Category: Columns
Remembering fresh eyes to horrible situations
by Wade Rathke April 30, 2021 New Orleans – We were lucky on our work to launch the ACORN Tenants Union in Atlanta to have a bunch of serious and committed young apprentice organizers with us…
A hard look at the Amazon Bessemer union election – Part I
by Wade Rathke April 10, 2021 Pearl River The results of the union election at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are finally tallied and the scorecard by the numbers was 1798 voting NO to be…
A Hard Look at the Amazon Bessemer Union Election – Part II
by Wade Rathke April 11, 2021 Pearl River There’s no way to put sugar in your coffee. The union’s loss at Amazon is deeply disappointing. A victory would have been a huge blast of wind…
Restoring voting rights to former felons
by Wade Rathke March 17, 2021 New Orleans In these times when a number of states are trying to curtail voting rights for their citizens, the governor of Virginia made some news by speeding…
Weak cybersecurity puts all at risk
by Wade Rathke March 16, 2021 New Orleans If you are lucky, maybe you have a bit of savings for your retirement, like a 401(k) plan. Maybe if you are really lucky, you worked for…
Clogged pipeline for minority and women-owned businesses
by Wade Rathke March 15, 2021 Pearl River If the Jeffersonian story of America was the small yeoman farmer, the contemporary story of America is often of small businesses. These are the main streets…
Stop Stacey: We don’t think so
by Abby Zimet, Further columnist March 9, 2021 Almost 60 years later, the fight goes on. Georgia’s ” horror” of a new voter suppression law, dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0” and passed the day after Bloody Sunday,…
3/11 Pandemic Anniversary
by Wade Rathke March 11, 2021 New Orleans 9/11 has been a date fixed on the mental calendar of Americans for what will be twenty years this September of 2021. It is worth wondering whether…
Grand Old Party (GOP) vs. Party of Trump (POT)
by Wade Rathke March 10, 2021 New Orleans No matter what, it seems that when we are talking about Trump, it’s all about the money. In the latest stop on his revenge tour, his lawyers…
No energy regulation equals rip-offs
by Wade Rathke March 9, 2021 New Orleans Picture this, if you will. The crippled power grid in Texas triggered by the polar vortex bringing freezing temperatures and snow, left millions without power and others…
Shifting Sands on Police Tactics
by Wade Rathke March 8, 2021 New Orleans In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, we heard from a former mayor and activist in the area. He wanted to do…
Politicians face off over ESG investing
by Wade Rathke Friday, March 5, 2021 New Orleans Free marketeers are caught in a crisis of contradictions. They want to pretend that market forces exist independent of any interference from government or other factors,…
Housing shortages and rental squeezes
by Wade Rathke March 4, 2021 New Orleans One story after another in the mainstream media is now focusing on the shortage of homes for sale in city after city. The curious American dream of…
President Biden says, “Join the union!”
by Wade Rathke March 2, 2021 New Orleans John Lewis of the United Mineworkers Union and one of the founders of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO behind the hyphen in the AFL-CIO, famously…
No venues, no sales, no money
by Wade Rathke March 1, 2021 New Orleans One week, we have the southern end of the polar vortex. The next week, it’s spring, while I’m still hacking away at freeze-damaged night-blooming jasmine, bougainvillea, and the…
Republican resistance, state by state
by Wade Rathke February 26, 2021 Little Rock After four years of Twitter torture, I understand how people seem to be following every little cough and sneeze in Washington these days, crossing their fingers for…
Congress must fight for a better democracy and pass the For the People Act
Republicans and Democratic voters agree: We need to make sure leaders actually represent “we the people.” by Ben Jealous Thursday, February 25, 2021 More than 230 years ago, the founders of the United States enshrined their…
Wilbur Mills sunk in the Tidal Basin
by Wade Rathke February 25, 2021 Little Rock. Wilbur Mills moved me to Arkansas in 1970. He didn’t reach out and offer me a job to work for him or anything like that. Quite the opposite….
Georgia reveals the Trump Tribute
by Wade Rathke February 24, 2021 Atlanta Big news in Atlanta was the seeming flipflop by former Senator David Perdue on his commitment to run in two years to reclaim the seat he recently lost…
Amazing Grace for 500,000 Covid dead
by Wade Rathke February 23, 2021 Atlanta I was driving in what I hoped was post-rush hour traffic in Atlanta after 6pm. I had the local public radio station on, which was interrupted by an…
One Hundred Years
by Wade Rathke February 22, 2021 Atlanta In my family we always knew when George Washington’s birthday hit the calendar. It would be February 22nd. Before Abraham Lincoln on February 12th and Washington on the…
Stop Manchin and Sinema from imitating Jim Crow Dixiecrats and letting the filibuster block Civil Rights and Voting Rights
Sinema’s and Manchin’s decisions may well determine whether America remains a democracy or whether it’s indefinitely distorted by minority rule. by Miles Mogulescu Friday, February 20, 2021 “You want to honor John [Lewis]? Let’s honor him…
Father Vincent O’ Connell deserves better than a smear
by Wade Rathke Thursday, February 18, 2021 New Orleans This was random. A friend and comrade got it in her mind to memorialize Father Vinnie O’Connell, one of the rare and now vanished labor priests,…
Reclaiming our common home: expand the commons to include everything we need
Ecological civilization is based on the consciousness that we are part of the Earth, not her masters, conquerors, or owners. by Vandana Shiva Thursday, February 18, 2021 The path to an ecological civilization is paved by…
