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".
Chicago It’s back on the road again, but that doesn’t mean anything is easy in the new world of pandemic travel when we have one foot in the mess, and another foot pretending it’s all over, but we’re good-to-go. Of course, there are mask rules or something similar on everyone in the airport, although, …
Pearl River The second leg of the stool was building a community-based organization in order to block Wal-Mart from building new supercenters. To engage that fight, we build WARN, Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now, as a broad coalition of unions, community and civil rights organizations (including ACORN chapters obviously), environmental groups, and civic associations in …
Pearl River In 2005, I left the SEIU International board to run an organizing project directed at establishing whether we could successfully organize Wal-Mart workers on a number of fronts. This was a joint project involving ACORN, SEIU, AFL-CIO, and UFCW. SEIU was developing the Wal-Mart Watch effort based in Washington, DC, and our effort …