Tag: Rathke
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…
Video Protection
New Orleans There’s a very clear lesson emerging from all the news these days: keep your cellphone handy and learn how to press video record. It might not save your life, but it might bring…
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…
Getting OSHA on the job
by Wade Rathke Pearl River If there were ever a time that workers needed to feel safe on the job, it’s got to be now in the middle of a pandemic. Even with the lifting…
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…
Time to hit the streets again
by Wade Rathke New Orleans In the United States all states are now opened with different levels of restrictions and rules. While businesses try to lead people back into malls and restaurants, many of us,…
W.H.O, What, When, How?
New Orleans Whoever thought that global diplomacy was not child’s play? They have huge lessons to learn from President Trump, who is proving every day in every way that the world is simply his schoolyard…
Testing for coronavirus
New Orleans Stage one reopening in New Orleans this weekend was a snoozer, and hardly different from the previous two solid months of stay-at-home orders and restrictions. The new requirements issued by the governor and hardened…
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…
Pandemic is pushing Wall Street suburbs and home garden space
by Wade Rathke New Orleans Rumor or reality? I wasn’t sure. My daughter had heard from a real estate agent who specializes in New Orleans historic districts like the French Quarter, Marigny, Bywater, and elsewhere…
Will masks become the new class and race divide?
New Orleans It is no secret that opening versus stay-at-home from state to state and nationally has now, somewhat amazingly, but unsurprisingly as pandemic combines with polarization in the United States, become equally politicized. Having recently…
The robots are coming and jobs are disappearing
Pearl River We all wonder what the world of life and work is going to look like at the end of this 2020 Great Depression under the helm of the modern-day Herbert Hoover. Just as an…
Home work
Little Rock There is talk everywhere about “re-opening.” When? How? The “new” normal is a question on everyone’s mind. I find it interesting and curious how much you hear about people working from home. The…
Mississippi’s Politicians and Powerful are the Real Welfare Queens
by Wade Rathke Greenville, Mississippi In the ongoing conservative war against the poor, welfare or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) spending was converted to a block grant program, allowing states, purportedly, to design their own…
Guns and masks – outlaw turnabout
New Orleans It used to be that masks and guns were a bad combination that spoke of trouble with capital letters. Until recently, I would quip that if you were trying to raise money from…
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…
Workers and bosses are caught in a reopening Catch-22
Pearl River In the United States when dealing with a program that is touted as a lifesaver for what will likely be fifty million unemployed workers and another program that is designed, ostensibly, to help…
Many lessons in unemployment benefits meltdown
Pearl River Losing your job through layoffs or even temporarily in a furlough is a terrible thing. For years, state unemployment divisions, under the brutal thumbs of corporate dominated conservative legislatures and governors have seen it…
