Tag: ACORN
James O’Keefe, Spy Boy
by Wade Rathke October 29, 2020 New Orleans Back when we used to have Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which looking forward to 2021, seems an iffy proposition, one of the treats for early risers…
Police plus shots equal feet on the street
by Wade Rathke October 23, 2020 Little Rock About twenty Georgia State University School of Social Work students watched the film, The Organizer, in Atlanta recently. I zoomed in for a questions-and-answers session after it…
Community Radio on the frontlines
by Wade Rathke October 11, 2020 Pearl River The Grassroots Radio Coalition is a loose confederation of various progressive community radio stations around the country. We got involved with them when, to our surprise, they had…
The Indian government’s attack on nonprofits
by Wade Rathke October 8, 2020 New Orleans In recent weeks the conservative, communalist Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken steps yet again to attack nonprofits, especially those with any extensive ties…
What the New York Times gets right and wrong about ACORN
by Wade Rathke October 7, 2020 New Orleans P.T. Barnum, the famous 19th century impresario and huckster from Bridgeport, Connecticut is often quoted as saying, “Any kind of publicity is good publicity as long as…
Database voter suppression strategy
by Wade Rathke New Orleans We all know it’s bad, and then we find out that it’s even worse than we imagined. Sharing the Voter Purge Project’s recently released report on consistent errors in the voter…
Stopping Purges as Voter Registration Deadlines Hit
by Wade Rathke October 5, 2020 New Orleans We’re on the countdown to the election now. October 5th marks the last voter registration day for the majority of states. The flipping of pages on the…
Marathon protests
by Wade Rathke September 30, 2020 New Orleans There’s something strange and different happening in the world of protests. The average bystander is unlikely to have noticed this, but as a practitioner in this trade,…
Voting on the Working Family Party Ballot Line
by Wade Rathke September 15, 2020 New Orleans New Yorkers are lucky. Not only do they get to vote with relatively little hassle, but they get to send important messages to politicians about where they stand…
Community land trusts could help heal segregated cities and reduce homelessness
Efforts to build wealth for Black Americans could focus on property ownership. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images by Mark Roseland, Arizona State University and Christopher Boone, Arizona State University American cities represent part of the…
Old and New Social Movements
by Wade Rathke Sunday, September 13 Pearl River Every month in the 50th anniversary year of ACORN, I’ve been talking on the radio to veteran organizers and others with unique perspectives on the organization, its history,…
Appraisal hell
by Wade Rathke August 31, 2020 New Orleans Finally, one of the deep, dark secrets of home ownership and home buying is coming to light – the mysterious, highly subjective, largely unregulated world of real…
The dangers of no one looking at info and data
by Wade Rathke August 29, 2020 Pearl River A million years ago a random snip of an article or book or something, I honestly don’t remember, made what seemed to me a profound observation. The…
Laura shows Lake Charles no love
by Wade Rathke Thursday, August 27, 2020 Pearl River I’m fifteen feet above dirt looking out the window at the water that has risen up from the bayou a few miles from the Pearl River…
Testing works, but it takes organizing and resources
by Wade Rathke August 22 Pearl River If there’s any consensus about dealing with Covid-19, it involves the critical role of testing right now, and a vaccine down the line. Testing allows all of us and…
Convention lite without any bite
by Wade Rathke New Orleans I actually know a lot about the national political conventions, both Republican and Democratic. ACORN was well represented every four years from the 1978 Memphis midterm under President Carter to…
Microfinance is now a mega-mess
by Wade Rathke New Orleans A little less than a decade ago, in mid-2011, ACORN International stirred up a bit of a hornets’ nest by opposing the international development consensus in a series of reports we…
The Disappearing Organizing Art: Tagging
by Wade Rathke Pearl River Those were the days! As part of the ongoing 50th anniversary celebration of ACORN this year, different veterans have joined me on Wade’s World to share their memories and reminisce…
Change is Messy
by Wade Rathke Little Rock One takeaway from the memorials to civil rights leader and organizer, Congressman John Lewis, has been the repeated invocation of the violence that was the handmaiden of the struggle. Martin…
Driving through the Pandemic with Antifa
by Wade Rathke Decatur, Texas In the predawn, the three-week long veteran night clerk at the Motel 6 along Highway 287 in Decatur, Texas north of Dallas confirmed, “it’s rough out here.” Looking for a…
City amenities and the prices paid for them
Pagosa Springs In Durango, Colorado, we felt like we had struck gold, having hauled out bikes across Texas and New Mexico. We stumbled, almost literally, onto a bike trail that had seemingly been recently completed…
New Communities and community land trusts
by Wade Rathke Greenville Reading in Harper’s about New Communities farming land trust in Georgia celebrating the 50th anniversary since its founding, my memory is playing tricks on me. I keep thinking that I met…
Manic media nightmares
by Wade Rathke New Orleans Let me be honest. We can hardly keep our primary Facebook account and website up to date. We gave up on Twitter long ago and have sworn it off until…
ACORN is 50
by Wade Rathke New Orleans Celebrating a 50th anniversary feels strange on a Zoom call, but that doesn’t make it feel any less of an accomplishment. As the clock passed midnight in India, the farthest extent…
