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".
New Orleans Dollar stores are now literally everywhere. How can you miss them, especially in rural and lower-income areas? It’s not easy. There are 18,000 Dollar Generals, 16,162 Dollar Trees, and they own another 8,200 Family Dollars. That’s 42,362 stores, and they’re still opening new ones as often as they can. Driving an …
Marble Falls Along with millions of other people, I read with some interest Malcolm Gladwell’s early books The Tipping Point and Blink. I’ve certainly read his pieces in The New Yorker, where he is one of their staff writers, and now seems to mostly publish pieces as trial runs for future books, …
Marble Falls Working with essential workers and their struggles over the last several years makes me hope that the recognition of the critical dependence we all have on them is more permanent than the pandemic. Unfortunately, I’m a realist, so I recognize how quickly people forget and try to put it all …