Consumer advocacy organization that focused on such issues as environmentalism and socialized medicine
Worked for Democratic Party causes
Was destroyed by its participation in a 1997 money-laundering scandal
Now defunct, Citizen Action was a consumer advocacy group based in Cleveland, Ohio. It was established in 1979 when the leaders of five state organizations -- Oregon Fair Share, Massachusetts Fair Share, the Illinois Public Action Council, the Connecticut Citizen Action Coalition, and the Ohio Public Interest Campaign -- jointly decided to form a national federation. Ira Arlook (of Ohio Public Interest Campaign) and Heather Booth (who co-founded the Midwest Academy in 1973, and is closely affiliated with the NAACP and ACORN) served as co-Directors of Citizen Action from 1979 through 1988, when Booth left the organization and Arlook alone remained at the helm.
Working closely with Greenpeace and Ralph Nader's Public Interest Research Groups, Citizen Action pioneered the strategy of door-to-door canvassing to solicit donations for, and disseminate literature by, environmentalist organizations and causes. According to Undue Influence, by 1985 Citizen Action had established 20 state organizations, was operating on an annual budget of $12 million, and was staffed by some 1,500 organizers, door-to-door canvassers, and researchers. At its height, Citizen Action had nearly 1.5 million members, 600,000 of them from Ohio and Indiana. Its popularity was due in part to the efforts of the public relations firm Fenton Communications, of which Citizen Action was a client.
In the early 1990s Citizen Action began to focus some of its efforts on supporting the fight for socialized medicine, an issue that was being explored by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.
Citizen Action's political activism was on display during the 1996 election cycle when it joined forces with the Sierra Club in a "Campaign for a Responsible Congress," an effort to unseat Republican incumbents in 15 key Congressional races. A major contributor to this effort was the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which gave Citizen Action $475,000.
But in 1997, a thriving Citizen Action suddenly imploded following the public disclosure of its involvement in a money laundering scandal that involved the illegal juggling of funds between the AFL-CIO, the leaders and officials of individual unions (including the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters Union, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME), the Democratic Party, then-Clinton administration chief fundraiser Terry McAuliffe, and former Clinton White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes. One purpose of this juggling was to funnel illegal contributions to the re-election campaign of Ron Carey as President of the Teamsters Union. The conspirators donated at least $150,000 to the tax-exempt Citizen Action, which a few days later transferred $100,000 to Carey's re-election effort.
(1) "The Teamsters donated $475,000 to Citizen Action, and in return, Citizen Action allegedly helped channel some of that money to the Carey campaign. ... Citizen Action paid off a previously forgiven 1990 loan for $25,000 plus interest, and then the lender, Jeremy Sherman, sent $35,000 to the Carey campaign. This appears to be just one example of how the some of the $475,000 was allegedly laundered through Citizen Action."
(2) "Citizen Action reportedly sent $75,000 to Michael Ansara's Share Consulting for work that was never done. The $75,000 allegedly went instead to reimburse Ansara's wife, Barbara Arnold, in part for her $95,000 contribution to the Carey campaign. This may also have been part of the $475,000 plan."
(3) "Citizen Action reportedly paid $100,000 to Martin Davis' November Group after receiving $150,000 from the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka, which he allegedly received from the Teamsters. This $100,000 reportedly went to help pay for a large direct mail effort that the November Group was executing for the Carey campaign."
One of the conspirators identified by Congressional and U.S. Attorney investigations was Paul Booth (then and currently the National Training Director of AFSCME), who was a conduit for $27,100 of the illicit money transfer. Booth was a co-founder and leader of the radical Students for a Democratic Society and is currently married to Heather Booth.
"Before the Teamsters scandal, there were problems" at Citizen Action, said Edward Kelly, former Director of the Massachusetts chapter. "Basically, I saw national go from a nonpartisan, grass-roots organization to a partisan one tied to the Democratic Party. I didn't like that." "In the early 1990s," he added, "during the fight for national health care, it was a pretty viable organization, and what allowed it to get big was door-to-door canvassing. But over time, national leaders lost interest in canvassing. So, what some of us were beginning to see was a shift from an organization that was committed to building grass-roots power to one that wanted to be a big inside player in Washington, D.C. … Once they took that step, they became involved in all sorts of questionable activities."
Though Citizen Action's national office ceased operations in 1997, a number of the organization's state affiliates remained intact. In 1999 Heather Booth revived Citizen Action as a national organization under the name USAction, where she currently serves as Vice President.
