And What to Do About It New research from the Institute for Policy Studies and Inequality.org, finds that the philanthropic sector is increasingly dominated by the 1%, their own private foundations and donor advised funds. In the resulting report Gilded Giving: Top Heavy Philanthropy in an Age of Extreme Inequality, Class Action Board member Chuck Collins, Helen Flannery and […]
About Chuck Collins
Wealthy, Come Home
Here’s my invitation to those of you, like me, in the top of America’s income and wealth ladder. Come home. What I mean by “coming home” is to bring your whole self – your passion, your stake in a place, your wealth and sense of agency – and throw it fully into the movements to reduce […]
Echoing in the Streets: Growing Racial Wealth Gap
As protesters march through our cities, a new study dramatizes that at the heart of our racially fractured society is a hidden system of racial wealth inequalities. The marches in the streets may have been provoked by police conduct in Fergusson and Staten Island. But there is a deeper dream that has been deferred. The […]
Class and the Labor-Environmental Divide
How do we address the deep class and culture divide that has opened up between workers and environmental activists? We are heading to a potentially severe clash between green advocates who advocate for reducing carbon emissions and labor-community activists concerned about jobs, racial equity and reducing extreme wealth inequality. Both the climate crisis and the […]
400 Billionaires = Wealth of All 41 Million African-Americans
Click here for updated numbers for 2015 from the new Forbes 400 Report. Preview: Just two years later, the wealthiest 100 now have as much wealth as entire African American population. The racial wealth divide has reached new heights. The billionaires that make up the “Forbes 400” list have as much wealth as the entire African-American […]
Wealthy Kids Pulling Away: Accelerating Privilege, Compounding Disadvantage
How does the system of class advantage reproduce itself, generation after generation? Let me count the ways. I have an article in the latest issue of American Prospect called “The New Politics of Inherited Advantage.” I summarize the mountain of growing research demonstrating how affluent families engage in what sociologists call the “intergenerational transmission of […]
Who Are Congress’s Protectors of Class Privilege?
Mitt Romney and I both grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a wealthy suburb of Detroit. For much of our childhoods, we were represented in Congress by a tireless defender of the rich and powerful, U.S. Representative William Broomfield. Indeed, we would be hard-pressed to find a politician more faithful to the interests of the […]
Ward Morehouse 1929-2012
A wonderful friend of Class Action has passed away. Ward Morehouse, 83, an internationally known human rights and anti-corporate activist, author, publisher, international educator, union activist, housebuilder, lover of dogs and children, died June 30 while swimming laps in a pond near his home in Northampton, Massachusetts. He had a multifaceted 60-year career that spanned […]
Your Class War (for Felice Yeskel)
A memorial for Felice Yeskel will be held this Sunday 10/23 at 1:30 at the Jewish Community of Amherst. Felice’s long-time colleague Chuck Collins wrote this poem in honor of this occasion memorializing Class Action’s kick-ass co-founder. Your Class War (For Felice Yeskel) Class war! You would laugh at the absurd idea of the poor inconveniencing the rich. You […]
Occupy DC: Chamber of Commerce helps ‘built-to-loot’ companies
On Thursday, October 6, more than 2,000 people assembled at Freedom Square and marched to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We brought thousands of resumes of people looking for jobs. Many testified about their job searches. Here were my remarks: A coalition of Wall Street companies —and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — are pressing […]
CEOs Rewarded For Dodging Taxes
As the Super Congress eyes trillions in budget cuts that will undermine the quality of life for most Americans, here’s a stunning fact to contemplate: Twenty-five hugely profitable U.S. companies paid their CEOs more last year than they paid Uncle Sam in taxes. In other words, the more CEOs dodge their civic responsibilities, the more […]
Joe Bageant: 1946-2011
It is with great sorrow that we learned of the recent death of Joe Bageant. Joe and Class Action’s late co-founder, Felice Yeskel, were two of our greatest voices on class in the U.S. What a loss for us all. Felice loved Joe’s blog posts –and frequently sent me links to his latest dispatch with […]
After Wisconsin: Stop the Corporate Tax Dodgers
This is the strategic moment to dramatically juxtapose the pain of local budget cuts with the scandal of corporate tax dodging. This talk of austerity is unnecessary.
Celebrating Felice Yeskel
Felice Yeskel, a peaceful warrior for economic justice, has left us. After a 2-year battle with cancer, Felice died on Tuesday Jan 11, surrounded by loving family and friends in Amherst, Mass. Felice was a remarkable trainer and public speaker on issues of class, human liberation and economic justice. Her irreverent sense of humor and […]
Chickens in Every Pot? Or Bentleys in a Few Garages?
Lawmakers are really in a bind over whether to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of this year. After all, they owe those millionaires a lot after all those campaign contributions this fall. But extending tax cuts for households with incomes over $250,000 would cost an estimated $700 billion […]
Red Carpets and Platinum: Travel and Privilege
The hardest place to pretend that the U.S. is a classless society is when traveling. After all, it’s the travel industries who put “Class” into “First Class.” Instead of the avoiding the language of class, the travel industry seems to flaunt it.
