Community activist group ACORN gaining support

Community activist group ACORN gaining support
04:36 PM PST on Thursday, December 27, 2007

By CHRIS RICHARD

The Press-Enterprise

Usually at San Bernardino City Council meetings, the audience is small.

William Wilson Lewis III / The Press-Enterprise Robert Catalano, 52, left, and Sean Hagstrom, 53, load a van on moving day for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Meetings that begin at 3 p.m. every other Monday can last for hours. By the time the council is halfway through the agenda, most listeners have drifted away, and the level of participation in the public comments period often ebbs with it.

At one meeting earlier this year, a lone gadfly earnestly suggested that council members to seek policy guidance in Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Known as ACORN, it wants a commitment from local officials to expand crime prevention in San Bernardino.

Sometimes, nobody has anything to say at all. But recently, there's been a stirring of change.

At a meeting in November where council members discussed the expansion of the city's crime-fighting Operation Phoenix, the audience included some 30 people in scarlet vests.

They were volunteers with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. And they had a unified message. Extending more vigorous police patrols to crime-plagued neighborhoods was a good idea as far as it went, ACORN speakers said.

Even more, however, they wanted a commitment to expand crime prevention, from youth recreation to parenting classes to jobs training.

Last week, at a meeting to discuss allegations that police harass black and Latino residents of the city's Westside, ACORN activists played a crucial role, leafleting the neighborhood and urging neighbors to attend.

The Rev. Bronica Martindale, a meeting organizer, said ACORN's help made the gathering a success.

"They're new, but they can really get people to turn out," she said.
The group, which bills itself as the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, has maintained a San Bernardino office for several years. But Bobbi Jo Chavarria, head organizer for San Bernardino, said in September that the organization launched a much more intensive local effort, starting with a commitment to improve police-community relations.

Since then, Chavarria has seen her list of affiliates grow from about 200 to about 1,500. After a recruiting and training period next month, Chavarria expects her staff to double, with about seven full-time organizers. The organization has moved to larger offices so it can offer more services, including assistance to residents facing foreclosure.

This is not Chavarria's first experience with community activism. Two years ago, she launched a local campaign to establish a federal counterpart to the Defense Department, a Department of Peace.

While she says she remains committed to that goal, ACORN takes precedence right now.

"It's really hard for people to see the mountaintop vision when they don't have food on their table or trust government at any level," she said.

Enthusiastic Responses
On the local issues, she said, San Bernardino residents have responded enthusiastically. At first, when Chavarria or another organizer knocked on their door, they were suspicious, wanting to know what she was selling. But when they realized she wanted to know about their concerns, enthusiasm spread fast, Chavarria said.

Pewe Salgado, Westside ACORN chairwoman, said she was impressed when she learned that the organization has 350,000 member families nationwide.

That brings a respect from local authorities that her own organization, More Action Regarding Community Havoc, lacks, Salgado said.
She said she founded her organization a decade ago after her granddaughter and her boyfriend died in a gang-related attack. But her group has only 15 members.

Salgado, a self-described former gang member, said she sometimes wonders whether authorities take her seriously.

"With ACORN, I can see that they listen," she said.

City Councilman Rikke Van Johnson, who represents the Westside, said one reason he has been impressed is that the group seems to rise above ethnic and economic distinctions.

"They bring together a real cross-section of the community, and you don't always see that happening," he said. "Also, they're very well organized."
Martindale, a leader in efforts to extend Operation Phoenix social programs, said she is impressed as well.

As president of the California Gardens Neighborhood Association, she said she often has wondered why it can be so difficult to enlist neighborhood support for San Bernardino civic organizations.

Other groups have addressed many of the same issues that ACORN is taking on, she said. But when ACORN helps with a meeting, crowds turn out.

"With as many neighborhood groups as we already have, that boggles my mind," she said.

"From what I've seen, the people who have stepped forward in that group are the people who probably were going to be leaders anyway. They may not have had the capacity to organize. ACORN has provided a platform for them to be the leaders they were called to be."

Reach Chris Richard at 909-806-3076 or crichard@PE.com