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".
Washington In the 1960s, citizen participation seemed to be coming to low-and-moderate income communities with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. Maximum feasible participation was a baseline requirement for local community action programs. In CAPs, one-third of the seats had to come from the lower income constituency, ostensibly being served by the programs. …
New Orleans There’s nothing like federal immigration officials doing mass arrest roundups in workplaces, especially in urban America, to get everyone out in the streets. What Trump and his mad dog aide, Stephen Miller, don’t understand is how embedded immigrants, undocumented and not, are in American communities, workplaces, and families. These are not …
New Orleans A political science professor at NYU, Adam Przeworski, has a disturbing theory about democracies, their stability, and their sustainability, which has gained increasing prominence. If he’s right, and there’s a lot of evidence that he’s got a point, even if he’s a bit off the mark, then none of us can …