Wade Rathke:

Pearl River     At ACORN we like the slogan, “Housing is Health Care.”  We saw it or picked it up somewhere.  I wish I could remember, so I could give proper credit, but in the meantime, we’re touting this in many countries where we work, because it speaks a clear truth to power and people. In […]

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 political interests.  This isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon, but it’s getting out of control and subverting the very practice and […]

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 a throwaway line in a New Yorker piece.  In his opinion it was evidence of the destruction of […]

New Orleans      I’m way out of my lane when I start chiming in on how the military should work, and I’ll admit it, but only to a degree.  I’m pretty clear that “chain of command” is not something that you wrap around your ankle like a weight until you hit the ocean floor.  I […]

New Orleans       Central America doesn’t get the press on the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s as real there as it is in other countries, except perhaps more dangerous since these countries lack the same level of infrastructure and capacity.  Guatemala managed to break into the news cycle recently with a plea to the White House […]

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 solitary moans on social media?  No, never!  Mass-based organizations assemble the base into action in another way to serve their […]

Pearl River     It’s not every day when the United States and any of the world that bothers to look gets such a stark lesson in leadership than what we have seen recently, both in what it is and what it is not. President Trump in a rambling announcement of the Center for Disease Control’s strongest […]

Pearl River     There’s no good time to be poor in America.  Not surprisingly, a pandemic bringing rampant disease and deaths in droves is a spectacularly bad time to be poor.  Some are even noticing the poor now, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that a whole lot is being done about it. For example, it turns […]

My advice to anyone stuck at home and bored is to think about how lucky you are to have food and shelter.  While you’re bored, here’s my advice for a pick me up, and I’ll quote Dharmendra again,

“Kindly donate generously on ACORN International’s website to help us defeat hunger and defeat corona.  All donations will go to feed migrants in India.”

Just say, “Delhi” on the PayPal memo.

New Orleans    One of the stark realities undergirding a number of industries that has been vividly exposed during the current coronavirus pandemic is the fragility of advertising-based business models that actually power tech giants and publications.   We might think the news is what counts or building connections and doing good, as the Techsters have argued, […]