathke built ACORN into a powerful organization that, by 2008, had chapters in 38 cities and 400,000 members.

With unprecedented access to ACORN's staff, leaders, board members, and archives, as well as interviews with the group's political allies and enemies, Atlas presents a colorful and dramatic portrait of the obstacles and opportunities for grassroots activism. His readable narrative shows how ACORN recruited low-income residents to engage in local battles for better schools, parks, housing, and police protection, which often gave people the self-confidence they needed to take on bigger targets and campaigns. With an eye for the telling anecdote, Atlas recounts ACORN's campaigns against big banks, insurance companies, utilities, and other corporate power-brokers, as well as major legislative victories at the federal level, including strengthening laws against bank redlining and an increase in the minimum wage. Because of its deep roots in urban neighborhoods, ACORN warned policymakers about the dangers of predatory lending and the possible foreclosure epidemic years before it became front-page news.

In one of the most fascinating chapters, Atlas uncovers how the leaders of ACORN's large New Orleans chapter organized the victims of Hurricane Katrina to successfully demand a voice in the relief and reconstruction efforts by local, state and federal officials. More than any other group, ACORN played a key role in ongoing efforts to rebuild the Lower 9th Ward, and to reach out to the Katrina diaspora scattered throughout Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere.

Atlas also reports on ACORN's cunning "homesteading" campaign in Philadelphia in the 1970s that involved members illegally taking over blocks of abandoned housing in order to pressure local officials to direct funding for repairs and rehabilitation. He describes ACORN's bold and successful campaign to pass a statewide referendum in November 2004 to raise Florida's minimum wage by a dollar an hour. Despite being dramatically outspent by Disney and other corporate giants, ACORN built a coalition of unions, faith groups, and others that scored a whopping 72 to 28 percent (4.95 million votes to 1.96 million) victory, far larger than George W. Bush's 300,000 majority over John Kerry in the state that same day.

Seeds of Change also recounts the "battle of Brooklyn" that pitted ACORN against one of the city's most politically-connected developers, Forest City, that planned to build a megaproject - including a new arena for an NBA basketball team, luxury housing, and high-rise offices - at Atlantic Yards. ACORN threatened to stop the project if developer Bruce Ratner didn't include a significant number of housing units affordable to poor and working class tenants. ACORN won that fight, forced Ratner to make significant concessions, and then become an advocate for the project. In doing so, ACORN earned the emnity of the project's fierce opponents, mostly middle-class residents, for whom Atlas shows great sympathy, leaving the reader to wonder who won and who lost.

As Atlas describes in this lively book, ACORN learned the art of playing the inside-outside game. Although it was best-known as a kick-ass activist group, it also formed alliances with sympathetic politicians and even some corporations willing to negotiate with ACORN to avoid being the target of protest. As a result, ACORN was able to pass living wage laws in dozens of cities, get voters and legislators in a dozen states to raise the minimum wage, and pressure local politicians to strengthen tenants rights laws and adopt policies to stem the tide of foreclosures.

Atlas devotes a chapter of Seeds of Change to the ACORN-affiliated Working Families Party, which has groomed activists to run for city and state offices in New York, helped them win elections, and played an important role in building a progressive coalition with labor unions and other groups.

Not everything went smoothly. Atlas recalls an incident during the 2001 New York City mayoral race where ACORN and the Working Families Party had to weather a controversy over its alleged criticism of Rev. Al Sharpton, which almost destroyed the group's relationship with New York's African American community.

Atlas, like ACORN's leaders, expected Obama's victory in 2008 to give the organization even greater influence. After all, ACORN had worked with Obama when he was a young legislator in Illinois and it had helped register voters in key swing states that Obama needed to beat John McCain.

But during the campaign, and soon after Obama took office, ACORN became the target of a right-wing assault that it was unprepared for and, ultimately, unable to survive. Atlas reports on what he describes as the "tragedy" of ACORN's downfall, engineered in part by Karl Rove, George W. Bush's top political advisor, who saw in ACORN's successful large-scale voter registration efforts a real threat to GOP candidates. Starting in 2004, and accelerating during the 2008 campaign, when both John McCain and Sarah Palin attacked ACORN by name, the Republican Party, aided by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and the right-wing echo chamber, attacked ACORN for "voter fraud." Although the accusations were untrue, they were repeated often enough - backed up by nuisance suits filed by GOP activists and officials - that it sullied ACORN's reputation.

The GOP's war against ACORN was compounded by two mistakes of judgment by ACORN's own staff. One was the embezzlement of ACORN funds by Wade Rathke's brother Dale, who served as the group's accountant. Trying to protect his brother, Wade Rathke hid the scandal from ACORN's board. It only came to light last year when the New York Times broke the story, probably leaked by an ACORN insider. The other was the negative publicity generated when two right-wing activists - the woman of the duo dressed like a prostitute -- visited ACORN offices around the country and asked for help. The duo secretly videotaped the conservations, doctored them to make it appear that ACORN staff were engaging in illegal activity (assisting the couple in setting up a prostitution ring), and became instant right-wing heroes when the tapes showed up on Fox News and became a national controversy.

Egged on by the right-wing media and right-wing GOP pols like Cong. Darrell Issa, the mainstream media failed to treat the video scandal with any of their typical skepticism. Within months, many of ACORN's supporters - including Democratic politicians and liberal foundations -- abandoned the organization. Last September, the House voted 345-75 to ban all federal funding for ACORN. All 173 Republicans and 172 of the 247 Democrats voted against ACORN. These acts of cowardice certainly reflect badly on liberal Democrats, who ran away from ACORN faster than they accept campaign contributions from banks and oil companies. (Indeed, the Democrats' "yes" vote for the resolution to defund ACORN stands in stark contrast to their unwillingness to withdraw federal contracts from real corporate criminals like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Fed Ex, Dell, and KBR, who, according to the Project on Oversight and Government Reform, have actually violated federal laws).

