Category: Community organizing
How deep canvassing by progressives can change rural politics in the US
In North Carolina, progressive activists reach out to rural voters as an overlooked segment of the electorate. by Amanda Abrams, Yes! Magazine November 24, 2021 It’s Nov. 1, and Precious Cogwell is canvassing in Alamance County,…
Highlander and Horton
by Wade Rathke May 8, 2021 New Orleans It was fun talking to Stephen Preskill about his new book, Education in Black and White: Myles Horton and the Highlander Center’s Vision for Social Justice, on…
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…
Anne Fenney
by Wade Rathke February 8, 2021 Pearl River I didn’t know Anne Fenney, but I stayed in her house. I’m not sure how that counts in degrees of separation, but I would mark it as pretty…
Organizing in the Year of the Plague
by Wade Rathke January 28, 2021 New Orleans The Year End / Year Begin meeting is a tradition and vital piece of planning, reflection, and celebration with our ACORN family of organizations. This one was…
Celebrate, but keep it real, here come the Congressional Mod Squad
by Wade Rathke Wednesday, January 6, 2021 New Orleans Victories have a thousand fathers and defeats are orphan children, or something like that. ACORN, the Voter Purge Project, and Labor Neighbor are glad to count…
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…
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: 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…
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…
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: 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…
Rathke: Surging voter registration in the United Kingdom
New Orleans Here’s an interesting voter registration story, but it’s not in the United States, but the United Kingdom. I had been hearing about this phenomenon for weeks whenever I spoke with our organizers in…
Rathke: Mass protests are back – what are we waiting for?
New Orleans Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? If you can make it past the daily Trump wailing wall, there’s one report after another of protests. Not some piddling ten- or twenty-person thing, though there’s…
Rathke: Faking the Voter Strategy
New Orleans Democracy is under assault everywhere it seems, and, no, I’m not just taking about the White House. Russia is busy interfering with elections in, are you ready for this, Madagascar. How did this…
Rathke: Liberal Affordable Housing Conundrums
New Orleans Just maybe there is beginning to be an emerging consensus in the United States, joining many other countries around the world, that there is in fact an affordable housing crisis in the country. Perhaps…
Rathke: Spewing Cancer Chemicals on Louisiana’s Death Alley
New Orleans A tip from a friend sent me to a seat on the back row of a lecture hall at the Tulane Law School to listen to a star-studded panel assembled on the topic…
Rathke: Strong towns: Investing in old, lower-value neighborhoods, not more infrastructure
New Orleans On the sometimes lonely march to try to advance and rebuild low-and-moderate income communities, it’s always a welcome relief to stumble on fellow travelers moving on much the same pathway. At least that’s…
Rathke: Have Doctors and Hospitals Joined Banks as Fraudsters?
New York City It’s the holiday season when old time movies used to give us hope that miracles might happen. Santa might climb down from the chimney, if you had a chimney anymore. There were…
