ACORN Abandoned Building Campaign video

Tom Boland (wgcp@earthlink.net)
Wed, 7 Jan 1998 04:22:41 -0800 (PST) 

FWD excerpt from http://www.benton.org/Library/Advideo/advideo4.html#chicago

(See also: http://www.acorn.org/community/index.html
ACORN = Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Squatting abandoned buildings was a frequent ACORN tactic.)
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Advocacy video in community organizing

Case study: Chicago Video Project

Founded by a veteran community organizer, the Chicago Video Project
produces videotapes for Chicago nonprofits fighting urban problems.

One organization devoted solely to producing videos for grassroots
campaigns is the Chicago Video Project (CVP). Founded by former community
organizer Bruce Orenstein, CVP exclusively produces organizing driven
videos designed to have an
integral, utilitarian role in the campaigns of Chicago-area nonprofits. CVP
receives the majority of its funding from a variety of Chicago-based
foundations.

  "Organizing driven," says Orenstein, "means there's an organizing plan in
which the tape will be used, and the organization has the capacity to carry
out and actually complete its plan. You're taking a tape and you're not
just grafting it onto a program.  You're integrating it into your methods
of organizing so that it becomes one of your strategic tools for mobilizing
people and influencing your targets. What we're trying to do is really take
video and develop it into a strategic tool in organizing for social
change."

  For nonprofits with solid plans for such tapes, principally organizations
representing the poor, CVP produces highly professional videos for a
minimal charge, or, in some cases, for free. "Because we live in a society
that relies on the graphic communication of ideas," states CVP promotional
material, "the poor cannot afford to be locked out of the influential arena
of video." Orenstein believes that video possesses a unique ability to
frame issues and to focus political discussion. "Who controls the debate,"
he says, "will often determine the outcome of the issue itself."

  Abandoned Building Campaign, a 9-minute video produced by CVP for the
local ACORN chapter, helped the organization change Chicago's policy toward
abandoned buildings. Produced in the style of a news report, the video
outlines the problems posed by abandoned properties. In eyewitness
accounts, community members explain how empty buildings breed crime and
devalue neighboring properties.

  From the outset, ACORN planned to use the video in its grassroots
organizing effort to change city policy. ACORN supporters showed the video
at roughly 60 house meetings with 10-15 people attending each meeting. Once
ACORN had built
a strong base of support, groups of citizens began showing the tape to
aldermen, housing officials, reporters, and eventually the building
commissioner. In a matter of months, the campaign won a $4 million increase
in city funding to board up and demolish unsalvageable, empty buildings.
ACORN also forced the city to develop a policy to save those buildings
which could be renovated.

  When asked whether ACORN would have won the campaign without the video,
board member Ernestine Whiting responded:

  "Maybe we would have won without the tape, but it would have been a much
longer time frame. So many times when you're dealing with officials on
issues, you can talk about the issues, but they really don't seem to
understand where you're coming from because they never come out to those
communities. So now we can bring the community to them by way of video. And
when you identify a problem with the visual eye, it makes you respond more.
You cannot deny that there is a problem."

  Orenstein believes the ACORN tape would have been ineffective if the
organization did not have the capacity to mobilize large numbers of people.
"Video," he says, "is a tool that is only as effective as the organization
using it."

  CVP tailors its productions to the size and needs of each organization.
When dealing with small organizations that do not have a grassroots
network, for example, CVP will create video news releases (VNRs) intended
to generate media attention rather than galvanize grassroots support. One
VNR, produced for the Mother's Guild of the Henry Horner Housing Project,
documented the horrific living conditions in Chicago public housing:
bombed-out looking walls and ceilings, broken plumbing, and in one
apartment-a dead, decomposing cat.

  The dramatic footage generated extensive play in the media, both locally
and nationally, and called attention to a lawsuit filed by the Mother's
Guild against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). Two years after the suit
was filed, CHA settled with the Mother's Guild and agreed to spend $200
million on renovations at the Henry Horner Project.

  "The video forced CHA to take the suit more seriously than they would
have without the media attention," says Orenstein.  "I don't think there's
any question about that. The media called periodically to see what happened
with the suit so that put constant pressure on CHA. The video allowed some
very poor people to reach a local and national audience in a very
sophisticated way."

  But Orenstein does not believe that video in and of itself can win
improvements in society. "Change comes about because people organize
power," Orenstein continues. "I don't think video forces change or
organizes power, people do that."

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