Changes Our Members Have Fought for —

and WON

• During President Obama’s Administration, we are proud to have worked for passage of the transformative Affordable Care Act. Our members traveled the state collecting letters from Arkansans to support healthcare reform, and held a March across Scott Street Bridge to bring attention to need for healthcare access.

• We traveled to Washington, DC to help pass the 2010 Wall Street Reform legislation that set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

• We worked have worked with national coalitions to protect social security.

• We helped build a coalition to stop the Little Rock technology park from destroying central Little Rock neighborhoods.

• We helped pass Medicaid expansion in Arkansas, and through the navigator program, ACO helped enrolled people in affordable healthcare created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This was a huge win to be a part of, expanding healthcare coverage to hundreds of thousands of Arkansans.

• Over the last twelve years, Arkansas Community Organizations has:

  • helped prepare 16,027 tax returns, at no charge to taxpayers,

  • helped people receive $12.3 million in Earned Income Tax Credit and $25 million in federal refunds,

  • saved community members an estimated $3.4 million in tax preparation fees,

  • received input from almost 13,000 low-to-moderate income Arkansans about issues important them through voluntary surveys at our VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) sites.

• We have held candidate forums in Pine Bluff and Little Rock, for candidates running for city offices and school boards.

• ACO brought together school boards members, teachers, other organizations and stakeholders, to oppose the proposed takeover of Little Rock School District, and has been active in several efforts to return the school district to local control and to make our schools more equitable.

• ACO has been active in building the state’s first statewide renters association, Arkansas Renters United, which currently has over a thousand members across Northwest, central, and Southeast Arkansas.

• We brought together a group of stakeholders that produced a study of how Arkansas’ renter laws impact the health of tenants; the report received widespread coverage in Arkansas and several other states and helped to relaunch to efforts to reform Arkansas’ backwards landlord/tenant laws.

• During the COVID pandemic, ACO’s work has helped to keep many tenants under the threat of eviction in their homes.

  ACO also works on very local neighborhood issues, and in 2022, has been successful in helping to open Thrasher’s Boys Club, winning basic street improvements in South Little Rock, and stepped up code enforcement in Pine Bluff.

• ACO has been working with community members to reduce the impact of medical debt and justice system debt on families. In January 2022, we released a report and held a virtual town hall that received widespread attention. We have recently helped block a block a contract between a private debt collection company and Pine Bluff district court, that would have turned court debt into a private-profit-making venture.