Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog

New Orleans        President Obama announced that in order to pay the piper for health care and for expanding the tax credits to lower income, working families, he was going to advocate a very simple solution:  tax the rich!   Well, not exactly TAX THE RICH, but more just equalize some of the taxes on the [...]

New Orleans        All weekend the national papers, radio, and television tried to get a handle on what the notion of nationalization might mean when thinking about the banking and auto industries.  Word flowing out of the negotiations with Citi indicates that the US might have as much as a 40% stake in the company [...]

Mardi Gras Day, New Orleans   
I am hardly a Hollywood groupie, but given ACORN International’s work in Dharavi, the Mumbai mega-slum, that was one of the “stars” of the movie, Slumdog Millionaire, I couldn’t claim to be disinterested.  Furthermore, ACORN India put on a different kind of Oscar-watch party in Dharavi that has now been widely [...]

Boston        I popped my head in for a minute to hear the distinguished panel speak of new takes on urban renewal.  It was fascinating in bits and pieces, but seemed to also underscore how little real attention revitalization of urban areas has gotten in recent decades as a matter of public policy or public [...]

Boston        On Friday night the panel at the EPIIC International Symposium convened to discuss the issues of particularly vulnerable global cities and New Orleans was highlighted as a worse case example of the impact and consequence of vulnerability.  It was encouraging to find that after more than three years, there is still deep interest [...]

    Washington        In the push to win comprehensive immigration reform the exhilaration of the election has been tempered by concerns that this issue was being pushed to the back of the queue because of the economy and the need to get other mattes also handled quickly like health care and housing measures and worker [...]