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 We finished our last day of workshops on ACORN organizing in Baltimore in the massive old theater complex that is now CASA’s multi-service worker center in the city. We worked with a mixed group of professional organizers and a number of what I had begun calling “seekers.” These are activists looking …
Philadelphia Community gardens have been a growing part of the urban agriculture scene around the country, so I jumped at an invitation from people in our first Philadelphia workshop to visit one of the most well-known, the Cesar Andreu Iglesias Garden in North Philly. Driving there, I felt like it was one of the …
Philadelphia Like a bad penny, the same question popped up again in the crowd of forty activists and organizers in Philly, just as it had in Easthampton and Cambridge, Massachusetts. People understood that home visits and door knocking are fundamental to the ACORN, but everywhere people are asking if it’s really safe to …