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".
Pearl River I’ve always said about organizing that the “beginnings prejudice the ends.” Meaning simply, how you start things – like an organization – will have an immense impact on what that organization is ever able to do. If you begin as a tenants’ group, it’s unlikely that you will somehow morph into a …
Pearl River In 1984, ACORN organized what we called “Reagan Ranches” all over the country, recalling the famous Hoovervilles, to protest Reagan economic policies impacting our membership. In a similar “ranch”, organized along the trickle of a river in Dallas during the Republican national convention, we slept and marched under a banner that proclaimed, …
New Orleans I get emails from a coalition called One Fair Wage, largely because our now shuttered Fair Grinds Coffeehouses were members of ROC, the Restaurant Opportunity Centers, which drives that alliance. In a recent bulletin they were heralding a front-page article in the New York Times and taking credit for feeding the …