Category: Columns

by Wade Rathke New Orleans   This is complicated, so hang with me, but here is what you need to know. Nursing home workers and other frontline healthcare providers like home health aides, and community home workers…

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…

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…

Memphis       The Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change was established in 1996 by the University of Memphis and the late Benjamin Hooks, former president of the NAACP, originally from the city.  The Hooks Institute has…

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…

New Orleans  Dine’ Butler and I had just finished our presentation about the impact of predatory land installment contracts and hedge funds in the Memphis real estate market at the Hooks Institute event at the University…

Ponce We hadn’t been to Puerto Rico over the last fifteen years. Tickets were too pricey to Mexico and Columbia, so why not see how they have come through the recovery from Hurricane Maria, touch base…

Columbus        An analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis on a panel with us at the Benjamin Hooks Institute at the University of Memphis listened to our remarks about the devastating impact of hedge…

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…

Fort Lauderdale         The voters came out from under the rocks and jumped over the hedgerows to vote for the Conservatives behind weird and wacky Boris Johnson in the recent snap election in Britain.  Labour took a…

“The cap is off of that bottle! We’re now in the land of “no limits,” even in the halls of Congress. Everybody is ready to throw it up against the wall!”

New Orleans      It may be too early to make a definitive list of lessons learned from the off-year elections in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky, but the one thing that seems crystal clear is that the…

San Pedro Sula      We had weathered another difficult annual general meeting of Honduras ACORN midway between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.  It was a difficult three-hour session as the leadership tried to navigate the legal requirements…

New York City      Once the breeze picks up between the canyons formed by New York City skyscrapers, the most common local bird that seems to be floating in the sky when you see something flutter…

New Orleans       Newsday, the big Long Island, New York newspaper, reported on a three-year investigation of real estate practices in this suburb that is well-known as one of the whitest suburbs in America.   Using a…

Oxford   Having breakfast at the University of Memphis before leaving for Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi, we were in a good mood after the Hooks Institute event the previous evening.  We laughed…

Flagstaff    It’s always exciting for me to hear of new journalistic or literary adventures, and all the more exciting to be even a small part of such an undertaking, and I hold onto a fond…

New Orleans      The persistent political canard has been that, sure, you can register young people, but most of them are not going to vote.  The Trump turmoil and the urgency of climate change is overturning…

CEOs say they’re cutting their own pay in solidarity with laid off or hurting workers — only, not really. By Jim Hightower | Other Words September 16, 2020 COVID-19 has been a doubly-deadly disaster for millions…

Ponce, Puerto Rico     At the end of every year we are inundated with the best of this and the top ten of that in music, movies, books, sports, tech, politics, and, well, I guess, almost everywhere. …

New Orleans       The role of the military in governments of any stripe can be a powerful thing, though rarely is this good news. In Asia, the military junta’s role in Myanmar has led to genocide…

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. …

New Orleans       Not only have I believed there is a housing crisis, but I’ve said so repeatedly and at every opportunity I’ve been given.  I’ve also argued that rents and evictions are rising at record…

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…