How about ACORN to Stop the Budget Bill Cutbacks?

Over the last year, more than 5 million people lost SNAP benefits–often called food stamps–across the United States at an accelerated pace that the Congressional Budget Office had not expected until 2030. In Arizona the food stamp rolls have already been more than halved. In Louisiana, Georgia, Nevada, and Florida, 20% have lost food support. 

In January 2027, even more drastic cuts in Medicaid requirements will arrive in full force. Fourteen million are predicted to lose their benefits, including two million in New York City alone.Why? Because of Trump’s Big Bad Budget Bill which eviscerated benefits for lower income families in order to pay for continued benefits for the rich. 

aNone of this should be news at this late date. More stringent work requirements of eighty (80) hours per month are designed to disqualify beneficiaries of SNAP and Medicaid. Bureaucratic obstacles and “paper cuts” mandating more onerous application, renewal, and multiple recertification requirements are expected to eliminate even more. Lawsuits were threatened and filed. Politicians have promised to seek change if elected. States with reduced administrative staff are pleading helplessness.

For all the progressive sound and fury, it is hard not to feel impotence in the face of this tragedy to so many people. We think there’s a way to fight back from the bottom–with recipients through direct organization and action, while helping them meet the new requirements imposed by the Trump administration.

Work Requirements

The push for more Medicaid and SNAP “work requirements” has been happening state-by-state for decades. Trump’s bill dramatically expanded these requirements to include recipients over age 55, parents of children over 14, the medically frail, veterans, and young adults aging out of foster care. In the 41 states expanding Medicaid, work requirements will be imposed on many expansion recipients over the age of 19. 

The work requirements can be met by punching in at McDonalds or the like, but can also be met pursuing qualified education and training programs, and, even more significantly, through volunteer community service work. The current requirements are highly general and, in most cases, self-certified. Churches qualify. Nonprofits of all sizes and descriptions qualify. In most of the states researched, ultimate discretion is given to case workers. Most of the time, there is no requirement that a recipient clear their volunteer placement in advance: even in Mississippi, the requirement is that a recipient timely submit proof that they worked their volunteer hours after they have done so.

This presents an opportunity.

BRAVO

At ACORN, we believe the Trump administration was able to implement this devastating war against the poor partially because rightly-entitled beneficiary recipients were not organized and able to take action to oppose these oppressive cuts to their benefits. We blame no one except the government that implemented these cuts, but without the voice and action of recipients themselves, the voices decrying these outrages were simply lost in the wilderness. 

Talk is cheap, and action is hard, but in response to this crisis, we have begun organizing BRAVO, the Benefit Recipients Access and Volunteer Organization. We started in Cleveland, working through the newly launched ACORN Cleveland; Baltimore, working through our ACORN affiliate, Progressive Maryland; and New Orleans, working through A Community Voice, an ACORN affiliate.We have organizers in place in Little Rock and Philadelphia with plans to soon add Houston and Tucson, where we have partners.

Our organizing plan within the constituency is two-fold. 

• Organize a pipeline of recipients who need qualifying volunteer work requirement hours through a coalition of agencies and nonprofits who have work the recipients can do and will verify the hours so that recipients can continue to qualify for benefits.
• Organize BRAVO volunteers directly, who are fulfilling their work requirement hours, to serve as organizers and advocates to do outreach to other eligible recipients, assist in enrollment and/or appeals to obtain and maintain benefits, and do the work of organizing such beneficiaries into BRAVO local and area groups to allow recipients to educate, advocate, and determine appropriate outreach and actions to build a base for continued, restored, and expanded benefits.

Why Do We Believe This Will Work?

The entire experience of ACORN throughout its history in the US and now globally, is that the constituency is more than able to join together to act and organize, lead themselves and others, speak clearly and act effectively in their own interest, and do whatever is necessary to sustain the organizations they build. Supporters and organizers are essential, especially in helping get things started and expanding to scale, but ACORN’s experience and history is that once formed, these initiatives can be unstoppable.

