Kalkaska, or Trout Town USA, is a picturesque northern Michigan town touting a population of just over 2,000. Located in the snow belt with its Trout Festival and Winterfest the area offers a modest place for a modest life. Growing up there and graduating in 2009, life seemed simple enough. Of extremely modest means, my […]
immigrants
Living “Relatively Visible”
I am born to a Tamil, working class, OBC (Other Backward Caste) couple who immigrated to North India to earn their livelihood in the mid-1980s. My father had begun working with an American cultural agency, a full-time job that he would continue to do for the next three decades. My mother, by default, stayed at […]
Politics of Work, Socioeconomics, and Classism in Classrooms:
Education to Work to Live or Live to Work? I am a first-generation American whose parents immigrated from Dhaka, Bangladesh, so I could make it big – so I would never have worry for my survival as they had and still have to, and to be able to take my life for granted as most to none of […]
Inclusion, Preservation and Lottery Odds
Somerville used to be a place where many of the residents were people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. As I’ve told many younger folks in recent years, from 1978-81 I rented an eight-room home with three other young adults for $250 a month – that’s total, not per person! In today’s Somerville*, the […]
Brexit: Race and Class
I had very mixed emotions about the Brexit vote. Having watched the manner in which the European Union strangled Greece, I have not been very sanguine about the EU as a project. The guiding vision of the EU is neo-liberal globalization. And it is determined to impose this on the continent. At the same time, […]
“Sixteen Tons” brings mine wars of ’20s and ’30s alive
“Are the mules okay?” Not to diminish hard-working mules, but the mine boss’s urgent question after an accident captures the cruel reality thrust upon generations of underground coal miners, whose toil fueled America. That authentic quote valuing mules over expendable common laborers jumps off the pages of “Sixteen Tons,” (Hard Ball Press, 2014), described as […]
Grassroots Voices Rising for a New Economy
Imagine an event where the people in control were the house cleaners, the nannies, the family farmers and the unemployed! A little over two weeks ago I attended the joint organizing summit and member assembly of National People’s Action (NPA) and National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). Entitled Rising Voices for a New Economy, the four-day […]
The Unity of Class and the Division of Nationality
This world is divided into unrepresentative and irrelevant categories. Rather than looking at what we have in common with others, we are told to focus on the differences. It was in Austria, whilst staying with friends of mine in Vienna, that this became apparent. The only divide I had with these people was that of […]
Now Showing in Seattle: A Multicultural Working Class Movement!
Any American interested in the working class should know about Kshama Sawant, an open Socialist (and immigrant), who was recently elected to the Seattle City Council. Recently, I exchanged emails with her assistant, Anh Tran. Rather than repeat widely-known facts, I’ll include some of our email Q & A, which I was grateful to receive […]
Need vs. Greed: Greed Wins
I’ve been interviewing people and carrying out research lately on housing affordability in San Jose, and what I’ve found has been both heartbreaking and enraging. In a city and area where housing is jaw-droppingly expensive, some of the wealthy exploit the poor, or worse, take for themselves public goods intended for the needy. Beginning my […]
Les Miz: Class themes in Oscar nominees #2
The poverty in the Les Miserables movie seems more realistic than most poverty portrayed in fiction in one crucial aspect: the way desperately poor people in Les Miz are preyed upon. Fantine is deceived and ripped off by the Thénardiers, who try to extort as much money as possible from fostering her daughter. Then as […]
Student Leaders Lobby for Affordable Education
Emily Dickinson once wrote, “why not have a big life?” These are the words I kept close to heart when I joined the Seattle Education Access (SEA) staff and my fellow members of the SEA Student Advisory Board Council for the SEA Lobby Day. I had never been to the State Capitol, and the closest […]
Obama’s State of the (Dis-)Union Speech, 2013
If you ain’t poor (by America’s low poverty standards), you are “middle class.” That is the current political and pundit mode of understanding the USA. Those below the middle class income standards have no claim to a class appellation—they are just “poor.” The president’s speech was largely about improving the situations of those already in […]
Who Is Stressed Out?
I regularly facilitate a Stressed Out! workshop for Job Seekers in a non-profit organization serving a wide range of customers and clients in search of meaningful and self-sustaining work. The clients I typically present to are college educated adults who have had some work experience, and are accustomed to the everyday stressors one experiences in […]
The Anthropologist in the Organic Store
The drive on I-90 on the way to the Organic Store is picturesque. That’s the only word that can quantify the margarine yellow and red zebra stripes of the majestic trees and leaves painted across the landscape. You’re an anthropologist, you see. It’s a fancy term you’ve started calling yourself because the word “immigrant” is […]
Who represents the working class?
There was a time when if one asked, ‘Who represents the working class?’, a reasonable answer would have been the Democratic Party. But since Jimmy Carter that party has moved to the right, supports so-called Free Trade, champions legislation that fosters financial speculation, has forgotten the poor as a group worthy of aid, and goes […]
