WADE RATHKE is the founder of ACORN, Chief Organizer at ACORN International, and Author of "Nuts & Bolts", "Citizen Wealth", "Global Grassroots", and "The Battle for the 9th Ward".
Sofia It hasn’t been easy for the Organizers’ Forum to get our arms around housing issues in Sofia or Bucharest. People agree that rents are going up, but that’s about all. The numbers say that the percentage of homeowners vastly outnumbers tenants. In Romania, there is claim of over 90% homeownership. In Bulgaria, …
Sofia It’s not an insult to say that Bulgaria is a smaller and poorer country than Romania. It’s just the truth. In talking to various organizations and activists, they have also emphasized to us the difficult and challenging social infrastructure for citizens as well as immigrants. We had hoped to meet David Bisset …
Bucharest The Roma people constitute about 12% of the Romanian population with between 1.8 and 2.2 million people disbursed across the country, even though official census figures number only 600,000. Their minority status has led to intense discrimination in the region for hundreds of years. We were meeting with Alin Banu, the Executive Director …