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). He was ACORN's chief organizer from its founding in 1970 until June 2, 2008, and continues to organize for the international arm. 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), WAMF (New Orleans), and WDSV (Greenville, Mississippi). Early life and education 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. 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). ACORN Founding 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. Departure Wade Rathke resigned from ACORN on June 2, 2008, which is on the same day his brother Dale Rathke was fired for embezzlement. Wade Rathke however continued as the chief organizer of ACORN International. SEIU Local 100 Rathke is also founder and Chief Organizer of Service Employees International Union (SEIU)