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Money

Damaging Dishonesty

July 26, 2021 by Betsy Leondar-Wright 1 Comment

I guess you could call me a liar.  Back when I had fundraising responsibilities at several small nonprofit organizations, I lied to foundations all the time.  I assumed, often correctly, that funders wanted to believe that their money would directly bring about specific program impacts, so I told them it would. That meant hiding some […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Classism in Diversity Work, Classism in Progressive Movement Groups, Classism in the Economy, Dismantlng Classism, Labor movement, Money, Women and Class Tagged With: low-wage jobs

Poverty Constrains Your Wardrobe – and You

July 5, 2018 by Angela McEwen Leave a Comment

I will always remember December 2013. It was a particularly cold winter, and downtown Los Gatos was in the low 30s. My friend Jane rented a carriage and invited me to come along. I declined because I did not have a jacket. I was too ashamed to tell her why, so she was rightfully angry […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Internalized classism, Money, Poverty, Your Stories Tagged With: downward mobility, low-wage jobs, money, poverty

Weighing Every Cost: A Genteel Poverty

July 5, 2018 by Nancy McGartland Leave a Comment

I am the youngest of 10 siblings. My dad built a successful plumbing business, bought his own shop and employed a few helpers at the height of his business. He even bought a summer home, a Civil-War-era farm out in the country, which he later sold to pay my sibs’ college tuition. My older sibs […]

Filed Under: Money, Poverty, Your Stories Tagged With: class cultures, debt, downward mobility, poverty, working class

Addressing Food Insecurity on Campus

February 15, 2018 by René Franceschini Leave a Comment

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food insecurity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had been both poorly understood and oftentimes neglected until very recently. I think the overwhelming view of the administration was that students were, in general, […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Class in Higher Education, Classism, Classism in Higher Education, Cross-class alliances, Money Tagged With: academia, activism, community organizing, education, money

Trump’s First Year: Did the Working-Class Benefit?

January 29, 2018 by Christa Avampato Leave a Comment

Donald Trump ran for president on a populist and inclusionary platform. As he campaigned across the country, he appealed to increasingly larger numbers of Americans who felt forgotten by the country’s policies and politicians. Despite the fact that he lost the popular vote by three million, there’s no doubt that he tapped into the visceral […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Classism in K-12 Education, Classism in Politics, Health care access, Money, Politics and Class Tagged With: classism, health care, privilege, public school, super-rich, tax cuts, working class

The Poverty Catch-22

May 4, 2017 by Hazel Garcia Leave a Comment

The High Costs of Destitution Cause a Vicious Cycle Nothing is more infuriating than the ill-informed critique that “the haves” like to lob at “the have-nots.” Here’s a classic: “If you’re so poor and can’t afford to eat, then why are you overweight?” If you have ever been poor, you know the answer to that question […]

Filed Under: Class prejudice, Classism, Classism in Everyday Life, Classism in the Economy, Money, Poverty Tagged With: blaming the victim, money, poverty, working class

Surviving in the Gig Economy

February 10, 2017 by Jade Obler Leave a Comment

As a creative person without a degree, the gig economy field has always appealed to me. I have had various jobs in customer service that have left me emotionally drained and unable to create art and enjoy my life, due to long hours and low wages. It seemed at first that gig economy jobs were […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Money Tagged With: debt, gig economy, low-wage jobs, making ends meet, Minimum wage, money

Affordable vs. Attainable Housing

January 5, 2017 by Lita Kurth 3 Comments

When you think affordable housing, you think $600,000 for a condo, right? With a $12,000 down payment, that would be $3,557 per month for 30 years. Maybe that’s why a new term has arisen in the real estate market, attainable housing. Under the new rules, old safety precautions are ignored. Once, homebuyers were advised to spend no more than […]

Filed Under: Affordable Housing, Building Economic Alternatives, Money Tagged With: debt, downward mobility, middle class, money, working class

Risk Telling the Truth

September 29, 2016 by Abraham Lateiner 1 Comment

I thought I was going to be a career teacher. But after a decade, I hit bottom. Teaching in inner-city schools, I saw the barriers my students faced and confronted my own limits caused by my vastly different experience growing up. I had some positive, uplifting experiences, but I wasn’t very resilient, and I kept […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Building Economic Alternatives, Classism in the Economy, Cross-class alliances, Cross-class Relationships, Cultural capital, Dealing with privilege, Dismantlng Classism, Money, Owning class Tagged With: classism, privilege, race and class, racism, super-rich

Wealthy, Come Home

September 29, 2016 by Chuck Collins Leave a Comment

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 […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Cross-class alliances, Dealing with privilege, Dismantlng Classism, Money, Owning class Tagged With: activism, community organizing, Felice Yeskel, owning class, privilege, speaking up, super-rich

