The community group called ACORN has been trying to raise hell in Baltimore for four years - blocking a busy street with trash, piling rubbish in front of City Hall, barging into a bankers dinner with big inflatable sharks, and rattling stones in tin cans to disrupt public meetings.

But the group has pulled off its biggest coup with only a few flashes of flamboyance.

ACORN got a measure put on the Nov. 5 ballot that could profoundly reshape the City Council, and last week it managed to quash a rival plan backed by the council. It accomplished these acts by forging alliances with groups such as the League of Women Voters, collecting signatures on petitions, studying the Open Meetings Act and filing a lawsuit with help from a high-priced lawyer.

There were but a couple of classic ACORN moments along the way. Loud confrontations with the council. A summer intern delivering the first batch of petitions to City Hall dressed in a leotard, a mask and a cape.

The combination of quiet, mainstream tactics and in-your-face theatrics has won ACORN powerful friends - and foes.

The organization that Mayor Martin O'Malley dismisses as "professional protesters," that some council members accuse of lying and extortion, receives financial support from the prominent Abell Foundation, which gave it a $90,000 grant for a lead paint assessment project this year. Several candidates for the House of Delegates, including Curtis S. Anderson in the 43rd District and Jill P. Carter in the 41st, say the group helped put them over the top in last month's primary.

"They're trying to take politics back to the people," said state Sen. Ralph M. Hughes. "Their tactics sometimes I disagree with. They're quite confrontational sometimes. Sometimes I think they might be too aggressive. ... [But] I do think they're a good group and will have to be reckoned with."

Councilwoman Lisa Joi Stancil counts herself among those who applaud most of the group's political aims but take issue with the leadership's often confrontational style. She complained that one of her aides was essentially hijacked into participating in an ACORN protest.

'Some dirty tricks'

Last spring, ACORN invited Stancil and others on a "tour of shame" through blighted Baltimore neighborhoods. Stancil said her aide attended in her place and was startled at the end of the tour when the bus rolled up to the mayor's house and people started pouring out.

"They do pull some dirty tricks like that. ... There are boundaries, and they don't seem to have a problem crossing them," Stancil said.

O'Malley, who was not home at the time, was even more upset.

"They unloaded a busload of people shouting pretty ugly things and scared the daylights out of my wife and kids," he said. "I thought it was a pretty cruddy thing to do. My kids don't get paid to take their abuse. I suppose I do."

ACORN officials tell a different story. They say only one person got off the bus to knock on the door and was shooed away by O'Malley's security detail before reaching the front steps. They concede that Stancil's aide was unwittingly taken along for the ride and say they're sorry if he was inconvenienced.

But ACORN offers no apologies for aggressive tactics. Members say that is often the only way to bring attention and action to long-neglected parts of the city.

"They don't sit down pansy-wansy and say, 'Maybe we need to go to Annapolis and lobby,'" said Rose Taylor, 60, a longtime activist from Greenmount West who is co-chairwoman of Maryland ACORN. "We go to Annapolis, and we're up in their face. That's why ACORN and I click. We don't just talk about it. We do something about it."

Chapters in 45 cities

The group's chief Maryland organizer is Mitchell Klein, 32, a New Mexico native with a sociology degree from the University of Michigan and a Tasmanian Devil tattoo on his right arm.

Klein has a knack for keeping the phone numbers of friendly politicians in his head. He also has an unflagging habit of criticizing those he feels are out of touch.

"To me, it's unbelievable that a City Council person would hold a press conference announcing they're going out to their community for the day," he said, referring to a councilman who set up a temporary office on drug corners during the summer. "You shouldn't visit a drug corner as a special thing when people are living with it every day."

ACORN began in Little Rock, Ark., in 1970 to help welfare recipients in need of clothing and furniture, according to the group's Web site.

Then, the acronym stood for Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now. Today, ACORN has chapters in 45 cities and its name has been changed to Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It claims to be the country's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, with more than 120,000 members.

ACORN campaigns for liberal causes, such as higher wages and affordable housing, and against such issues as predatory lending and privatization of public services.

Some critics question ACORN's power-to-the-people image, suggesting that it uses a handful of poor residents as fronts for an organization mostly run by paid, college-educated staff.

"If you go on a picket line sometime and ask some of these tired, old black folks what the issues are, they can't tell you," said Robert L. Woodson Sr., president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a Washington-based group that provides training and assistance to community and faith-based organizations. "They use people."

Grants, settlements

Sonja Jones, an ACORN member and mother of three who lives in Waverly, scoffs at the idea that the organization forces her to fork over $60 a year in membership dues.

"No one can make me pay for anything," she said.

Besides dues from about 2,200 members, the Baltimore branch is supported by grants from foundations and by financial settlements from banks and other institutions whose practices it has criticized - another sore point with critics, who call that extortion.

"ACORN knows that corporate America has no starch in their shorts and, therefore, what they try to do is buy peace from groups that agitate against them," Woodson said. "The same corporations that pay ransom to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton pay ransom to ACORN."

Klein said ACORN has received money from institutions such as CitiFinancial, often as part of multistate legal settlements to improve lending practices in poor areas.

"It's not about 'Give ACORN some money so we'll shut up,'" he said.

Local activities

The branch is incorporated as a nonprofit organization, but not the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) variety that must make its tax filings public. Klein says the Baltimore branch has an annual budget of $450,000, but he declines to release tax forms, saying ACORN has ruffled too many feathers to open its books.

"We have enemies out there that would love to destroy our funding sources," he said.

Since the Baltimore chapter started four years ago, ACORN has filed a lawsuit against the closing of five library branches. It has protested a deal by the city to build a 13-story parking garage to benefit a company accused of predatory lending.

Last year, the group released a study that found that children who live in poor Baltimore neighborhoods are more likely to be taught by novice and uncertified teachers. Last week, it distributed a thick report on a gap between white and minority homeownership rates.

Through a program with the University of Maryland School of Nursing, ACORN trains residents to test homes for the presence of lead paint. Its affiliate, ACORN Housing Corp., draws praise from the mayor for providing housing counseling to low-income people.

The housing arm receives $50,000 a year in grants from the city, something O'Malley and other city leaders considered eliminating after ACORN got its council plan on the ballot. The money was not cut.

Council reform

Its efforts to reshape the City Council have been low-key by ACORN standards, but they have drawn fire nonetheless.

ACORN wants to shrink the 19-member council by four members. The new council would consist of one member from each of 14 districts and an at-large council president. The council now has six three-member districts and an at-large president.

ACORN argues that its plan would make the council more accountable, would help less-established candidates and would save money for the city. Critics, including council members and O'Malley, warn that the plan would Balkanize the city into small, self-interested districts.

As part of a coalition that included labor unions and the League of Women Voters, ACORN helped collect 10,000 signatures to get the resizing plan on the ballot.

The council countered by putting its own plan on the ballot, which also called for cutting four seats but would have retained multimember districts.

The coalition accused the council of trying to sabotage its initiative because the two plans would have appeared as separate ballot questions and would have canceled each other out if both had passed. The group took the council to court, alleging that the council's plan had been hatched at an illegal, closed-door meeting.

The state Court of Appeals sided with the coalition last week, removing the council's plan from the ballot.

ACORN was meeting late last week to plot its get-out-the-vote drive for Question P, as the ballot initiative is known. They were talking about posting signs and planning a rally, but they were still undecided.

One thing was clear, said Taylor, the co-chairwoman: "We're going to be very persistent, out there, up in your face."