Tag: ACORN
Organizing obstacles come with online and at-home work
by Wade Rathke New Orleans Speaking as an organizer, be careful what you wish for, if you’re hoping the pandemic means more online work and work from home, because it is easy to see even…
Mutual aid and governmental responsibility
by Wade Rathke New Orleans Mutual aid or solidarity work has long been a feature of political activity in times of crisis and often at all times. ACORN affiliates around the world have been involved…
Foretelling labor’s future in the cloudy crystal ball
Pearl River Roughly 39 million Americans have applied for unemployment, not even counting gig and self-employed workers, workers who have abandoned job search, or couldn’t access the benefits, which means real unemployment is over 50…
A passion for equality
by Wade Rathke Pearl River The other day I read a belated obituary on Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Nick Kotz. He had passed away at 87 on his cattle farm in Virginia of a freak accident…
Making reality from fiction: underground soccer leagues
Pearl River Remember way back in another lifetime, pre-pandemic, before the coronavirus global killer wave? It seems years ago, but it was only last summer that ACORN’s French affiliate, Alliance Citoyenne, gained huge attention throughout…
Putting the fist on the wood again
by Wade Rathke Pearl River The sports pages are full of discussion about whether or not baseball players will be putting the wood on the ball soon in huge, empty parks, or whether basketball players…
Riding the Zoom to link global voices for governance
by Wade Ratke New Orleans I witnessed something of a miracle yesterday as thirty leaders and staff from more than fifteen ACORN affiliates were successfully able to hold a board meeting for two hours on Zoom….
Why ACORN and the cartels and not the state?
New Orleans I had to do a doubletake. What in the world? There were pictures of armed men with masks giving out food and protective gear in Mexican barrios. Another picture, eerily like the ones…
Masks and food for the people
by Wade Rathke May 14 Pearl River ACORN and its affiliates are direct action, mass-based organizations. Some now ask, how do we explain the fact that we also, especially now, deliver what many would only expect…
Google rolls the sidewalk up in Toronto
by Wade Rathke New Orleans The old saying was always that “pride cometh before the fall.” In the case of Alphabet-Google’s Sidewalk visions of grandeur, it turns out pride — and arrogance –came from the…
Poor People’s Campaign: We refuse to allow politicians and big corporations to balance state budgets by denying rights
Leaders are using the lie of scarcity to place the burden of the crisis on the poor while billionaires are becoming even richer and large corporations are getting bailouts. by Rev Dr Liz Theoharis Friday, May…
Why can’t we fix payday lending?
Pearl River We’ve been fighting payday lending for over fifteen years in Canada with some success as well a truckload of frustration. The issue has been in our sights for several decades in the United…
Thinking of workers in the time of pandemic on the eve of May Day 2020
by Wade Rathke New Orleans Today, I’m sharing a guest piece that I contributed to the Working-Class Perspectives series on the even of May Day and during a difficult time for workers around the world….
President Trump, protest organizer and civil disobedience advocate
New Orleans Here during our collective field test for the “end times,” we are all learning new and different ways to relate, individually and collectively. In the absence of mass protest actions, ACORN and other groups…
Ripple effects on remittances
New Orleans One thing leads to another. Easy to say, but hard to endure, especially when it comes to the economic damage that keeps spreading from the pandemic shutdowns. This is the real trickledown economics,…
Real life, real tragedies in the pandemic
Pearl River Trump is in trouble, and it’s getting worse. Reportedly, top Republicans and their political strategists are trying to tell him that his daily press meanderings are hurting him, and that he needs to step…
Defanging community organizing, what’s in a job title?
Pearl River There’s something happening to community organizing, and it’s not a good thing. The job is being expropriated and defanged of its critical content and its bottom-up push for peoples’ power by corporate and…
The value of collective experience
New Orleans A couple of random comments have gotten me thinking a bit about the post-coronavirus world. One thing that stuck with me was a young man’s take on hoarding in New York City that was…
Food crisis growing in Honduras cities
A Sunday call with ACORN Honduras organizers brought the harrowing issue of food insecurity home to me with a vengeance. New Orleans Central America doesn’t get the press on the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s as…
From street demos to solidarity work ACORN members are in the community
Pearl River What do mass-based organizations and social movements do when their tactics of mass action, disruption, and street protests are impossible due to stay-at-home orders and social distancing? Do collective actions simply devolve into…
Stop evictions and freeze rents
Pearl River The ACORN Union in England has launched a petition in the wake of the coronavirus that has already gained 3000 signatures and rising. As reported in The Independent The ACORN union, which supports tenants,…
Delivery driver unions and resistance are growing
New Orleans Traveling in other cities both in the United States and around the world, it sometimes seems like food delivery workers are everywhere on either scooters or bicycles. The soft box on their backs…
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…
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…
