The community group called ACORN has been trying to raise hell in Baltimore for four years - blocking a busy street with trash, piling rubbish in front of City Hall, barging into a bankers dinner with big inflatable sharks, and rattling stones in tin cans to disrupt public meetings.
But the group has pulled off its biggest coup with only a few flashes of flamboyance.
ACORN got a measure put on the Nov. 5 ballot that could profoundly reshape the City Council, and last week it managed to quash a rival plan backed by the council. It accomplished these acts by forging alliances with groups such as the League of Women Voters, collecting signatures on petitions, studying the Open Meetings Act and filing a lawsuit with help from a high-priced lawyer.
There were but a couple of classic ACORN moments along the way. Loud confrontations with the council. A summer intern delivering the first batch of petitions to City Hall dressed in a leotard, a mask and a cape.
The combination of quiet, mainstream tactics and in-your-face theatrics has won ACORN powerful friends - and foes.
The organization that Mayor Martin O'Malley dismisses as "professional protesters," that some council members accuse of lying and extortion, receives financial support from the prominent Abell Foundation, which gave it a $90,000 grant for a lead paint assessment project this year. Several candidates for the House of Delegates, including Curtis S. Anderson in the 43rd District and Jill P. Carter in the 41st, say the group helped put them over the top in last month's primary.
"They're trying to take politics back to the people," said state Sen. Ralph M. Hughes. "Their tactics sometimes I disagree with. They're quite confrontational sometimes. Sometimes I think they might be too aggressive. ... [But] I do think they're a good group and will have to be reckoned with."
Councilwoman Lisa Joi Stancil counts herself among those who applaud most of the group's political aims but take issue with the leadership's often confrontational style. She complained that one of her aides was essentially hijacked into participating in an ACORN protest.
`Some dirty tricks'
Last spring, ACORN invited Stancil and others on a "tour of shame" through blighted Baltimore neighborhoods. Stancil said her aide attended in her place and was startled at the end of the tour when the bus rolled up to the mayor's house and people started pouring out.
