The Wisconsin uprising has become as loud a wake-up call as there has ever been that working America is under attack. Attempts by Governor Scott Walker and the Republican majority to steal away the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers – as a false premise for the state’s budgetary hardships – has triggered a […]
Class Action Blog
Caregiver Unions: Much Needed But Most Vulnerable Now
Often overlooked amid the current attacks on long-established public sector unions around the country is the threat to recently organized workers, who are the lowest paid and most badly treated. When “regular” state workers are under attack, it’s not easy to improve the conditions of a contingent workforce of direct care providers at the bottom […]
Modern-day Pirates: the Republicans vs. the Public Sector
So, let’s be clear: it’s not about the budget. As the facts have emerged in the 2011 Wisconsin crisis with Governor Scott Walker’s move against public service unions, it is not about Wisconsin lacking funds. There is no credible way that Walker and his clique can argue that eliminating a worker’s right to collective bargaining […]
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.
Condescending Baby-Feeding Advice
I read this article about negative breast-feeding myths among African Americans in The Root and sat upright when I saw this bit of social class cluelessness: “…myths persist because of a lack of education among African Americans.” The myths about the dangers of breast feeding described in Jamila Bey’s article exist because two generations ago […]
Who Gets Plowed in New York?
After the first huge snow storm on December 26, my family was asking two questions: a) where are the damn snowplows in our Brooklyn neighborhood?; and b) why is Manhattan clear? Smells like a class issue here. I was born and raised in this neighborhood, which saw white flight in the 70s, the crack epidemic […]
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 […]
Responding to Verbal Classism
When I hear a classist put-down, I feel like Derek Zoolander in the Ben Stiller movie Zoolander, tongue-tied and unable to come up with a response until hours or days later. I know that being a bystander is not enough. I owe it to myself, other listeners, the offensive speaker, and the target of the […]
Special Delivery: Mexican-in-a-Box
I found myself an unprepared witness to a classist/racist “joke” where and when I least expected it. Should I have intervened? Is there a way to turn such ugliness into a “teachable moment”? One afternoon I was waiting in line at my university’s mailroom behind a rowdy group of undergraduate men. The students—mostly white and […]
When you’re rich and when you’re poor
When you’re rich and lose money on a leveraged investment, you are a victim of the bad economy and deserved to be bailed out. When you’re poor and lose money on a risky investment, you’re a financially incompetent yahoo who chases get rich quick schemes. When you’re rich and a war is about to start, […]
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 […]
Don’t be a classist anti-racist!
While naming “white privilege” is an important part of exposing and dismantling structural racism, I can see how the term “privilege” is hard to swallow for white folks on the downside of our economic system. Being marginalized in one power system doesn’t mean you can’t be privileged in another. But this particular form of pushback […]
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 […]
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 […]
Class in the Classroom
There is a loud silence about social class in U.S. public schools. The silence was deafening on the first day of the course I recently taught — a course in which teachers look closely at how education in the United States is deeply entangled with social class. In this course, students look closely on their […]
‘Tis the Season When the Poor are Freezin’
Lack of enough opportunity, social inequality, and exploitation are the main factors in capitalist America that cause poverty, but an often overlooked contributor are the “ghetto taxes” and abusive social policies that go hand in glove with lack of incomes that keeps people poor. Ghetto taxes are the extra fees, rates, and miscellaneous surcharges that […]
The Santa Secret: Santa Plays Favorites
Australian author Dr Joanne Faulkner created a stir worldwide recently when she advocated for parents to not tell their children the Santa Claus story. “[Parents] should not create a fantasy where children are not given any basis for knowing what’s real and what’s pretend.” She said that she regretting telling her children about Santa, telling […]
Visioning Our Way to Justice
I grew up in poverty, the daughter of a tenant farmer. I thought people were privileged if they lived in a house, had running water or even an outhouse. My family of five lived in a ten-by-forty foot trailer. I knew that there were farm owners who lived in large houses, but they worked almost […]
