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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
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John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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At a Thursday afternoon rally sponsored by the Tacoma branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN – a rally attended by a dozen or so people, including those who spoke – the word went out to Governor Chris Gregoire and President-elect Barack Obama that the upcoming stimulus program should benefit the more troubled among us.
Following the meeting, Tacoma ACORN President Brenda Leichsenring said she was surprised that so few people attended. “I expected quite a bit more,” she said.
For those who did not attend, she said, “I would like them to know we need to stand together. People who live in these neighborhoods are in bad shape. We want the governor to now that whatever kind of stimulus packlage gets passed needs to target low- and medium-income people.”
She said job creation is critical in the coming months, and that the the funds allocated for Pierce County should go to increased unemployment benefits, more food stamps and “part of it to help families who are in foreclosure” by allocating funds to “community organizations like ACORN who would be able to have staff so we would be able to help them negotiate with their mortgage companies.”
“We are here,” she said. “We are everyday people. We are working class, working poor. We want things to be done so that we can go out there and work.”
Tacoma ACORN, she said, comprises some 70 people, with the statewide organization counting some 5,000.
Speakers Thursday included representatives from Tacoma Teamsters Local 313, the American Federation of Teachers and Safe Streets. Pierce County Councilmember Tim Farrell also spoke, as did unemployed worker Brandon Winston.
At the end, Leichsenring announced an ACORN rally in Olympia on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, Jan. 19.
For more information, call 253-572-4959.
COMMENTS:
According to your article:
Tacoma ACORN President Brenda Leichsenring said she was surprised that so few people attended. "I expected quite a bit more," she said. For those who did not attend, she said, "I would like them to know we need to stand together. People who live in these neighborhoods are in bad shape. We want the governor to now that whatever kind of stimulus package gets passed needs to target low- and medium-income people."
Why should anyone believe ACORN?
No wonder turnout was so low!
Because ACORN is too often silent when it comes the mis-spending of our tax dollars!
For example, when Tacoma city government uses middle and low income tax dollars to subsidize tax breaks for big business at the expense of schools and education or emergency services. I’ve watched others get up and protest this rip off of low income and middle income taxpayers. ACORN never speaks up.
They claim to work for and represent those of low income or middle income status, but Tacoma ACORN President Brenda Leichsenring is conspicuously silent when it comes to confronting the county and city councils about these transfers of our hard earned money to these companies.
Let me be clear here Brenda, stand up or shut up. Quit whining. Go to these public meetings at the city and county and tell them to use our tax dollars to improve those neighborhoods you reference that are in bad shape. Tell them to fix the streets. Fix the sidewalks. Improve emergency services. But tell them to quit using our money to subsidize these companies that don’t need government handouts.
Maybe then you’ll get someone to attend your rallies!
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