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".
Marble Falls Talking to NYU Professor Natasha Iskander on Wade’s World and reading her new book, Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond, forces us to confront the fact that we don’t think enough about skills. Employers, educators and politicians constantly promote more effort and programs to increase skills. We all talk about …
New Orleans We have an extended family WhatsApp group, as many families have. These things are a hodgepodge of advice and, usually, good will, attempts at humor, sports talk, birthday greetings, atta-boys, and occasional light controversy. Did I mention a LOT of advice! It’s a great thing, especially for the brothers and siters with children and outlaws like …
Marble Falls Vacation is a good time to try and do some reading. I don’t say catch-up with my reading, because there’s no such thing. We’re always reading. There’s always more to read. Reading almost defines the Sisyphean project of constantly pushing up the hill and never getting there. I’m actually good with that. It’s the journey more than the destination that …
New Orleans We can’t seem to get Congress to read the memo and increase the federal minimum wage, but in almost every other way, workers’ wages seem on the rise, and the signs are everywhere. Kellogg workers after two months on strike still voted down a tentative, five-year contract with the company. Not enough money with their …
Little Rock Tip O’Neil, the iconic old Boston pol, and former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, once famously expressed the dicta, “all politics are local.” Even as the modern world is increasingly knitted together, that observation continues to hold in many areas. What may be changing is not the fact that all politics are local, but …