Wade Rathke:

Pearl River     Ok, so “bad judgement” is his middle name, but we’ve moving from tragedy to pathos when we read and watch President Trump go through his stupefying descent.   He clearly has lost touch with reality.  Since he brought it on himself, there’s no way to feel sorry for him, compared to how we feel […]

Pearl River     Not long ago we argued here that there needed to be some special praise for the quick action of people who grabbed smartphones or cameras to document police brutality and had the courage to take a stand for justice.  There are some other behind the scenes folks, some of whom we know, and […]

Pearl River     In organizing unions, captive audience meetings are the scourge of organizing drives.  The employers have the right to make the meetings mandatory in order to deliver their anti-union screeds, but union representatives are unable to attend.  Organizers spend hours preparing committee members and union activists how to takeover these meetings so that they […]

Little Rock       There’s nothing new about states, particularly blood-red states, trying to suppress the vote.  The Republican strategy continues to be not to change one iota in their far right, white grievance, servant to the rich appeal, but to bear down until their last voters are gone.  The president is setting the tone, and local […]

Little Rock       The old saying that “arrogance comes before the fall,” doesn’t set the clock on when it happens, just the inevitability.  Facebook, the social media giant and communication hub for the world, seems finally on the verge of reading the time correctly, after ignoring the issues and the voices of concern and protest for […]

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 Charles Sherrod or at least was in a meeting at the same time with him, but I can’t place the time or occasion, […]

New Orleans        As a Nikole Hannah-Jones fan, I followed her arguments carefully and approvingly in a recent piece in the New York Times as she demolished one quick fix after another that would achieve increased racial equity as she built up to her conclusion that reparations were the only essential, correct path.  As she […]

New Orleans      I’ll never forget the surprise on a colleague’s face who was working to build a nonprofit community development organization in the Mississippi delta several years ago when we first met.  A lot of her work had been focused on schools and enhancing their curriculum for young people.  When I questioned her and […]

New Orleans  Having not flown in months, I was curious what was up in the airways.  My 6:15 AM on a Saturday to Atlanta was the first flight out of New Orleans.  That was already strange.  It used to be one of many.  Where was the 5:28 AM to Houston?  The 6:00 AM to Chicago?  […]

Atlanta     Every six months or so in recent years we have been pulling together community, labor, and political organizers, mostly in Europe and the United Kingdom, to share perspectives and organizing experiences.  Until the pandemic, we had met several times in Amsterdam.  Now we convened on Zoom with fewer people in a more compressed time […]