Graduate School and Kind Strangers

September 15, 2016 by Frelimo Amili Leave a Comment

By the time August rolls around it seems like summer is pretty much over. School started on September first this year, that’s the earliest I can remember. If it weren’t for good people and programs that help, there is no way my family would ever have been prepared. I am a graduate student at the […]

Filed Under: Class cultures, Money Tagged With: academia, first generation college students, money

Brexit – A Class Issue

July 7, 2016 by Milan Rai 2 Comments

Two weeks on, a lot of progressive people in Britain are still in deep shock or fury or despair – or alternating rapidly between all three emotional states. A full 51.9% of British people voted to Leave the European Union (Brexit), and 48.1% voted to Remain in the EU. It was 17.4 million votes to 16.1 million. […]

Filed Under: Class cultures, Classism in Politics, Classism in the Economy, Money, Politics and Class, Poverty Tagged With: budget cuts, class cultures, downward mobility, low-wage jobs, middle class, poverty, privilege, union-bashing, working class

Choosing Not to Go Into Debt for College

June 8, 2016 by Nicole Renee Brown 3 Comments

Nicole Brown wrote the following after reading, and being so affected by, last month’s (May 2016) Classism Exposed blog post on the possibility that students are deciding not to attend college due to the fear of loan debt. After reading that low-income and working-class students may be choosing not to go to college for fear of taking on debt, […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class in Higher Education, Classism in the Economy, First Generation College Students, Money, Poverty Tagged With: academia, debt, education, first generation college students, poverty, working class

Forgoing College to Forgo Debt

June 7, 2016 by Lita Kurth 1 Comment

In education, we are headed toward a perfect storm. Increasingly large numbers of capable students are so afraid of incurring debt that they are deciding not to go to college. I’m not talking about marginal students but successful students. These are not the students that lawmakers are likely to hear about. They and their families are too […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Class in Higher Education, Classism in the Economy, Money, Poverty Tagged With: academia, debt, education, low-wage jobs, Minimum wage, money

Crowdfunding as Community

June 7, 2016 by Taylor Chapman 5 Comments

Crowdfunding, a type of online fundraising where many people come together to contribute small amounts of money to fund a larger project, is happening now more than ever. In 2014, a man named Zack Danger Brown started a fundraiser with an initial goal of $10 so he could make potato salad. People were so amused […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Classism in the Economy, Dismantlng Classism, Money, Philanthropy and Classism, Poverty

When Pregnancy Is the Biggest Scare

May 20, 2016 by Seble Adinew Leave a Comment

Stephanie Jones, writing in Class Lives, says, “But poor girls are so strapped by their finances, we can’t imagine a pregnancy: the furniture needed, time away from work, the long-term financial costs, the exhaustion after a double shift, the food, the bottles, the formula, the child care.” The author is right. Being pregnant when poor […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Money, Poverty Tagged With: low-wage jobs, Minimum wage, motherhood and poverty, poverty, single mothers

Can’t Buy Me Love

February 12, 2016 by Taylor Chapman 1 Comment

Being Poor in a Cross-Class Relationship We had just turned 18. We had just started dating after two years of friendship. We had just walked into one of my worst nightmares: Which friggin’ fork do I use first?!? My boyfriend was wealthy, and I was poor. It normally didn’t affect our relationship very much, because […]

Filed Under: Class cultures, Money Tagged With: class cultures, cross-class relationships

When Love Crosses Class Lines

February 12, 2015 by Jessi Streib Leave a Comment

What’s it like to be married to someone who grew up in a different class? If you asked most of the 64 college-educated adults who I interviewed who did so, they would tell you that it was like being married to anyone else. Most said that they loved their partner deeply, and, like all couples, […]

Filed Under: Class cultures, Cross-class Relationships, Money Tagged With: class cultures, couples, middle class, working class

How a low-income-led group handles fees for events

December 16, 2014 by Larry Dansinger Leave a Comment

No Class and Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC), our parent group, have a policy of always charging on a sliding scale for our events. In most cases, we just tell people the cost is $0-20 or, in the case of our organizer training weekend, a cost of $10-80, since we want everyone to have […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Money

Google, Hookers, and Heroin

July 18, 2014 by Lita Kurth Leave a Comment

I’ve been compelled, and I feel kind of sick about it, to read about the Google executive who died when a $1,000-a-time call girl—who found serial killers exciting and sexy— shot him up with too much heroin, on his yacht. The picture of decadence. Nine months earlier, his obit had pictured him as a father […]

Filed Under: Money, Owning class Tagged With: affluenza, super-rich

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