January « 2009 « Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

Turkish Attacks on Roma

January 31, 2009
New Orleans In 2006 when the Organizers’ Forum delegation from the US and Canada visited Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey we spent several hours visiting with an organizer and a community organizing project among the Roma (gypsies) across the Bosporus Straits on the Asian side of Istanbul. The community was similar to [...]

Common Ground Infiltrator

January 31, 2009
New Orleans There was a brief squib on the wire that defied easy explanation. One of the co-founders of Common Ground, an agency that had sprung after Katrina first with a health center on the West Bank and then involved in some recovery work on the East Bank, was revealed to be [...]

Wal-Mart Expanding in Latin America

January 30, 2009
New Orleans Even as we deal with the deepening recession, the huge recovery phenomena of Wal-Mart is hard not to notice. The stock is up. Sales are through the roof as hard strapped, working income customers are desperate to stretch their dollars as far as possible. Store expansion in the US continues [...]

Looking for $4.2 Billion

January 29, 2009
New Orleans It would be nice to say to the Right, “Hey, get over it!” The Arkansas legislature failed to get a unanimous resolution of congratulations to President Obama, and throughout the last week the Google alerts have been filled with wildness that says the national community organization, ACORN, is slated to [...]

Doug Allen and SAG

New Orleans Other than on some kind of screen, silver, LED, computer, TV or whatever, I probably would not know a screen actor if one bit me, so I’m probably not qualified to comment on the internal squabbles within the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) and their termination of Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Doug [...]

Grassroots Labor Rights Enforcement

New Orleans I was talking recently to Kim Bobo about her book, Wage Theft, which makes the clear and irrefutable point that American workers are getting ripped off by a lot of employers. She told me that she was hoping this old school notion of actually enforcing labor laws, especially those designed to protect [...]

Marshall Plan

New Orleans For quite some time there has been a low-grade resistance movement being fought within the Service Employees International Union by one of its largest local unions, United Healthcare-West, led by long term president, Sal Rosselli. He has claimed that actions taken to deprive him of various leadership positions and other steps [...]

Poster Child

New York Walking by the elevators and out towards Park Avenue two women were talking and shaking their heads as they left Citibank. I wasn’t listening, but one of them said, “Thain,” and both shook their heads. Turned out the buzz all over the financial district was about a short 15-minute visit Kenneth [...]

Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

Categories