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Jim Lynch has spent a lifetime of grassroots organizing and actions in Little Rock, AR – ever since he met Wade Rathke in 1975. “ACORN changed my life!,” he says and describes the two years he worked as an “ACORN Associate” in the ACORN headquarters, and successive years working as an organizer for ACORN-associated orgs and campaigns. He left ACORN in 1977 to work for an elected official, Roger Meers (sp?) and to earn a better living than the ACORN paycheck he received (roughly $45/week after deductions). While working for the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, for majority of his professional career, he was the Chief Organizer for the Coalition for Little Rock Neighborhoods – an independent organization that ACORN later joined. This interview will be of interest to anyone exploring the early organizing actions and strategies of ACORN when it was headquartered in Little Rock, “The New Party” and “Fusion” actions, and alliances between ACORN and Little Rock labor orgs, as well as other organizing strategies and actions specific to Little Rock. He also speaks with great admiration about Zach Polett, who ran the Little Rock ACORN office after Wade Rathke and senior staff relocated to New Orleans in 1979.
