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 While posting a blog to Facebook on what we have called “maximum eligible participation” in a riff on the old War on Poverty line about “maximum feasible participation” of the poor, I found myself calling for a “mass enrollment campaign.” I of course in my excitement mistyped that exhortation as “pass enrollment …
Pearl River Hancock County is not the poorest county in Mississippi by a long shot. My mother was born and raised in Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta. The poverty rate there is over 38%, more than twice the 17.3% rate along the Pearl River where I’m sitting now. The 11.3% US poverty rate …
New Orleans Is poverty up, down, or about the same? No one seems to know, but we’ll still pretend they care about the answer. Regardless, the question remains as experts, policymakers, and politicians continue to debate the numbers, while people who in fact ARE the numbers, continue to be desperately and disappointingly poor …