WADE RATHKE is the founder of ACORN, Chief Organizer at ACORN International, and Author of "Citizen Wealth", "Global Grassroots", and "The Battle for the 9th Ward".
Greenville, Mississippi In the ongoing conservative war against the poor, welfare or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) spending was converted to a block grant program, allowing states, purportedly, to design their own best practices and programs. In many ideologically based, conservative dominated southern and up-north states, block grants allowed them to reduce or curtail …
Amsterdam If Parchman Prison in the fertile Mississippi River delta of Sunflower County is in the news, it means there’s bad news, never good news. Parchman is the only men’s state prison in Mississippi. Parchman is part of the Leadbelly story. Parchman was the hellhole where civil rights and Freedom Riders were taken. Parchman is …
Little Rock On the Peoples’ Daily News that I do for the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement (AM/FM) and all of our stations, I scrounge the daily papers for factoids and news bits that might interest our listeners and give them a brief sense of the fine hands that are pulling the strings behind current events. …
New Orleans There are few lobbies as powerful as the nursing home owners’ groups in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. All of which makes the intervention of federal rules extending some of the same accountability standards that hospitals now face, welcome news. The fact that the penalties go right to their pocketbooks is even better …
New Orleans The midterm elections in the United States are almost over, but there’s one race still pending. It’s a longshot, but cries out for people of conscience, regardless of their politics, to take a stand and be counted. There’s a cry for help, but it’s unclear how many will hear it. Mississippi to …