Voice for the needy keeps low profile

Rachel Stovall surveys a map of Colorado Springs taped to the concrete-block wall of her modest office and talks about her plans for helping residents of low-income neighborhoods.

“I’ll go anywhere and help anybody,” said Stovall, who left a mortgage brokerage firm in June to organize the Colorado Springs headquarters of ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

To some, ACORN might seem a bit out of place in Colorado Springs. Describing itself as a champion of social justice, it’s known to use angry protest marches and in-your-face tactics to fight for its causes. It has 850 neighborhood chapters, with 175,000 members in 75 cities.

Stovall, 39, grew up in the Springs area and worked as a promoter and as a volunteer with groups helping single mothers. She knows that many ACORN initiatives and tactics will not work here.

“ACORN is about solving problems in neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s about connecting people to each other and to their community leaders. Connecting them to the system.

“In Colorado Springs, it will be more about flashlight vigils, not screaming protests on someone’s steps. We want good relationships.”

Her first project was a typical ACORN initiative: registering voters for November’s election.

Funded by grants from the national organization, Stovall hired workers who set up tables at malls, worked the bus station downtown, the food stamp office and other locations to register about 10,000 voters.

Stovall was proud of the effort, though it was tainted when a worker hired by ACORN was suspected of forging 19 registration cards.

“I turned him in myself,” Stovall said. “I had to testify against him at the grand jury.”

It provided a valuable lesson for her and the group.

“In the future, instead of having paid workers, voter registration will be a volunteer effort,” she said. “We’ll work with people attached to ACORN.”

After the election, she focused on her goal of organizing low- and moderate-income neighborhoods into powerful voices for better housing, schools, parks, neighborhood safety and more. It’s the fundamental ACORN mission, dating to the work of a small group of welfare mothers in Little Rock, Ark., who founded ACORN in 1970.

Stovall assessed neighborhoods for need and ended up on familiar turf in Stratmoor Valley, an unincorporated southside neighborhood adjacent to Interstate 25 near Fort Carson. Stovall grew up in the valley.

She knocked on doors, asking residents about their problems. Soon, she had a core group of 12 or so, interested in trying to improve the neighborhood.

Today, four months later, the region’s first ACORN chapter has taken root there with several dozen members paying $10 monthly dues. They are working to raise hundreds of dollars needed to buy streetlights.

Stovall helped get El Paso County Commissioner Dennis Hisey and Sheriff Terry Maketa to meet with the new Stratmoor Valley Neighbors Group. Hisey and Maketa have promised to help solve chronic flooding, crime and speeding problems.

“Before, when we called as individuals, nobody heard us,” said Albert Aldaz, a Stratmoor Valley resident and member of the ACORN chapter. “Now, we are being heard. It made me feel good. It felt like we accomplished something.”

And others are stepping up to help. Folks at Oracle Corp. donated money for a beautification project in the valley, and a Wal-Mart in Fountain wants to help build a neighborhood park.

The Stratmoor Valley effort caught the attention of a little east-side neighborhood near Wildflower Elementary School along Nordic Drive near Powers Boulevard and Airport Road.

Now Wildflower residents are talking about organizing into the area’s second ACORNaffiliated neighbors group with an eye toward creating a neighborhood park.

Stovall’s work sounds similar to what homeowners groups and neighborhood associations typically do across the city.

She said the difference is that ACORN aims at low-income neighborhoods and welcomes residents who are not necessarily homeowners.

Still, Jan Doran, president of the Council of Neighbors and Organizations, or CONO, would like to meet Stovall and see if the two groups can work together.

“We’d certainly welcome them,” said Doran, whose CONO is an umbrella association open to all the city’s 125 or so neighborhood groups.

“There’s a place for everybody,” Doran said.

“We appreciate what they’re doing. More power to them. Maybe we can help them, show them how they can get things done without reinventing the wheel.”

Stovall said she intends to meet with CONO as she works toward her goal of adding a half-dozen ACORN chapters in 2005.

“I want ACORN to be defined by neighborhood advocacy,” Stovall said. “I want to give regular citizens a sense of power. I want them to know they have a voice and can use it.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0193 or

bvogrin@gazette.com

TO REACH ACORN

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, can be reached at 634-1525 in the offices of the Urban League of the Pikes Peak Region at 125 N. Parkside Drive.