The Dems and the donors abandoned ACORN before all the facts were in. In the past six months, several reports by Congressional investigators and others - including a General Accounting Office report released this week -- have exonerated ACORN of wrong-doing, but it was already too late. ACORN had to close its doors in April, a major loss for the progressive movement, which needs all the kick-ass activism it can muster.

Atlas's history of ACORN is sympathetic to the controversial group, but does not shy away from exposing its weaknesses, clashes over strategy, internal power struggles, tensions between white Ivy League organizers and a membership of mostly blacks and Latinos, as well as ACORN's trouble with staff turnover. Atlas' account of the Rathke embezzlement scandal is a fascinating inside story that you won't find in the New York Times, on CCN, or on Fox News.

Atlas' complex tale of ACORN will likely stir up debates about community organizing, how we might address a real war on poverty, and why a progressive movement is essential if we are to bring about significant change in America. Seeds of Change is an essential read for anyone concerned about democracy and social justice.

Although Atlas recounts ACORN's rise and fall, Seeds of Change does not end on a downer note. Atlas shows how, over the years, ACORN has been a real school for democracy, training thousands of activists who, even after leaving ACORN, continued to work as effective organizers for hundreds of community groups, unions, environmental organizations, and other public interest groups. Many ACORN veterans worked as key staff for elected officials and some became successful politicians themselves. Atlas also notes that ACORN's willingness to experiment with different strategies and approaches has changed the field of organizing in numerous ways.

Finally, Atlas observes that while ACORN may be dead, its offspring are continuing to organize. In more than a dozen states, ACORN's former leaders and staff are building new progressive community organizing groups to carry on the work of kicking ass to strengthen American democracy.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College, where he teaches a course on community organizing. Full disclosure: John Atlas is his friend and occasional co-author. This review was originallly published on Talking Points Memo on June 16, 2010. Read more ›

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book June 25, 2010

By Lila Lee

Format:Paperback

Ever since ACORN was in the news I have wondered about the organization and the real story behind the headlines. I picked up a copy of Seeds of Change after hearing John Atlas discuss his book on the radio. I've not been disappointed. He's written a lively, action packed book which provides a history of ACORN, its leadership, programs, accomplishments, and the controversies that have swirled around it. Although it's clear that the author is a supporter, he does not shy away from looking at the weaknesses in ACORN which might have contributed to its downfall. I urge anyone who wants the true story to read this book.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars finally somebody got it right July 5, 2010

By organizer

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

When I saw the movie "Hoop Dreams", I felt a sense of exhilaration, like someone had finally got the experience of some low income African American families close to right. That's how I feel about John Atlas' book on Acorn. It is not perfect, but it is so much closer to the truth about Acorn than anything we have seen to date. Whether you like Acorn or hate it, or are just interested in it from what it can teach us about the vulnerability of poor people's organizations, Seed of Change is an interesting read. For one thing, it is pretty clear that Atlas, unlike the folks at Glenn Beck, actually interviewed his subjects. Imagine, in this day and age where a kind of "anything goes" passes for journalism, Atlas actually talks to his subjects, then documents what they say with press backup. Refreshing.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for social change activists December 6, 2010

By Stuart C Elliott

Format:Paperback

Seeds of Change is an excellent book. I highly recommend it to everyone interested in community-based social change. It is impossible to understand the last 20-30 years of social justice without understanding the role of ACORN. John Atlas' book is the best place to get that understanding.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars WHY WE NEED TO SUPPORT GRASS ROOT ORGANIZATIONS August 28, 2010

By LB

Format:Paperback

THIS BOOK SHOWS THAT VERY FEW PEOPLE, MOST IMPORTANTLY, THE POLITICIANS AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA, KNOW MUCH ABOUT GRASSROOT ORGANIZATIONS AND THAT THEY ARE READY TO BELIEVE ANY RIGHT WING LIE ABOUT THEM. IT SHOULD BE READ WITH THIS IN MIND AND A LESSON THAT THE MEDIA HAS FAILED TO DO ITS JOB, BUT IT IS BECOMING A HABIT.
LB

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars ACORN - let the truth be known! August 4, 2010

By Dr. Jay Sher

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

"Seeds of Change" is the account of ACORN from a perspective rarely seen in its 40 years of existence.....the TRUTH. John Atlas had obviously spent endless hours gathering this information so he could tell the real story of ACORN, based upon facts, in an enticing portrayal of this often maligned and controversial organization. I found the stories and the people behind the splashy headlines to be so fascinating and intriguing as Atlas skillfully described the details behind the inner workings of ACORN and its involvement during important historical events. The story of ACORN, as written by John Atlas, was superbly engaging and I would strongly recommend it.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars AN IMPORTANT WORK September 30, 2010

By coransky

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

John Atlas' in-depth account of the rise and fall of ACORN is a fascinating study not only of the issues which ACORN confronted but also of the issues which are shaping our society today. Atlas has obviously had unprecedented access to ACORN and this shows in his detailed and thorough presentation. While it is clear that Atlas is an ACORN supporter he presents his analysis in an even-handed and objective fashion. Atlas' atttention to detail also enables the reader to form much clearer judgments about what happened to ACORN as well as the dangers of relying on the media as ones source for all the facts. This is a must read for anyone trying to understand the issues facing not only today's community organizing groups but also in evaluating the prospects for a 21st century social movement.