Wade Rathke

Wade Rathke (born Laramie, Wyoming and now based in New Orleans, Louisiana) is a community and labor organizer who founded and was Chief Organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 1970 and United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 (formerly Service Employees International Union - SEIU Local 100) in 1980. He was ACORN's Chief Organizer from its founding in 1970 until June 2, 2008, and continues to organize for the international arm, ACORN International, which has more than 150,000 members in 18 countries around the world, including projects in the USA as well. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy, a quarterly magazine for scholars and activists. As the principal in the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement (AM/FM, Inc.) he manages noncommercial stations in Little Rock and New Orleans and supports others. Through ACORN Global Enterprises (AGE), a social enterprise, he operates community meeting spaces in New Orleans neighborhoods as well as two locations of the fair trade Fair Grinds Coffeehouses and a partnership with ACORN International on the ACORN Farm in the lower 9th Ward. Wade is the author of several books on organizing including Citizen Wealth (2009) and The Battle for the Ninth Ward (2011), as well as the forthcoming, Nuts and Bolts: The ACORN Fundamentals of Organizing (Summer 2017).