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Locating Housing for the Poor: Good Intentions, Expediency, and Living with the Consequences

Robert Moses, seated at left in 1959, used his position as head of the Mayor's Committee on Slum Clearance to mass-produce thousands of units of public housing, often near the shoreline.

 Quito    One of the ironic outcomes of recent disasters, whether New Orleans or now New York, is that the public, policy makers, and politicians [...]

Hurricane Sandy Rapid Response from Occupy and Others

New Orleans   In The Battle for the Ninth Ward:  ACORN, The Rebuilding of New Orleans, and the Lessons of Disaster, published last year, I had added the Lessons appendix as more and more community-based organizations sought to meet the challenges of the unexpected natural disasters that are cropping up all around us, whether in the [...]

Why are NYC Hedge Funders and Rupert Murdoch messing in a NOLA School Board Race?

New Orleans  In the days when New Orleans had a daily paper, it might have been a big issue that hundreds of thousands of dollars in out of state money has flooded one particular school board race.  Perhaps not, because those were also the days before Katrina when 100% of the schools in New Orleans [...]

Lessons of Disaster: Sandy, New York City, Housing Projects, and Lost Wages

New Orleans   After Katrina and the continual start-and-stop-and-slow rebuilding process in New Orleans with side trips and explorations to Kobe and more recently cities in Eastern Japan after those earthquakes and the tsunami attacks, and other cities near and far, I have come to believe that the way governments, established institutions, and community and popular organizations [...]

Trying to Grow Jobs in the Japanese Disaster Zone

seafood processing is slowly coming back

Tokyo  The population losses in Ishinomaki and Onagawa were different than New Orleans.  After Katrina, a city that had evacuated was (is!) unable to return with 80% of the housing flooded.   The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and the tsunami that followed virtually wiped out everything in its path, killed, [...]

Art & Activism in Oakland, California

Organizers and activists came together at the Art & Activism Conference held in Oakland, California on July 13th, 2012.  Organized by Gary Delgado and Gina Acebo, the conference was a fruitful discussion on how the role of art and culture in the fight for social justice. In this video, Wade Rathke discusses the role of [...]