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".
Philadelphia Like a bad penny, the same question popped up again in the crowd of forty activists and organizers in Philly, just as it had in Easthampton and Cambridge, Massachusetts. People understood that home visits and door knocking are fundamental to the ACORN, but everywhere people are asking if it’s really safe to …
Boston I’ve been here before. A friend reminded me that my last visit was perhaps five years ago; pre-pandemic, as we now say. Massachusetts is no stranger to me, even before my last stop. My professional organizing began in Springfield in western Massachusetts and then in Boston and around the state before I …
Easthampton, MA There’s no better evidence that we live in different worlds than the experience of visiting with organizers and activists in western Massachusetts searching for ways to deal with community and tenant issues and staying with friends and hearing about the microaggressions and their impact on local and school politics, and then reading …