President, Arizona ACORN

Phoenix, Arizona

Following her brother's footsteps

When her brother Erasmo Villavicencio died in September 2005, Alicia Russell wasn't an ACORN member yet. She knew about Erasmo's ACORN work – that for over two years he had worked on neighborhood improvements like speed bumps, and he fought passionately to raise Phoenix’s minimum wage – but she had not yet joined the cause. "After my brother died, when I was going through his things, I collected a whole bag full of his notes about ACORN's minimum wage campaign," Ms. Russell explains. "Then I decided to join ACORN and carry on his work."

Ms. Russell steadily increased her work with ACORN. In July 2006 she became an ACORN Precinct Action Leader, or APAL, and began registering and engaging a network of voters in her neighborhood.

As an APAL, Ms. Russell helped 43 friends and family members register to vote, and then enlisted them to register others. Her daughter assisted students to register to vote on the campus of her community college, while Spanish-speakers in Ms. Russell's APAL network reached out to West Phoenix's Latino population.

Click here to read more about Alicia and other ACORN members