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 There is no danger whatsoever that anyone will start calling American football the “beautiful game,” which is sometimes the expression used internationally for what the world sees as football, which we call soccer. Football is earning the moniker of the “deadly” game for its institutionalized violence, mayhem, maiming, racism, and more. I …
Los Angeles There’s a point when people get numb. Not so much used to something as feeling it is inevitable. Reading the news about another school shooting, this time in suburban Houston where more young people were killed, I was most struck by a young woman who was interviewed while sheltered saying, “we wondered when …
New Orleans Getting more experience in hospital emergency and waiting rooms is on no one’s top ten list, but, trust me, you do the time and this comes with the territory. If you can call it luck, it’s not you personally, though the anger and aggravation when it is family is every bit as bad. People …
New Orleans The horrific tragedies of our time call for action that is often unheeded, and it has forced me to think more and more about this puzzle. I have increasingly gravitated to a conclusion that part of the mystery of why this happens is that we inadvertently are allowing ourselves to minimize the impact …
New Orleans I hate to write about contemporary sports, because for readers and listeners around the world it seems so stereotypically, how can I say this, American. We’re seen as sports obsessed, because, well, many of us are sports obsessed. And, if there’s one sport that has taken pride of place above all others, it …