Before organizing and founding–with so many others–ACORN in 1970, I had been an organizer in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then head organizer of Massachusetts Welfare Rights Organization (WRO), the largest affiliate of the National Welfare Rights Organization, founded by Dr. George A. Wiley in 1966 in Columbus, Ohio. Whether in Springfield, Boston, or elsewhere in Massachusetts, the local WROs all had “grievance committees” led by recipients who were experienced with the in and outs of the welfare system and its rules and regulations. Akin to “jailhouse lawyers,” they were the best advocates for other recipients trying to keep their benefits, appeal denials or mistreatment, or prove their eligibility to gain benefits to which they were rightfully entitled. 

It worked then. We believe it can work now. Even under Trump’s bill, these are entitlements and therefore rights, not discretionary gifts from the public purse.

In Houston, Dallas, Little Rock, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, and elsewhere through our union United Labor Unions Local 100, and in New Orleans and Lake Charles through A Community Voice, we did the outreach and processing, using recipients and constituency organizers, to enroll more than 20,000 people as navigators in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas in the first year of the Affordable Care Act. We overcame opposition. We even caught undercover spies sent by Project Veritas: our organizers had to chase him out of the parking lot upon discovering the red light of his recorder blinking in his pocket, after trying to entrap our staff with fraudulent income figures.

This is the world we work in now, and ACORN knows this better than most. There shouldn’t be any surprises. This should be expected, and we have to be prepared.  

The Work So Far

BRAVO-ACORN organizers have been contacting existing recipients in food stamp and welfare offices, unemployment centers, and, most successfully, in neighborhood grocery stores. The vast majority of recipients don’t know about the Trump bill and the new work requirements. For existing recipients, most are already working, but are angry and confused why they are now being stalled, rejected, or seeing their benefit levels reduced. Roughly 20% don’t meet requirements, many of them young men between 18-35, and are being rejected without work requirements. About 10% are receptive to using alternative means to qualify.

At the same time, the new rules are being applied in a summary and arbitrary manner by administrators fearing punishments for over- or underpayment of benefits, which would drastically increase the state’s contribution to sustaining the programs. In north Philly recently a young woman with an eight month old baby was distraught and crying when she spoke to us. She had been receiving benefits and was meeting the work requirement, but had found her stamps cut back without explanation on questions about verification of her income and would now be forced to go through several months of appeals to correct it.

Organizers are finding that some states are using federal exemptions to resolve issues, while Arkansas, Louisiana, and Ohio are requesting few exemptions and just ejecting people from the program. The system everywhere is cloaked in chaos and confusion.

Volunteer Army

ACORN sees a silver lining in these dark clouds by organizing BRAVO as a 21^st century “welfare” rights organization. There is never enough money or staff to build progressive organizations and our campaigns. If we are right, we will create a progressive, grassroots, constituency-based “volunteer army.” It won’t be young college graduates wielding social media apps, but it will be the deeply talented, but underutilized cohorts of benefit recipients.

To protect this program, BRAVO is creating a digital tool to allow participants to record their volunteer hours and the signatures of supervisors approving their work. It will also store and back up work plans from organizations and agencies that accept recipient volunteers to verify those work hours. This will be invaluable when the inevitable pushback comes and some state governments attempt to disqualify recipients doing qualified volunteer community service.

This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to finally have enough people in spite of the eternal challenge that our organizations and movements never have enough money.

This is an opportunity that can’t be squandered.

Do it Everywhere

Though ACORN is piloting this program in specific cities and states to build the experience and prove the concept, we do not pretend that we can meet the challenge alone. This assault is national. We believe any organization that needs additional people power should be enabled to recruit and accept these recipients as volunteers enabling them to continue to receive benefits, but also allowing them to advance the program of host organizations. We are prepared to lend support to any and all of these efforts.

We’ve started, ready or not, funded or not, because the crisis is immediate and growing. We’re ready to help anyone who wants in the fight. Join us!