Posted on 09/29/2009 10:49:05 PM PDT by BAW
Wade Rathke, the former chief organizer of ACORN, acknowledged that the organization he founded in 1970 is caught in a public storm that threatens its existence.
"It's a Katrina-like storm for ACORN; they are in a perfect storm, " said Rathke, who left ACORN's leadership a year-and-a-half ago amid revelations about the alleged embezzlement of nearly $1 million from the community organization by his brother, Dale. The money has since been repaid.
But Rathke, who lives in New Orleans where the national organization has had its headquarters -- it is relocating to Washington -- said he expects large and well-rooted chapters, such as the one in New Orleans, to survive.
"We've been in Louisiana a long time, since 1976, and they haven't built a stick big enough to chase us out of Louisiana, and it isn't because they haven't thought about it," Rathke said.
Rathke was in Washington to talk about his new book, "Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families," at Busboys and Poets, a bookstore, restaurant and café with a decidedly left-wing bent and clientele. But the small crowd for Rathke's book talk included correspondents for the conservative magazine National Review, and the ironically titled Web site biggovernment.com, whose viral videotapes have brought ACORN to the edge of ruin.
The videotapes, made with a hidden camera by a young man posing as a pimp and a young woman playing the part of a prostitute, showed ACORN workers in several cities offering helpful advice on how to set up an illegal business.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Rathke is the first one of those scumbags who should be sent to prison.
Exactly, let’s hope the next picture we see of this low life is a mugshot.
This POS is in the same deck of domestic enemies playing cards that has Bill Punk POS Ayers.
I wonder if citizens can file a class action against them or RICO for violations of (our) civil rights for voter fraud.
One of my least favorite (and so often misused words) in journalism is "alleged". If the money was not embezzled, why was it repaid?
Rathke should not go to just any PRISON
ACORN is history (really bad, stanky history).
The only interest in his book is from the folks interested in burying ACORN. Ah, sweet irony.
Wade is a valuable resource, Id love to have him over for a water board, or better yet an oversezed jug of Johnnie Walker, red.
When it comes about that you spray for roaches, the lucky the quick and the smart will succeed in evasion, and though far fewer in number, will re emerge even more powerful “expects large and well-rooted chapters” than before. Iffen your enjoyen the thinken that to crunch acorn is a good thing , yes, a very good thing. Friend, in words like Arnold the barbarian, They’ll be bock.
Rab worries over Former ACORN organizer future.
I agree
The cow teat just dried up.
So, if I rob a bank and then give the money back, the cops will just go away and leave me alone?
....”New Orleans where the national organization has had its headquarters — it is relocating to Washington -”...
Washington D.C.???
aghhh. The thought of these criminals walking the halls of the White House disgusts me.
Wade organized draft resistance for Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later organized welfare recipients in Springfield and Boston, Massachusetts for the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO).
Rathke began his career as an organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in Springfield, Massachusetts. After working with the NWRO, he left for Little Rock, Arkansas to found a new organization designed to unite poor and working class families around a common agenda. Working with Gary Delgado, Rathke was a co-founder of ACORN.
This community organizing initiative in Arkansas eventually grew into the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the largest organization of lower income and working families in the United States, with 175,000 dues-paying families spread across about eighty-two staffed offices in American cities. The ACORN family of organizations includes radio stations (KNON and KABF), publications, housing development and ownership (ACORN Housing), and a variety of other supports for direct organizing and issue campaigns, such as Project Vote and the Living Wage Resource Center. ACORN International has recently opened staffed offices in Lima, Peru, and Toronto and Vancouver, Canada.
Wade Rathke - http://chieforganizer.org/
Wade Rathke is the Chief Organizer of Community Organizations International (formally Acorn International), Founder and Chief Organizer of ACORN (1970-2008), and Founder and Chief Organizer of Local 100, Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
He has been a professional organizer for over thirty-five years. He has worked for and founded a series of organizations dedicated to winning social justice, workers rights, and a democracy where “the people shall rule”.
