Citizen Wealth - Winning the Campaign to Save Working Families

Zusatztext “No one knows better than Wade Rathke how to organize everyday Americans to win economic and political power. Now he has taken his fourty years of hard-won experience and given us the book and the understanding we need to turn around America and lay the foundation for a sustainable economy for our future." --Stewart Acuff! Director of Organizing! AFL-CIO “This is one of those rare books that magically appear when desperately needed. Wade Rathke describes an approach that has worked to build a better life for literally millions and does not depend on the outcome of the last election. I have learned so much from Wade Rathke that has helped me win critical battles! and so can you.” --Michael Kieschnick! President and cofounder! Working Assets "Wade Rathke shares insights and experiences from his fourty years of organizing and offers a grassroots strategy to combat economic injustice.  Invaluable!" —Robert Fisher! Professor of Community Organization! University of Connecticut! and author of Let the People Decide “ Citizen Wealth takes us on a remarkable journey through our recent 'gilded age!' witnessing the myriad efforts of ACORN and many others to counter the sly! often dishonest! ways that unscrupulous business interests exploit low and moderate-income people. But Rathke doesn't fall into polemics; instead! he tells stories—and damn good ones—about how activists and businesses worked out win-win partnerships that helped strengthen our communities.” —Drummond Pike! CEO! Tides Foundation Informationen zum Autor Wade Rathke Klappentext America's safety net is torn and tattered. Income inequality continues to grow the gap between rich and poor has expanded fivefold in the last twenty-five years. For millions of working families, achieving basic middle-class comforts has begun to seem as distant a dream as winning the lottery. What is needed, and what veteran organizer and ACORN founder Wade Rathke provides in this hard-hitting new book, is a comprehensive grassroots strategy to create what he calls citizen wealth: an enduring foundation on which working people can build a future that extends beyond paying next month's rent. Rathke shares breakthrough strategies that have enabled ACORN and other organizations help people secure the basics of citizen wealth a house and a decent income offering from-the-trenches advice on mounting successful living wage campaigns, battling unscrupulous and predatory lending practices, and developing new forms of worker organizations to protect wages and benefits. Existing antipoverty programs can provide critical support for citizen wealth-building efforts, but they're woefully underutilized. Rathke shows how to cut through government indifference and bureaucratic obstacles to provide those in need with access to these vital resources. But community organizations can't do it alone. Rathke describes ACORN partnerships with HSBC Bank and H&R Block that helped these businesses see building citizen wealth as a new market opportunity a win for them and for the people they once exploited. And he looks at other examples of strange bedfellows in the fight for citizen wealth, including Citibank, once the target of massive protests by ACORN and now, working with it, a major investor in working-class communities.From the Bottom Up Let us try to sing another song rather than another verse, the same as the first. I am not saying it will be easy, and I may have to catch myself as I fall into the same habits. We have memorized so many of the old verses that, at the first note we hear, it is difficult not to start singing immediately what we already know. However, we need new songs in our future with more hope and promise than those we have seen in the past. We are going to try our hardest to find a way to craft them together, so that we can all march to a differe...

Product details

• Authors: Wade Rathke
• Publisher: Berrett Koehler Publishers
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 06.07.2009
• EAN: 9781576758625
• ISBN: 978-1-57675-862-5
• No. of pages: 216
• Dimensions: 163 mm x 241 mm x 20 mm
• Series: BK Currents; Bk Currents
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education