ACORN News and national convention
colist at comm-org.utoledo.edu
colist at comm-org.utoledo.edu
Sun Jul 11 17:58:46 CDT 2004
From: "Camellia Phillips" <acornnews at acorn.org>
ACORN News: ACORN National Convention Report: Count on Us,
Count
on Victory!Convention Highlights
. Count on Us, Count on Victory!
. ACORN Marches on Wells Fargo, Files Lawsuit
. ACORN Announces Agreement with H&R Block
. "Invest in Schools, Invest in Kids" Campaign Moves
Forward
. ACORN Members March on L.A. Hospital to Demand
Charity Care Plan
. ACORN Members Hit the Streets to Register Voters
ACORN National Convention: Count on Us, Count on
Victory!
2,000 ACORN members march against predatory
lending as part of ACORN's 15th National
Convention, celebrating 34 years of organizing.
Over 2,000 ACORN members from across the country
converged in the city of Los Angeles for ACORN's 15th
National Convention from June 26-28. Marking 34 years
of organizing, the convention theme "Count on Us,
Count on Victory" celebrated ACORN's local and
national campaign victories in recent years - and
looked to the future of current campaigns like
fighting predatory lending, winning quality education
in our schools, highlighting the need for translation
services and care for the uninsured in our hospitals,
and increasing civic participation in our
communities.
ACORN members cheer as their state delegation
is announced.
The convention brought together ACORN members from 60
cities and 25 states to share their local victories,
network about organizing strategies, hear from
speakers including ACORN leaders and other
politicians, activists, and academics, and advance
campaign priorities that affect ACORN families
nationwide. For more information on ACORN's
convention, link to www.acorn.org/1501. Highlights of
the convention include:
ACORN Marches on Wells Fargo, Files Lawsuit
ACORN National President Maude Hurd announces
ACORN's lawsuit against Wells Fargo in front of
the company's Los Angeles offices.
On Monday, June 28, ACORN filed a national lawsuit
against Wells Fargo in San Francisco County Superior
Court. The suit charges the company with a broad
range of unfair and deceptive lending practices,
including misleading borrowers about the real terms
and conditions of their loans, "bait and switch"
sales tactics, and routinely failing to inform
borrowers with good credit that they can qualify for
credit at significantly better rates and fees than
those charged them by Wells. ACORN members in
California and across the country have been fighting
to expose and end predatory lending practices by
Wells Fargo Financial for more than a year.
ACORN members march to the downtown Los Angeles
offices of Wells Fargo to deliver a lawsuit
filed against the company in California.
On the day the lawsuit was filed, more than 2,000
ACORN members marched from City Hall through the
streets of Los Angeles to the Wells Building downtown
to personally deliver the suit to Wells. After
listening to testimony from ACORN leaders and
borrowers injured by Wells' loans, ACORN National
President Maude Hurd announced that: "ACORN will not
allow Wells Fargo to continue to swindle and steal
from our communities. We will fight until their
abusive loan practices end and the Wells stagecoach
is no longer delivering misery to homeowners."
Worried about the ACORN presence, Wells had actually
shut down their offices for the day.
The California suit follows a class action suit filed
against Wells by ACORN in Illinois two weeks ago,
charging the company with collecting fees on high
rate loans in excess of what is permitted by state
law. In addition to private legal action, state
regulators have begun to scrutinize Wells' lending.
The Maryland Human Relations Commission has opened an
investigation of the company in connection with
concerns about racial discrimination, and the
Louisiana Attorney Generals office has issued a Civil
Investigatory Demand in connection with abusive loan
practices in that state.
ACORN Announces Agreement with H&R Block
On June 28, ACORN leaders and representatives from
H&R Block announced a three-year partnership to help
low and moderate income families claim the Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other important tax
credits. In 2002, nearly 4.3 million low-income,
EITC-eligible households failed to claim the tax
credit - resulting in billions of lost dollars for
the lowest income families. Block and ACORN also
agreed to work together in a variety of ways to help
low income tax payers get clear information about tax
services and hold on to more of their returns. ACORN
National President Maude Hurd commended H&R Block for
showing that it can lead the tax preparation
industry. The agreement is an important step in
ACORN's ongoing campaign to increase EITC dollars
going to the families who have earned them, both by
shrinking the number of families who miss out on the
credit, and stemming the loss of dollars to tax
Refund Anticipation Loans or RALs and other high cost
bank products.
ACORN members have participated in hundreds of
demonstrations around the country, and are now taking
on Jackson Hewitt around their RAL practices. Only
days after the company went public, ACORN ally NY
State Comptroller Alan Hevesi sent the company a
letter expressing concerns about the financial impact
of their RALs.
"Invest in Schools, Invest in Kids" Campaign Moves
Forward
Throughout the three-day convention ACORN members
participated in a series of education forums and
events to expand ACORN's "Invest in Schools, Invest
in Kids" campaign which is demanding a massive
increase in funding for public education and
organizing to ensure that all our children receive a
quality education. Events included:
Rob Reiner, with California ACORN leaders,
addresses ACORN members at a forum on education
organizing.
