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 There’s no better argument for the advantage of in-person meetings rather than Zoom world than our ongoing efforts to figure out a common language over recent months about retrofit campaigns. Visiting with our organizers, first in Lyon, where there had been major breakthroughs, and then in Grenoble, where Adrien Roux, the Alliance …
New Orleans Guilty as charged! I have found myself whining from time to time recently about the circuitous path that young people in the so-called Generation Z were taking into – and out of – organizing. Organizers are often in transition but earlier in this second pandemic year I found myself kvetching to …
Houston At 4:30 AM in the morning, as we pulled up to my son Chaco’s house, he turned to me and said, “We’re not doing this again!” He was right. It was crazy to bolt over, hell for leather, to Houston from New Orleans in time to see the first game of the World …
Little Rock Watching from a distance the back and forth of internal push and shove within the Democratic caucus in Congress in both the House and Senate is a negotiations case study, no matter how painful the process. In labor negotiations this is pejoratively called, “bargaining with yourself,” meaning that you are having to …
Atlanta There’s no question that Bill Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda, along with their foundation have, as the saying goes, “more money than God.” It seems that Mr. Gates sometimes gets confused on whether it’s just about the money or that he can act like his own little version of a god. The news of the world …