Class Action’s Voices of the Working Class, Working Poor and Poor series seeks to raise the visibility of those most impacted by inequality and create access to their perspectives and experiences. Creating a Solidarity Alternative: The Center for Cooperative Development and Solidarity (CCDS) Ann Philbin, Executive Director of Class Action, speaks with Luz Zambrano, Liliana Avendaño, […]
Gender Class Intersections
Roseanne and the Changing Working-Class
When ABC’s Roseanne premiered in 1988, it arrived in the era of Reaganomics with policies that stripped power from unions, sent blue collar jobs overseas and flattened wages throughout the Rust Belt.[1] Roseanne Barr, creator and star, argued the show intended to “speak directly to working-class viewers in an active feminist voice over the people’s airwaves […]
American Exceptionalism Leaves International Women’s Day Blank
When searching for information about International Women’s Day (IWD) 2018, I knew I would not find details from the U.S. government. It doesn’t coordinate IWD events or recognize it as an official holiday, unlike 26 nations that include Afghanistan, Cuba, Laos, Russia and Uganda. However, I was surprised when I had to make a concerted […]
Sexual Predators and Blue Collar Women
Finally. The manifestation of the recognition that women’s rights ARE human rights. That’s how I’ve been feeling about the outing of so many well-known sexual predators, long known but never punished for their predatory ways. Learning about some has broken my heart. Charlie Rose was my hero, as was John Conyers. But, like every woman I […]
Poor Little “Not-So-Rich” Girls
It wasn’t until I began to write about class from the perspective of the 19th century women about whom I’ve written two biographies that I realized how much issues of class lie at the heart of my attraction to these women. Class Action asked me to explore the constraints that even upper class white women […]
Work It, Girl
Sister, I see you. I see you, with your shitty paycheck I see you, with your kids, your bills, your debt, your dreams I see you young and bright cheeked, skipping rope Or playing hand clap games I see you silver and still bright remembering Girl, you know I see you. You have been here […]
Climate Justice Work Must Include Marginalized People
Late last year, I attended a 350.org divestment rally for climate justice at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Although the organizers made no claims to work intersectionally, and made no promise cross-class organizing, I left feeling deflated and angry at what seemed to be an effort to pander to wealthy white men at the […]
Tell Congress to End Child Poverty – Support the RISE and WORK Acts
The Global Women’s Strike, Women of Color in the Global Women’s Strike and the Every Mother is a Working Mother Network and more than two dozen grass roots organizations are petitioning congress to implement a welfare policy which prioritizes the elimination of child poverty and enables mothers and other caregivers to choose to raise their […]
Class and the Fight for Gay Marriage
The recent US Supreme Court rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 bring to light the intersection of class issues with the mainstream LGBTQ fight for marriage equality. While thrilling for many reasons, these rulings do not redress the many daily injustices facing the LGBTQ community that, frankly, gay marriage is incapable […]
A classist comment from a feminist publisher
I wrote a paper on the classism I experienced as a poverty-class single mother in the feminist movement, and it was selected for inclusion in a prestigious anthology. When I asked the editor about payment for my chapter, she said that all proceeds from book sales would be contributed to a charity. “None of our […]
Is delaying marriage really the solution?
Ross Douthat’s opinion piece in last week’s New York Times summarized the results of a study arguing for “delayed marriage” as an economic boon to a select population of men and women. But studies that publish the socioeconomic statistical average of a certain population largely ignore the realities of the study’s outliers, like me. Delayed […]
Speaking of human rights, how many violations have I encountered in my life?
We never had enough food for all five children in our house and I don`t remember ever having an orange. My earliest memories are of a drunken father beating my mother and then in turn my mother yelling at me that I was ugly and I had the ugliest disposition she ever saw. After my […]
