Wade Rathke

Wade Rathke "is Chief Organizer of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO. He is also founder and Chief Organizer of ACORN, a national network of community organizations representing the interests of low and moderate income people. Wade serves on the boards of both Tides Foundation and Tides Center."

"Wade is the Board Chair and founder of the Organizers’ Forum and has been the Chief Organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) since he founded the organization in 1970. ACORN is a national membership organization of 150,000 low and moderate income families organized in communities in 60 major cities. He also serves as Chief Organizer of Local 100, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which he founded in New Orleans in 1980 and which now has 7000 members in Texas, LA, and Arkansas. Currently, Wade also spearheads a multi-union effort through HOTROC - the Hospitality, Hotels, and Restaurants Organizing Council, AFL-CIO, to unionize this New Orleans industry. Wade is President of SEIU's Southern Conference and a member of the national executive board of the union, Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, and a member of the boards of the Tides Foundation, Tides Center, and Paradox Fund. In the late 60's, Wade organized draft resistance for SDS and welfare recipients in Springfield and Boston, Massachusetts for the National Welfare Rights Organization."


 * Director, Tides Foundation
 * Director, Organizers' Forum