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 Storms around Labor Day get my full attention. Betsy hit hard in the fall of 1965 right after school began and took more than a week to get everything back in gear. Katrina in 2005 hit at the end of August and decimated the city of New Orleans in what is now …
Newark An 8.3 level earthquake hit Chile in recent days. The quake lasted three minutes. The tsunami carried boats from the port onto city streets along the coast. One million people were evacuated. Over 100,000 continue not to have electricity. Many are displaced. Amazingly, the death count has been relatively minor for such a tragedy …
New Orleans The typhoon that devastated large parts of the Philippines, in a Hurricane Katrina like disaster many are seeing as part of what we can expect regularly in the future from climate change, is inspiring protests by poor countries at the UN Climate Change Conference and some corporate social responsibility, but, sadly nowhere near enough, …
New Orleans Hurricane Sandy was tragic in every way that one can imagine, but it was also tragic in the same way that all “acts of god” reduce the scale of mankind’s hand in the environment as inconsequential in the face of nature. In the wake of even larger devastation from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and …
Wade Rathke discusses similarities between Katrina rebuilding in New Orleans and rebuilding efforts of Springfield, Massachusetts tornadoes of 2011 with labor leaders and other activists at the Pioneer Valley AFL-CIO offices in Springfield on June 1st, 2012.