Wade is also the Chair of the Organizers’ Forum, which brings together labor and community organizers for two dialogues per year, one domestic and one international. The Organizers’ Forum is a project of the Tides Center. Wade was a founding board member of the Tides Foundation and continues to serve as senior advisor of the San Francisco-based organization and for a number of their entities including the Paradox Fund and Frontera Fund.
The ACORN family of organizations includes radio stations (KNON and KABF), publications, housing development and ownership (ACORN Housing), and a variety of other supports for direct organizing and issue campaigns, such as Project Vote and the Living Wage Resource Center.
Union Organizing
In 1980, union organizing in the U.S. was close to moribund, Rathke and other ACORN organizers started an independent union organizing effort called the United Labor Organizations, and, later, United Labor Unions. In New Orleans, Rathke organized an independent union of Hyatt employees. The New Orleans union later affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in 1984, founding SEIU Local 100, AFL-CIO.
Rathke is currently engaged in driving the multinational and community project WARN (Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now) in Florida, California, and elswhere to prove that Wal-Mart expansion can be stopped in addition to the Wal-Mart Workers Association in Florida that has established that other Wal-Mart workers will join and organize their own association on the job.
Rathke founded the Organizers’ Forum in 2000. The Organizers Forum brings together senior organizers in labor and community organizations in dialogues about challenges faced by constituency-based organizations, such as tactical development, organizing new immigrants, using technology, utilizing capital strategies and corporate campaign techniques, or understanding the impacts and organizing challenges of globalization.
Rathke is a longtime member of the Tides Foundation Board of Directors, and Board Chair of the Tides Center, which provides core management services to new and existing nonprofit organizations promoting social change.
AFL – CIO
AM/FM – Affiliated Media Foundation Movement
Change to Win
Citizen Wealth
Community Organizations International (Formally ACORN International)
Community Organizations International on Facebook
Community Organizations International on Twitter
Organizers Forum
SEIU
SEIU Local 100
Social Policy
WARN
******
Drummond Pike
Founder and CEO, Tides
Drummond Pike founded Tides in 1976 and is the chief executive officer. He is responsible for the entire Tides enterprise which includes Tides Foundation, Tides Center and Tides Shared Spaces.
Prior to founding Tides, Drummond served as executive director of the Shalan Foundation, an organization dedicated to economic change and environmental sustainability. He also co-founded and served as associate director for the Youth Project in Washington, D.C. Drummond’s entrepreneurial spirit has led to the founding of several other organizations as well. He was among the original founders of Working Assets, a telecommunications company dedicated to progressive philanthropy and political activism. He also helped to found Tides Canada, a sister organization to Tides in the U.S., and Groundspring.org, a nonprofit technology service provider which merged with Network for Good in 2005.
Drummond majored in Political Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz where he became involved in the anti-war movement of the late 1960’s.
Maya Wiley
Director
Maya Wiley is the founder and Director of the Center for Social Inclusion (CSI), an applied research and advocacy organization which supports community groups to dismantle structural racism. A civil rights attorney and social justice advocate, she has worked for the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and the United States Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York. Ms. Wiley also served as an advisor to the Open Society Institute and as a consultant to the Open Society Foundation. She has assisted several nonprofits on program and strategy development.
Open Society = George Soros funded
http://www.tides.org/drummondpike/index.html
In 1996 the Tides Foundation created, with a $9 million seed grant, a separate but closely related entity called the Tides Center, also headed by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center functions as a legal firewall insulating the Tides Foundation from potential lawsuits filed by people whose livelihoods or well-being may be harmed by Foundation-funded projects. (These could be, for instance, farmers or loggers who are put out of business by Tides-backed environmentalist groups.) In theory the Foundation’s activities are restricted to fundraising and grant-making, while the Center focuses on managing projects and organizations; in practice, however, both entities do essentially the same thing.
