When I worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, in what was then called the Food Stamp Program, ACORN was powerful. "Food Stamps" then were actual paper in several denominations.
My first assignment was in a small field office in east Tennessee. There was the Officer-in-Charge (a very conscientious and kindly man), the Secretary, and me (the Assistant Officer-in-Charge.) LBJ was president. Our job was to monitor grocery stores to make sure that food stamps were accepted only for food; and to monitor county food stamp offices to make sure there was compliance with all the Federal regulations, including the civil rights laws.
One day my supervisor puzzled over a letter from our Regional Office and then handed it to me. ACORN had filed a complaint against us. The complaint was that in our Field Office territory, not a single migrant worker had been signed up to receive Food Stamps.
Our little field office monitored food stamp offices in five mountainous rural counties. Local agriculture consisted of wooded mountains, and small pastures or vegetable plots tucked into hillsides. Some local people made cash by signing up to "go down to the bottoms" and pick cotton once a year.
Everyone was white, and most were low to modest income. Once when I visited a local grocery store and introduced myself, the proprietor snorted and replied, "Huh, that's not a Campbell County name." I think there were less than twelve Campbell County names.
As I read the letter my supervisor said, "We don't have any migrant workers, do we?"
"No," I replied. "When they go down to Memphis and pick cotton I guess they are migrant workers down there--but up here they are home folks."
So we sat down and drafted a reply explaining the demographics of our territory. That was not the end of it. ACORN pushed back, insisting that we certify those poor migrant workers.
It was months before we were able to disengage from the paper war.
My next experience with ACORN was when I worked in a Food and Nutrition Service regional office. We were proud that our administrative costs were such a small percentage of our budget. Almost all of our budget went to actually helping people in need.
I was one of the FNS people meeting with ACORN reps. The ACORN people were frank in expressing their opinion that our FNS mission was to deny food and nutrition as much as we could.
I am a liberal. But when liberalism reigned, there were enough doctrinaire jerks out there to give liberalism a bad name.