ACORN holds summer summit with banks and thrifts.

In July, shortly before the Democratic National Convention in New York, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now held a "banking summit" at New York City's Columbia University. The first of its kind, the meeting was a followup to an ACORN study, Take the Money and Run: The Siphoning

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was a keynote speaker, and judging by the reaction of ACORN delegates, many of them minorities, there was broad agreement with what he had to say.

Jackson opened with a prayer: "That bankers and common people might find common ground."

"Our communities are starving for the want of capital," said Jackson, adding later, "The fight to vote without a capital base is the right to starve." He charged that urban America "is victimized by redlining and red tape."

Jackson was addressing his words not only to the hundreds of ACORN delegates, but also to several rows of bankers seated right before the podium. Though he was followed by a series of bankers who spoke of local efforts in conjunction with the ACORN members they work with, the group's message was clear: It wanted more done.

"Get the money from where the money went," urged Jackson. "Don't make things complicated. Why did Jesse James rob banks? Because that's where the money was."

Meeting of minds: In a pre-summit press conference, ACORN President

Maude Hurd said, "There are too many people without homes and too many homes without people. ... We're not here today to point fingers, but to turn things around." Hurd, a drug abuse counsellor from Boston, noted that ACORN had secured over 30 community reinvestment agreements with fi - nancial institutions around the country in recent years. The group wants more flexible underwriting guidelines for bank credit and wants banks to do more small business lending and to do more to provide employment opportunities.

A working session followed the large meeting where Jackson spoke. About 50 representatives from 41 banks and thrifts attended. One disappointment on ACORN's part, according to spokesman Deepak Bhargava, was that most institutions sent community reinvestment specialists, rather than the top officers the organization had hoped to see.

The mood of the assembled bankers could best be described as being willing to listen. They heard plenty.

"We aren't going away," said George Butts, president of ACORN Housing Corp. of Pennsylvania. "We are committed to doing this as long as it takes to get some change." Butts, a supervisor at a Philadelphia picture framing company, acknowledged that ACORN has in the past made its point through sit-ins and similar demonstrations. He said communicating through efforts like the summit was preferable to "the wild and crazy way." Butts and other ACORN representatives recounted techniques the group and cooperating lenders use to improve community lending efforts, including bank fairs, where multiple institutions talk about their products, and loan counselling programs.

Some time was set aside for lender questions. The bankers and thrift officers asked about many issues, such as the views of private mortgage insurers on ACORN-sponsored plans and how ACORN-sponsored loans perform. Some financial institution representatives reported favorable performance in their own affordable housing and related efforts.

An alliance? Elena Hanggi, former ACORN president, ran the working session. She held out an olive branch at one point: "The financial industry would like to see expanded powers and we would like to see our neighborhoods taken care of." She suggested ACORN and the industry could work to meet each other's goal.

Hanggi also held out a warning: She noted that her organization had asked her to relate "how upset we will be if the Community Reinvestment Act is threatened in any way," such as by a congressional rollback proposed in some quarters. ACORN has used CRA to protest mergers in order to obtain commitments from banks.

Towards the end, Hanggi asked lenders to join two task forces. One concerns legislative issues in both the single-family and multi-family areas. The other will address secondary mortgage market and private mortgage insurance issues.

In late August, ACORN spokesman Bhargava reported that 12 institutions had agreed to join the first task force and 14 had agreed to join the second.

One banker who attended the conference said he turned in a three and a half page memo to management following the meeting. In it, the banker said, he gave the sense that ACORN wants to move away from confrontation.

That said, ACORN still appears ready to get rough if it feels it should. After the summit, it conducted a sit-in at a New York City bank that it didn't feel was cooperating.