Category: Columns
Hiring for all
by Wade Rathke December 4, 2020 Little Rock This is interesting. Rather than raise wages, some companies – and labor economists – believe that the other way to increase income would be to expand the…
Make USDA ‘the people’s department’ again
For years, the Department of Agriculture has been run by Big Ag acolytes. Biden has a chance to change that. By Jim Hightower, Jane Kleeb, Deborah Parker December 2, 2020 Years ago, Robert Kennedy noted that…
Hooks Institute for Social Change Looks at Memphis as a Tale of Two Nations: Rich & Poor
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…
Will the rich and top dogs jump the vaccination line?
by Wade Rathke, December 2, 2020 Greenville We’re about to have an interesting national test in the United States, and much of the world, that will determine exactly how unequal our societies really are, or,…
Rathke: Pulling CRA’s teeth when it needs to bite harder
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…
Puerto Rican earthquakes
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…
Rathke: Plundering Black Wealth with Predatory Land Installment Contracts
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…
Surprising UK election outcome – people want to organize
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…
Rathke: Protest by the powerless…congressmen
“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!”
That’s why they call it dope
by Wade Rathke November 30, 2020 New Orleans The years pass by, and some things in fact do change. In the early 1970s, when developing staff policies as the organization grew, there was a somewhat…
Rathke: Lessons from the South for 2020
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…
Rathke: Leaving Honduras the hard way
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…
Rathke: Are single use plastics getting a bad rap?
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…
Rathke: Community reinvestment still matters, why gut it more?
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…
Rathke: “The Organizer” Comes to Ole Miss
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…
Reflections in Flagstaff – Our determined intention to express
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…
Strategic nonviolent conflict
by Wade Rathke November 29, 2020 Pearl River I really, really want to like Erica Chenoweth and her work as a researcher and advocate of “strategic nonviolent conflict,” but I keep having trouble getting all…
Rathke: College Student GOTV Could be Key in Fight against Suppression
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…
Mask protection
A lot of our brothers and sisters are at best flying half-masked. Many seem to believe that the mask is something similar to a chin guard, but I’m unclear what kind of helmet it’s holding up?…
The tragedy of the UAW: When boss culture replaces member culture
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. …
Rathke: Politicizing the military is dangerous
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…
Rathke: The NFL is Out of Control and Football is Failing
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. …
Rathke: If there isn’t a housing crisis, why does it feel like one?
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…
Rathke: Come on up, Mississippi – time for a new constitution!
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…
