Stephen Wade Rathke is a community and labor activist who founded the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 1970 and 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 be chief organizer of ACORN International and United Labor Unions Local 100. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy, a quarterly magazine for scholars and activists. The magazine's publishing arm has published four of his books. He is also a radio station manager of KABF and WAMF.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is an international collection of autonomous community-based organizations that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. They, along with a number of other community unions, are affiliated under ACORN International.
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.
ActionAid is an international non-governmental organization whose stated primary aim is to work against poverty and injustice worldwide.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
Global Exchange was founded in 1988 and is an advocacy group, human rights organization, and a 501(c)(3) organization, based in San Francisco, California, United States. The group defines its mission as, "to promote human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice around the world." Global Exchange deals with a wide range of issues, ranging from the U.S. war in Iraq to worker abuse and fair trade issues.
Louise Alone Thompson Patterson was a prominent American social activist and college professor. Patterson's early experiences of isolation and persecution on the West Coast had a profound impact on her later activism. She recognized the ways in which racism and discrimination affected individuals and communities and dedicated her life to challenging these systems of oppression. Her involvement in the Harlem Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural awakening in African American communities, allowed her to connect with other artists and activists who were similarly committed to social justice. In addition to her notable contributions to civil rights activism, Thompson Patterson was also recognized as one of the pioneering Black women to be admitted to the University of California at Berkeley.
Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington's theory of a Clash of Civilizations. The term was initially used by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler who in 1972, in a letter to UNESCO, had suggested the idea of an international conference on the "dialogue between different civilizations" and had organized, in 1974, a first international conference on the role of intercultural dialogue with the support and under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
TransAfrica is an advocacy organization in Washington, D.C. that seeks to influence the foreign policy of the United States concerning African and Caribbean countries and all African diaspora groups. They are a research, education, and advocacy center for activism focusing on social, economic and political conditions in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America and other parts of the African Diaspora. They are the largest and oldest social justice organization in the United States that focuses on the African world. They have served as a major research, educational, and organizing institution for the African and African Descendant communities and the U.S. public in general.
Ruth Milkman is an American sociologist of labor and labor movements. She is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and the director of research at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. Between 1988 and 2009 Milkman taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she directed the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
Bruce Nissen is a professor emeritus of labor studies and director of research at the Center for Labor Research and Studies (CLRS) at Florida International University (FIU). He also formerly directed that university's Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy (RISEP).
SBP is a nonprofit, disaster relief organization. After temporarily volunteering in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenburg returned permanently in March 2006 and founded the project. The organization eventually expanded to include offices in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in Louisiana, Joplin, Missouri, Columbia, South Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia. By August 2022, SBP's national impact included assistance to 5,500 families, including the rebuilding of over 1,200 homes, including 600 in New Orleans. They have collaborated extensively with Toyota and Americorps. As a result of its accomplishments, the organization and its founders have been recognized by Senator Mary Landrieu, CNN, and President Barack Obama.
Joe Szakos is a community organizer and author. He was coordinator of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) from 1981 to 1993, and was the executive director of Virginia Organizing from 1994 to 2017. After stepping down from the directorship, he became the Lynchburg Chapter organizer until his retirement in November 2020.
John Bowe, is an American author and speech expert. He has written for The New York Times Magazine,The New Yorker, GQ, The Nation, McSweeney's, and This American Life. His work has been featured and reviewed in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and he has appeared on CNN, The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, the BBC, and many others. He is the co-editor of GIG: Americans Talk About Their Jobs ; author of Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy, editor of US: Americans Talk About Love, and author of I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in an Age of Disconnection. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Basquiat with Julian Schnabel.
Virginia Organizing, formerly known as the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP), is a non-partisan grassroots organization in the state of Virginia. Founded in 1995, Virginia Organizing brings people together to address issues that affect the quality of life in their local communities. Notably, Virginia Organizing engages in community organizing that is both multi-issue and multi-constituency, with a focus on people who have traditionally had little voice in society.
ACORN International is a federation of member-based community organizations that is active in Cameroon, Canada, the Czech Republic, England, France, Honduras, India, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Peru, Scotland, Tunisia, the United States, and Wales. The group's global membership numbers are currently at approximately 250,000 members.
Occupy Charlottesville was a social movement in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, that began on October 15, 2011, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the rest of the Occupy movement. The downtown Lee Park encampment was taken down on November 30, 2011, when 18 members of the movement were arrested and charged with trespassing. The group failed to establish a campsite after the eviction, although they continued to hold their 'General Assemblies' and participate in targeted actions for several months thereafter. The group's protests target social and economic injustice both locally and nationally.
Stephen Bradberry is a community organizer in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. In 2005, he served as the lead organizer for the New Orleans chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). He was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for his work on behalf of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Eric Mann is a civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental organizer whose career spans more than 50 years. He has worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, Newark Community Union Project, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Black Panther Party, the United Automobile Workers and the New Directions Movement. He was also active as a leader of SDS faction the Weathermen, which later became the militant left-wing organization Weather Underground. He was arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge police headquarters on November 8, 1969. He was instrumental in the movement that helped to keep a General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, California open for ten years. Mann has been credited for helping to shape the environmental justice movement in the U.S. He founded the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, California and has been its director for 25 years. In addition, Mann is founder and co-chair of the Bus Riders Union, which sued the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for what it called “transit racism”, resulting in a precedent-setting civil rights lawsuit, Labor Community Strategy Center et al. v. MTA.
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is an international collection of autonomous community-based organizations that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working. The association was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado, and, at its peak in the US, had over 500,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities.
