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".
Pearl River In 1984, ACORN organized what we called “Reagan Ranches” all over the country, recalling the famous Hoovervilles, to protest Reagan economic policies impacting our membership. In a similar “ranch”, organized along the trickle of a river in Dallas during the Republican national convention, we slept and marched under a banner that proclaimed, …
Chicago My mother always insisted after every birthday and Christmas, and it seemed like a host of other occasions, that my brother and I write “thank you” notes. That lesson set hard on my brother, and he embraced it as a good thing. I didn’t disagree with the practice, but often it was bottom-of-the-list-business …
London Preparing to fly home, I started reading the papers at 3 AM in Brussels, then 9 AM in Munich, while changing planes, and now in London’s Heathrow at noon, as I wait for the next leg to Chicago and then home to New Orleans. All of the reporters and pundits are as clueless …