http://www.livingwagecampaign.org/

Introduction to ACORN's Living Wage Web Site

Welcome to ACORN's living wage website. What you will find here is a brief
history of the national living wage movement, background materials such as
ordinance summaries and comparisons, drafting tips, research summaries,
talking points, and links to other living wage-related sites.

Visitors to the web site should keep in mind that there is no magic formula
for a successful living wage campaign. Every campaign is different --
dependent on the campaign leaders and their constituencies, local politics
and power dynamics, the campaign coalition's interests and scope,
resources, experience, timelines, local and regional economies, etc.

Clearly, there is much to learn about running a living wage campaign that
cannot be contained in a web site. However, as the movement chalks up wins,
and leaders and organizers gain experience and become more savvy, we are
building a body of material and experience that should be shared among
living wage organizers everywhere.

ACORN and Living Wage

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, is the
nation's oldest and largest grassroots organization of low and moderate
income people with over 120,000 member families organized into 600
neighborhood chapters in 45 cities across the country. For over 30 years,
ACORN members have been organizing in their neighborhoods across the
country around local issues such as affordable housing, safety, education,
improved city services, and have taken the lead nationally on issues of
affordable housing, tenant organizing, fighting banking and insurance
discrimination, organizing workfare workers, and winning jobs and living
wages.

Over the past eight years, ACORN chapters have been involved in over twenty
living wage campaigns in our own cities, leading coalitions that have won
ordinances in St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Boston, Oakland, Denver,
Chicago, Cook County, IL, New Orleans and New York City and have
participated in additional victories in San Jose, Broward County, FL and
Detroit. Our current campaigns are going on in Little Rock and Pine Bluff,
Arkansas, Bridgeport and Sacramento as well as statewide efforts in NM, IL,
AR and MA.

In addition, we have established the Living Wage Resource Center to track
the living wage movement and provide materials and strategies to the new
campaigns that are cropping up everywhere.

In November of 2000, ACORN hosted our second National Living Wage Training
Conference which drew 150 people from 55 different living wage campaigns
across the country to learn from each other about elements of a living wage
campaign such as building local coalitions, doing research, working with
city council, developing message and responding to the opposition,
preparing for living wage implementation fights, and using living wage
campaigns to build community and labor membership and power.

We encourage campaign organizers to contact Jen Kern at ACORN's Living Wage
Resource Center at 617-740-9500 for more materials, to discuss specific
campaign strategy, and to get referrals to experienced living wage
organizers who have been or are currently involved in living wage campaigns
in cities all over the country.

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