Category: Rathke: Chief Organizer Report
The paradox of Trump support
New Orleans There was a time when families followed a careful rule. When gathering with the blood, avoid talking about religion or politics. Only part of that rule still holds, as America becomes more and…
There’s no Duck-and-Cover with automated warfare
Kansas City I can still remember my third grade teacher walking us through the duck-and-cover exercise and announcing as we prepared to march to the corner single file that she would be standing on the…
The end of automobiles and locals dominating airports
Kansas City Flying in and out of the Kansas City International airport is like a snapshot back in another time, more specifically a time when automobiles and the convenience of local customers dominated planning and performance….
Weingarten Rights, the MLBPA, and the Houston Astros
New Orleans We don’t have a major league baseball team in New Orleans. Our closest team is a bit more than five hours away in Houston. In the vast majority of the last several decades,…
Housing crisis forcing rich cities to get smaller
New Orleans A reporter, Jed Kolko, with the New York Times seems to be connecting the dots in an interesting and important way. In a recent article about some of the unintended consequences of geographic…
Deliberate governmental opaqueness and obfuscation
New Orleans It’s one thing to feel powerless in the face of government like the Chinese ophthalmologist who died of the coronavirus after being reprimanded for warning colleagues in his hospital. Poignantly, he said, “every…
The Billionaire and Right-Wing’s racist lies about Redlining
New Orleans With the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency leading the way to gut the Community Reinvestment Act along with some other federal regulators, the last thing we should be doing is having to…
Field testing voter purges and “drops”
Columbus As the Voter Purge Project moves forward, we are now analyzing the voter files on more than a dozen states on our way to double that number in coming weeks, many of them include the…
The surprising ineptness of liberals and moderates
Houston Let me start by saying, I have mixed feelings about Senator Bernie Sanders as a candidate for President, not on ideological grounds and not personal to him. I’m just not sure that I’ve seen the…
Foundations as “extensions” of corporate reach
New Orleans Foundations created by corporations and the superrich are multi-headed monster of tax havens and public relations that combine to whitewash a story for the people down below that makes us swallow rather than spit. …
Are big-time CEOs finally facing justice?
New Orleans Ok, I’ll admit right off the bat that it’s not a movement. It might not even be a trend, but perhaps we could call it a tendency. I’m talking about the fact that…
Ohio battles to protect the vote
Columbus Twenty-five people made their way into the Vanderelli Room in Columbus. The art, performance, and all-around community space in the Franklinton neighborhood of the city near downtown had been offered to TrustVote and the Columbus…
Don’t mourn, hit the doors!
New Orleans What a week! It was pretty much a full-on-Trump-arade! Rarely have we read or heard so many pundits wringing their hands and tearing their hair since they were forced to walk-back the headlines…
Running from race is hard in the presidential race
New Orleans It’s Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, so what better time to talk about the still unresolved, raw issues around race that continue more than 150 years after his death. Evidence abounds that you can’t run…
Cooperatives need to get broadband to the countryside
New Orleans How can I say this plainly? Electric cooperatives have become increasingly less cooperative, and, frankly, not even all that electric. What was a huge breakthrough in taking electricity the last mile into rural…
Government shouldn’t play gotcha on voting and benefits
New Orleans Talking to a reporter from Politico about voter purges and why there needed to be supplemental efforts other than failing to answer a letter in the US Mail to determine whether a voter…
Choking on the Doughnut Hole: Medicare Part D disasters
Little Rock Driving through Mississippi back and forth on my regular route from New Orleans to Greenville to Little Rock and then back again, when I hit the long rural stretches since we belong to the…
Reading the tea leaves in the Iowa disaster
New Orleans The best thing to come out of the Iowa caucus disaster is the delay, which continues even now, because it prevents preemptive determination of a winner until the full totals are known, rather…
Trump is right – the Democrats are a hot mess
Greenville It’s like the line about a broken clock is still right two times a day. President Trump is right that the Democrats look like the gang that can’t shoot straight and might not be competent enough…
What’s the matter with Iowa?
New Orleans I’m not one of the political junkies that stays up late on the night of the Iowa caucus to see the results. Forty years ago, ACORN organized at the Iowa caucuses. I’ve followed them…
Sorting out social and other media
New Orleans On the last day of the ACORN family’s North American Year End / Year Begin meeting several of the workshops and group discussions centered on how to do a better job with social…
Tenants and communities organizing in Ireland
Dublin A change in plans pushed Tunisia off of my plane ticket and found me jumping instead from Manchester, England, to Dublin, Ireland, to meet with the officers of ACORN’s newest affiliate, CATU-Ireland or Communities and…
Taking on the buses in England
Sheffield ACORN in the United Kingdom is known largely as the ACORN Tenants’ Union, and no matter where we have organized, the affordable housing crisis has come to the forefront even though there is a long…
The cynicism of emergency aid for Puerto Rico
Newark There seem to be no limits to the vengeful pettiness of President Trump and his administration. Nowhere is that clearer than looking at the deliberate obstacles placed in the way of Puerto Rico’s recovery –…
