Who do you think of when you think of a social movement theorist? A professor? Two of the authors who have taught me the most about social movement strategy have only high school degrees: Linda Stout and the late Bill Moyer. I very rarely see either of them cited in the social movement literature. I […]
The most classist comment of 2011
Last January Classism Exposed asked for your votes on which was the most classist comment by a public figure in 2010, offering eight options. Readers weighed in and added their own grisly candidates. But this year, there’s no point in running a poll, since we already know who’s going to win (drumroll, please): Newt Gingrich, […]
What about those hand signals?
The same week that Steven Colbert pretended to mock Occupy Wall Street’s hand signals, I saw them used at an Occupy Boston General Assembly, and my Social Movements class studied the pitfalls of too much and too little “movement culture” – quite a serendipity! Using the six measures of degrees of movement culture that my […]
Giving thanks humbly or smugly
When I was a girl, at the beginning of Thanksgiving dinner, my family would sing a beautiful old hymn, We Gather Together, the most traditional Thanksgiving song, written in 1597. I loved the melody and the tradition and didn’t think much about the words. But in my 20s, with my newly critical eye, I scrutinized […]
WWFD? What Would Felice Do?
Working in the Class Action office, I sometimes find myself asking, “What would Felice do?” Often it’s hard to know, but at other times I can almost hear her voice weighing in on a decision. For example, should we do a local training of trainers now, or wait until we can afford to fly in […]
Occupiers’ Demands and Working-Class Activist Traditions
Thanks to Occupy Wall Street and its spin-offs, a national conversation has broken out over the purpose of protesting. I understand why defenders of the Occupy encampments say that it’s OK to put forward only general issues; it’s true that just being there spotlights the problems with the economy. But last Sunday’s New York Times […]
A Dubious Milestone
Well, a goal of Class Action’s just took a step forward, though not exactly in the way we envisioned. The professional cheaters have recognized our cause! About five years ago, the Class Action board discussed setting concrete objectives to measure our progress towards getting classism into American public consciousness, which is one of our goals […]
Economists can’t be rapists? Hotel maids are lunatics?
In rushing to the defense of accused rapist and head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn, well-known conservative commentator Ben Stein has stooped to blatant classist stereotypes. His headline on the American Spectator website, “Presumed Innocent, Anyone?,” implies that he’s just asking for a fair trial before judgment – a reasonable point. But look […]
Rapid response to “low-class Italian white trash”
What a coincidence! Just a few days after posting the two pieces below about responding to classist comments, I heard a doozy – and I think I responded quicker and better because I’d so recently read Nicole’s and Susan’s advice. But I’m still not sure whether it made any difference. In water aerobics class, several […]
Felice’s mission of making classism a diversity issue
When Felice Yeskel started graduate school in the 1980s, she was outraged that the Social Issues Training Project at the UMass Education School omitted classism from its curriculum. Every aspiring diversity trainer had to practice facilitating two-day workshops on sexism, racism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism and anti-Semitism – but not classism. Felice had been severely oppressed […]
Memories of Felice and class
A few memories of Felice and class from Betsy Leondar-Wright I remember when Felice first identified herself as working-class. When she was in her mid-20s, members of Movement for a New Society (MNS) began caucusing by class background, and she joined a middle-class caucus. After all, she had always known that she’d be going to […]
Mourning the loss of Felice Yeskel
Felice Yeskel, co-founder of Class Action, passed away in her home early this morning after a courageous struggle with cancer. Felice was a tireless activist working to bring about social change. Through fearlessly sharing her personal story, first as a lesbian and later sharing her working-class history to help break down the walls of classism, […]
What was the most classist comment of 2010?
It was a bumper year for callous, elitist politicians and CEOs spouting off in public. Cast your vote for one of these doozies, or add another 2010 classist comment to this list: • When Carl Paladino ran for governor of New York, he got a lot of media coverage for his homophobic, racist and anti-Muslim […]
Gisele Bundchen’s clueless classist comments
Supermodel Gisele Bundchen was quoted in the September Harper’s Bazaar UK as saying, “There should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.” Bundchen got lots of outraged reactions to her statement, but mostly from women with positive opinions about bottle-feeding, or general dismay at woman-to-woman lifestyle […]
B&B Breakfast Classism
It was the usual chit-chat among strangers encountering each other over breakfast at a Seattle bed-and-breakfast: “where are you from?,” “how’s the weather there?” Three middle-aged couples and a 20-year-old son who immediately set off my classism alarms. The first red flag was his face, a sneer usually seen on sulky teens much younger than […]
Faking your way into a working-class job
Laid-off professionals are “dumbing down” their resumes to avoid being rejected as overqualified when applying for jobs outside their former field, reported the Boston Globe. Job seekers are deleting graduate degrees and high-level jobs, and revising titles (for example, from Marketing Director to Marketing Manager). It was Globe reporter Katie Johnston Chase who chose the […]
