SEEDS OF CHANGE goes beyond the headlines of the 2008 Presidential campaign and today’s controversies to describe the truth behind ACORN’s massive voter registration drives and how it confronted its internal divisions and a prostitution scandal. Because of its success fighting poverty, I  show  how show  how for 40 years ACORN  grew into  an organization of  400,000 dues paying members,  from all walks of life, but mostly African-American and Hispanic,  in 38 states. And then suddenly, in one of the most bizarre and disgraceful   incidents in recent political history, a story stranger than fiction, it was destroyed by a ferocious two year attack by the right wing of the Republican Party, its allies and Fox News.

“Seeds of Change:  The Story of ACORN, America’s Most Controversial Antipoverty Community Organizing Group” is now available at http://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Change-Controversial-Antipoverty-Organizing/dp/0826517064 http://www.seedsofchangeacorn.com/, Vanderbilt University Press http://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/books/387/seeds-of-change and book stores everywhere.

A central theme is ACORN’s rocky relationship to Obama, who sought ACORN’s endorsement and its get out the vote efforts during the 2008 election. But when Right-Wing Republicans and Fox News first attacked ACORN, he distanced himself from the group.  After ACORN was subsequently exonerated from any misdeeds by several independent investigation, including a recent Government Accountability Organization, the Congressional “watchdog,” Obama and every member of his administration failed to come to ACORN's defense contributing to the decline of his powerful ally.  

Obama’s treatment of ACORN becomes a symbol of how he detached his presidency from the progressive base that helped get him elected, and how his administration's fear of Fox News and the right wing echo chamber led to the embarrassing firing of Shirley Sherrod. Also, ACORN was  one of the few organizations with the capacity to mobilize people not only to vote in elections but also to help pass reform legislation - a counterpart to the right wing Tea Party.  Its absence made it harder for Obama to enact his liberal legislative agenda.

The book, five years in the making, 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 the inside story of ACORN’s four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a new way of addressing the issue of poverty and a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy.

Based on my  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 leader, raised by a former sharecropper.

I  reveal what really happened when the videotapes of two activists, who entered ACORN’s offices, allegedly posing as a pimp and a prostitute seeking advice to set up brothel.

 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.

My narrative  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.

ACORN story is still alive.

ACORN’s work is provoking readers of the book, who are active locally or involved in politics to think about change on a national level and ways to organize outside the political parties.

The US Court of Appeals heard arguments recently about overturning the Congressional Act that defunded ACORN. 

The  federal government watchdog agency reported that ACORN never misused federal funds or engaged in voter fraud.  

As I predicted  ACORN is re-organizing under different names.

The Shirley Sherrod matter informed the public that the same conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the misleading video excerpts of Sherrod's address, posted the distorted videos about ACORN that led to its demise. The Sherrod incident also raised the question why the Obama administration, the US Congress, many of ACORN’s supporters, as well as editorials in the mainstream media, which were quick to condemn ACORN for its alleged misdeeds, have failed to report or comment on independent investigations that have exonerated the organization.