The Tides Center’s Board Chairman is Wade Rathke, who is also a member of the Tides Foundation Board. Rathke, a protege of the late George A. Wiley, serves as President of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union, and is the founder and chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Maya Wiley, daughter of George A. Wiley, sits on the Tides Center’s Board of Directors.
Chip Berlet sits on the Board of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a Tides Center project formed in 2005 to combat “the growing power of the religious right” and to “fight for the separation of church and state.” Berlet is a senior analyst for Political Research Associates, and has had affiliations with the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, the Christic Institute, the Socialist Workers Party, the National Lawyers Guild, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Tides Foundation promotes a multitude of leftist agendas, as evidenced by its assertion: “We strengthen community-based organizations and the progressive movement by providing an innovative and cost-effective framework for your philanthropy.” Among the crusades to which Tides contributes are: radical environmentalism; the “exclusion of humans from public and private wildlands”; the anti-war movement; anti-free trade campaigns; the banning of firearms ownership; abolition of the death penalty; access to government-funded abortion-on-demand; and radical gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender advocacy. The Foundation is also a member organization of the International Human Rights Funders Group, a network of more than six-dozen grantmakers dedicated to finaning leftwing groups and causes.
Immediately after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Tides formed a “9/11 Fund” to advocate a “peaceful national response.” Tides later replaced the 9/11 Fund with the “Democratic Justice Fund,” which was financed in large measure by the Open Society Institute of George Soros, who has donated more than $7 million to Tides over the years. Reciprocally, the Tides Foundation is a major funder of the Shadow Party, a George Soros-conceived nationwide network of several dozen unions, non-profit activist groups, and think tanks whose agendas are ideologically to the left, and which are engaged in campaigning for the Democrats.
Tides also set up a Peace Strategies Fund and an Iraq Peace Fund, the latter of which has granted money to such groups as MoveOn.org, the National Council of Churches, the Arab-American Action Network, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the pro-Castro groups United for Peace and Justice and Center for Constitutional Rights. In addition, Tides funds “A Better Way Project,” which coordinates the activities of United for Peace and Justice and the Win Without War Coalition/Keep America Safe Campaign.
Tides and the organizations it supports interact closely with one another on a regular basis. For example, Drummond Pike sits on the Board of the Environmental Working Group along with David Fenton, founder of Fenton Communications.
Recent recipients of Tides Foundation grants include: the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute; the American Civil Liberties Union; the ACORN Institute; the Agape Foundation; Alliance For Justice; American Family Voices; the American Friends Service Committee; the American Immigration Law Foundation; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Amnesty International; the Border Action Network; the Brennan Center for Justice; Campaign for America’s Future; the Center for American Progress; the Center for Community Change; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Center for Reproductive Rights; Changemakers; the Children’s Defense Fund; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (as revealed in FrontpageMagazine); Democracy Now!; Earth Day Network; Earth Island Institute; Earthjustice; Environmental Defense; Environmental Media Services; the Environmental Working Group; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; the Feminist Majority Foundation; Free Press; Funding Exchange; Global Exchange;
Plus, many, many more...
Tides also runs a tax-exempt “alternative media source” called the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), a leading provider of Web technology to the radical left.
One particularly notable donor to the Tides entities is Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry. From 1994 to 2004, the Heinz Endowments, which Mrs. Kerry heads, gave the Tides Foundation and Center approximately $8.1 million in grants. Until February 2001, Mrs. Kerry also served as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has given Tides numerous six-figure grants.
The Tides Foundation and Tides Center also receive grants from the U.S. federal government. Between 1997 and 2001, these grants included the following: $395,219 from the Department of Interior; $3,350,431 from the Environmental Protection Agency; $3,487,040 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development; $208,878 from the Department of Agriculture; $39,550 from the Department of Energy; $93,500 from the Small Business Administration; $10,986 from the Department of Health and Human Services; and $84,520 from the Centers for Disease Control U.S. Agency for International Development.
