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 If there is one thing every community organizer worth her salt learns about quickly from the first day they put feet to the street and knuckles to the wood, is what to say – and maybe even do – about vacant lots and abandoned houses. Neighbors always want the lots cleaned …
Marble Falls A couple of years ago in the wake of ACORN’s Homesavers’ Campaign around predatory rent-to-own schemes, I got a call out of the blue from an Illinois-based owner of various apartment buildings, mostly in the southeastern United States. He was calling in a long shot hope for relief from some tenant …
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 …