June 13, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Seeds of Change: The Story of Acorn, America’s Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group
By John Atlas
Based on internal documents and numerous interviews with staff members and leaders, John Atlas, co-founder and president of the National Housing Institute, crafts a detailed history of Acorn from its beginnings when Wade Rathke, the organization’s founder and longtime leader, dropped out of Williams College to organize antiwar rallies in New Orleans in 1968.
He traces the group’s history through a scandal involving Mr. Rathke’s brother’s embezzlement of almost $1-million from Acorn and another one that occurred after low-level staff members were videotaped providing tax and housing advice for two people posing as a prostitute and pimp. The troubles caused the group to shut down in April (The Chronicle, April 8).
Mr. Atlas says the scandals were in part the result of sloppy news coverage and that Acorn deserves praise for sounding alarms on predatory lending in the 1990s, carrying out aggressive campaigns to increase wages for workers, and helping poor people and members of minority groups to become leaders and advocate for themselves. Mr. Atlas writes: “The history of Acorn dispels the myth that the only way we can help the poor is through soup kitchens, charity, and social services.”
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press, 112 21st Avenue South, Suite 201, University Plaza, Nashville, Tenn. 37203; (615) 322-3585; fax (615) 343-8823; vupress@vanderbilt.edu; 336 pages; $27.95; ISBN 978-0-8265-1706-7.