. An evening-long ACORN Education Forum, featuring
addresses from ACORN allies like Wendy Puriefoy,
President of the Public Education Network, and
workshops on a wide range of critically important
education issues with experts and leaders of
education reform organizations. Workshop topics
included: preparing high quality teachers; retaining
good teachers; developing small schools and
redesigning schools for learning; preventing dropouts
and engaging students for success; school finance
campaigns; and how to work collaboratively with
teachers unions.
. Speeches by Lily Eskelsen, Secretary-Treasurer of
the National Education Association and Nat LaCour,
Executive Vice President of the American Federation
of Teachers. Both teachers union leaders stressed the
importance of working jointly with ACORN to improve
local schools, to win pro-education policies and
budgets, and to demand that the current
administration stop starving public education of the
funding it needs.
. A presentation by director and actor Rob Reiner,
who spoke to ACORN members about the importance of
Early Childhood Education, and described the work
that he is doing with California ACORN to win
expanded early childhood education programs and more
state funding for public schools.
. ACORN leaders participated in a strategy session
for ACORN's "Invest in Schools, Invest in Kids"
campaign, which is mobilizing parents, community
members, and teachers in cities across the country to
demand that the Bush administration fully fund its
education budget.
ACORN Members March on L.A. Hospital to Demand
Charity Care Plan
1,600 ACORN members march to St. Vincent
Medical Center to call attention to need for
accessible healthcare for the entire community.
On June 27, over 1,600 ACORN members rallied at the
St. Vincent Medical Center, part of the Daughters of
Charity Health System, in downtown Los Angeles, to
protest the hospital's inaccessible charity care
services. Non-profit hospitals like St. Vincent's are
required due to their tax status to provide community
benefits including charity or free care - but
according to the State of California's Office of
Statewide Health Planning and Development, the amount
of money that St. Vincent's spends for charity care
is significantly less than other hospitals in the
county, leaving uninsured patients with limited
access to the services they need. At the same time,
even in the heart of Southern California, St.
Vincent's does little to meet the needs of the
region's large non-English speaking community.
Currently, even the hospital's main phone line
provides a voice mail system and instructions that
are only in English.
In response, ACORN members marched to the hospital
and held a vigil in the front entry to demand
adequate services for the entire community. ACORN
leaders gave sermons in Spanish and English as ACORN
members gathered to say a prayer for the hospital
that had forgotten the meaning of charity. A
delegation of ACORN leaders also went to the CEO's
office to present him with a letter listing demands
which would help St. Vincent's better serve the
community's needs.
ACORN Members Hit the Streets to Register Voters
LisaGay Hamilton, right, presents Columbus,
Ohio, ACORN leader Deborah Morgan with a voter
registration award.
A crucial focus of ACORN's current work is the
opportunity to have every voice heard in the upcoming
presidential election. Since July 2003, ACORN and
Project Vote, have registered more than 465,000
voters across the country - substantial progress
towards reaching Project Vote's goal of registering
1.1 million voters this election cycle. To mark this
progress, at the convention 400 ACORN members
participated in a day of voter registration -
traveling to African American and Latino
neighborhoods in Los Angeles to register voters and
encourage civic participation.
In addition, at a banquet for ACORN members and
allies held on the UCLA campus on Sunday, June 27,
Juan Marcos Vilar, Director of America's Families
United, and actress and activist LisaGay Hamilton
presented awards to ACORN leaders from chapters in 21
states that have registered tens of thousands of
voters each. The top states were Ohio with 87,007
registrations, Florida with 67,894 registrations, and
Pennsylvania with 55,922 registrations.
At the same banquet, presidential candidate John
Kerry addressed ACORN members via video, commending
the strength and influence ACORN's grassroots
membership has built, and vowing to join ACORN in our
efforts to fight predatory lending, secure adequate
education funding, and raise the minimum wage.
For more photos, information, and articles about
ACORN's National Convention, link to
www.acorn.org/1501.
DONATE TO ACORN
Membership dues and chapter-based fundraising
programs pay for 75 percent of ACORN's budget. But
ACORN also needs financial support from non-member
allies, people who do not live in neighborhoods with
ACORN chapters but who support the work ACORN is
doing. For more information, link to
http://acorn.org/?4 or contact Steve Kest at
natexdirect at acorn.org or 718-246-7900.
ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now, is the nation's largest community
organization of low- and moderate-income families,
with over 150,000 member families organized into 700
neighborhood chapters in 65 cities across the
country. Since 1970 ACORN has taken action and won
victories on issues of concern to our members. Our
priorities include: better housing for first time
homebuyers and tenants, living wages for low-wage
workers, more investment in our communities from
banks and governments, and better public schools. We
achieve these goals by building community
organizations that have the power to win changes --
through direct action, negotiation, legislation, and
voter participation.
Check out ACORN's website at http://www.acorn.org.
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Camellia Phillips
ACORN - Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now 88 3rd Ave, Floor 3 Brooklyn, NY 11217
phone: 718-246-7900 x227
fax: 718-246-7939
acornnews at acorn.org
http://www.acorn.org
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