Wade Rathke

Stephen Wade Rathke (born 1948) 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 (now United Labor Unions Local 100).

Rathke attended Williams College, a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, from 1966 to 1971.

While there, 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.

As founder and chief organizer of ACORN, Rathke first hired Gary Delgado, among many notable community and labor organizers over the years.

They developed a replicable model of "forming membership organizations and developing leaders in low-income neighborhoods -- relying substantially on young middle-class staff working for subsistence wages."

This community organizing initiative in Arkansas eventually developed as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the largest organization of lower income and working families in the United States, with almost 500,000 dues-paying families spread across about one-hundred staffed offices in American cities.

The Institute for Social Justice has been developed to serve as ACORN's training arm.

Founded in 1980 in New Orleans as an independent union of Hyatt employees, the union became part of SEIU in 1984.

SEIU Local 100 organizes public sector public workers, including school employees, Head Start, and health care workers, as well as lower-wage private sector workers in the hospitality, janitorial, and other service industries.

Rathke's work in the labor movement includes three terms as Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO.

Rathke was the president and co-founder of the SEIU Southern Conference; a member of the International Executive Board of SEIU (1996–2004); and Chief Organizer of the Hotel and Restaurant Organizing Committee (HOTROC) a multi-union organizing project for hospitality workers in New Orleans sponsored by the AFL-CIO and its president, John Sweeney, and from 2004–2008 chief organizer of a multi-pronged effort to organize Walmart workers, including the Walmart workers in Florida and California.

In 2000, Rathke created the Organizers' Forum, which 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, using capital strategies and corporate campaign techniques, or understanding the effects and organizing challenges of globalization.

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 (Little Rock) and WAMF (New Orleans).

Rathke was born in Laramie, Wyoming, to Edmann J. Rathke and Cornelia Ratliff Rathke.

He and his younger brother Dale were raised in Colorado and New Orleans, Louisiana, where they attended local schools and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School.

Wade Rathke resigned from ACORN on June 2, 2008 and continued as the chief organizer of ACORN International and United Labor Unions Local 100, as publisher and editor-in-chief of Social Policy, and as radio station manager of KABF (Little Rock) and WAMF (New Orleans).

Rathke is also founder and Chief Organizer of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 100, which is headquartered in New Orleans and also has chapters in Texas and Arkansas.

In 2009, Local 100 left SEIU and once again became United Labor Unions Local 100.

Since 2013, Rathke has returned to the 100,000-watt radio station KABF-FM 88.3 as its station manager.

Rathke and Local 100 were most prominently in the news in the fall of 2017 when they filed charges with the NLRB to prevent Dallas Cowboys’ owner and general manager, Jerry Jones, from threatening his players if they refused to stand for the national anthem.

The union withdrew its charge after the NFL said it would not discipline players and Jones.

In 2017, the documentary film about Rathke titled The Organizer was released.

It was directed by Nick Taylor and distributed by Grasshopper Film.