Letters

Community Organizing

Editors:

Michael Walzer’s “Pastoral Retreat of the New Left” is sympathetic [Dissent, Fall 1979]; but some facts are wrong. The only organizations he mentions specifically in his critique of the trends in community organizing are the Midwest Academy, Massachusetts Fair Share, and my own group, ACORN. Perhaps his comments are true about the first two parties mentioned; I have no familiarity with them except in the most general terms. But having worked with ACORN for four years I can state categorically that Walzer is wrong in the following particulars:

(1) “Except for some union work, the new organizers don’t reach into the black community. And theirs is not, b...