Author: Wade Rathke Meteor Columnist
Prison everywhere around you
by Wade Rathke October 10, 2020 Pearl River Talking to Victoria Law on Wade’s World about the book, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, that she co-authored with Maya Schenwar,…
Domestic Insurrection!?!
by Wade Rathke October 9, 2020 New Orleans Whoa, you crazy gunsels! Y’all have absolutely crossed a line here! Planning to kidnap a governor? Are y’all out of your freaking minds? This was really the news…
The Indian government’s attack on nonprofits
by Wade Rathke October 8, 2020 New Orleans In recent weeks the conservative, communalist Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken steps yet again to attack nonprofits, especially those with any extensive ties…
What the New York Times gets right and wrong about ACORN
by Wade Rathke October 7, 2020 New Orleans P.T. Barnum, the famous 19th century impresario and huckster from Bridgeport, Connecticut is often quoted as saying, “Any kind of publicity is good publicity as long as…
Database voter suppression strategy
by Wade Rathke New Orleans We all know it’s bad, and then we find out that it’s even worse than we imagined. Sharing the Voter Purge Project’s recently released report on consistent errors in the voter…
Stopping Purges as Voter Registration Deadlines Hit
by Wade Rathke October 5, 2020 New Orleans We’re on the countdown to the election now. October 5th marks the last voter registration day for the majority of states. The flipping of pages on the…
White Christian Privilege
by Wade Rathke October 3, 2020 Atlanta As always, there are things you know, things you think you know, and then the dreaded assumptions that mask as both, but are neither. It’s those assumptions that…
The Trumps go viral
by Wade Rathke October 2, 2020 Atlanta You can’t make this stuff up! What an unbelievable year and election season hammered by both the economic depression and the pandemic. And, now, darned if the White House…
Memories and milestones
by Wade Rathke October 4, 2020 Pearl River Tenants all over the world are facing a huge crisis as the dual scourges of the pandemic and economic depression confront them daily. In some industrialized countries, eviction…
Donnybrook debate
by Wade Rathke October 1, 2020 Atlanta What a fiasco! This was no debate. This was a barnyard brawl. Once it was over the question was not whether Joe Biden had won, but how much…
Marathon protests
by Wade Rathke September 30, 2020 New Orleans There’s something strange and different happening in the world of protests. The average bystander is unlikely to have noticed this, but as a practitioner in this trade,…
Getting the lead out
by Wade Rathke September 29, 2020 New Orleans We have to take progress where we can get it in these dark days at perhaps the tail end of the Trump administration. There are scores of…
Trump life: death, yes, taxes, no!
by Wade Rathke September 28, 2020 New Orleans I had an elementary school teacher whose constant rejoinder was that “the only thing certain in life was death and taxes.” At a tender age, neither absolute…
Conspiracies cut both ways in reducing the vote
by Wade Rathke September 27, 2020 Pearl River The gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson used to have a patented expression as he wrote about everything from Las Vegas to political conventions. He would write, “…and then…
Cruel and usual punishment for prisoners
by Wade Rathke September 26, 2020 Pearl River Just when you might think things can’t get any worse, it turns out you don’t know half of it. At least, that’s how I felt visiting with Professor…
The vultures are circling the housing market
by Wade Rathke September 21, 2020 New Orleans Following right behind the crisis that tenants are facing with the eviction situation clouded in different courts and interpretations and no stimulus in the offing, mortgage holders…
The campaign to ban tear gas
by Wade Rathke September 20, 2020 Pearl River We’ve talked about Bjorn Skogquist before, but this time we wanted to catch up with him and the Ban Tear Gas Campaign in more detail on Wade’s…
Workers demanding pandemic protection
by Wade Rathke September 18, 2020 New Orleans Local 100 United Labor Unions members continue in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas to speak up and confront their employers, both public and private, about the inadequate health…
Firing workers for off-the-job protests
by Wade Rathke September 17, 2020 New Orleans A small notice in an email caught my eye. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) attorney in a newly released guidance letter wanted to make sure that…
CDC’s eviction ban, please and maybe
by Wade Rathke September 16, 2020 New Orleans I didn’t want to be right on this, but from any reading of the Center for Disease Control’s federal eviction ban, it was clear that it was going…
Voting on the Working Family Party Ballot Line
by Wade Rathke September 15, 2020 New Orleans New Yorkers are lucky. Not only do they get to vote with relatively little hassle, but they get to send important messages to politicians about where they stand…
Protecting, sharing, and hiding behind private health data
by Wade Rathke September 14, 2020 New Orleans Most of us think our own health is our business, that is until we find out it is big business, and that everyone wants to make it…
Old and New Social Movements
by Wade Rathke Sunday, September 13 Pearl River Every month in the 50th anniversary year of ACORN, I’ve been talking on the radio to veteran organizers and others with unique perspectives on the organization, its history,…
Where’s the health and safety plan?
by Wade Rathke Friday, September 11, 2020 New Orleans Leaders and members of Local 100 United Labor Unions finally had enough of working on the frontlines without proper protection against the coronavirus in nursing homes, supported…