Funders of the Tides Foundation have included the Pew Charitable Trusts. Recipients of Tides Foundation grants have included Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Media Services, and the Environmental Working Group, National Public Radio,
The Tides Foundation also sponsors the Tides Center, which provides training and other startup assistance to activist group
******
Tides Foundation Awards $150,000 to ACLU of Florida to End State’s Gay Adoption Ban (7/23/2009)
Collaborating Organizations
Nationwide organizations:
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD),
National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR),
Unity Coalition, and
Anti-Defamation League.
Statewide organizations:
Florida State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
Organizations United Together (OUT),
National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW),
Saving Our Children’s Rights (SOCR), and
Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates.
Wade Rathke founded the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), for which he served as Chief Organizer from 1970 to 2008. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of the Tides Center; a Board member of the Tides Foundation; an Executive Board member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and Chairman of the AFL-CIO’s Organizers Forum. Rathke describes himself as someone who is dedicated to “winning social justice, workers’ rights, and a democracy where ‘the people shall rule’”; i.e., socialism.
Rathke hails from a family of prosperous orange ranchers in Orange County, California. During the late 1960s he attended Williams College in Massachusetts but dropped out before graduating. He thereafter became a draft-resistance organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and an organizer for George Wiley’s National Welfare Reform Organization (NWRO). (For details on NWRO, see the separate entries for George Wiley and the “Cloward-Piven Strategy.”)
The Florida recount crisis in the 2000 presidential election served to inject Rathke and his fellow ACORN activists with a heightened sense of urgency to advance their political agendas. Initially, Miami-Dade County’s all-Democrat canvassing board moved the recount into a room too small to accomodate reporters or Republican observers. At the same time, the board announced that since its members lacked time to hand-count all the ballots, they would only count some ballots
“[W]e allowed conservatives to steal pages from our playbook and do actions on us in Dade County,” Rathke later lamented in his magazine Social Policy. “We need an edge, some harder steel on the rim.”
With new resolve, Rathke and ACORN thereafter pushed into high gear their efforts to help Democrat candidates win political elections at any cost. Toward that end, ACORN’s mass campaigns of voter-registration fraud would reach unprecedented heights in subsequent election cycles. ACORN’s paid workers, tasked with registering as many pro-Democrat voters as possible, submitted many tens of thousands of fraudulent voter-registration cards in key voting districts around the United States. By 2008, federal authorities were investigating voter fraud by ACORN in 12 separate states.
On June 2, 2008, Rathke stepped down from his role as ACORN’s President. A month after his departure, the organization publicly acknowledged that Dale Rathke — Wade’s brother — had embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN and its affiliated groups in 1999 and 2000. ACORN further admitted that for eight years its executives had known about Dale’s activity but had kept it secret from almost all of their board members and from law-enforcement authorities.
According to journalist Stephanie Strom, Wade Rathke “said the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a ‘weapon’ into the hands of enemies of ACORN, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to its often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers.”
Tides Foundation founder and president Drummond Pike personally repaid the embezzled amount to ACORN.
In July 2009, ACORNcracked.com editor Kyle Olson visited a Rathke book signing (for Citizen Wealth: Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families), where he interviewed the ACORN founder. In the interview, Rathke confirmed that he was pursuing the so-called “Maximum Eligible Participation” Solution (MEPS), a strategy calling for all Americans eligible for welfare payments to demand every penny to which the law “entitles” them. He urged people to “make sure that other people in the community” are actually getting their due from the government.
The MEPS is essentially an updated incarnation of the old Cloward-Piven Strategy, aiming to orchestrate a crisis that will overwhelm the financial system and cause it to collapse. Rathke writes in his book, “it is hard to believe that we cannot assemble the troops to mount a campaign for maximum eligible participation that harvests the opportunities and dollars already available if we could achieve full utilization of existing programs.” Rathke has also said that technology should be utilized to make it as easy as possible for people to claim welfare benefits
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