One of my friends calls working in higher education a “Ponzi Scheme.” This is how it works: You put years of your life on a shelf in the name of higher education. You work hard, delay gratification and play the game to obtain the advanced degree. Unless you have wealthy parents, you take out student […]
low-wage jobs
Labor Day, 2013: Realities and Hopes
I like to listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” album from time to time, at moments when my spirits need lifting up. In “Jack of All Trades,” the protagonist does outdoor work, carpentry, auto repair and farming (“I’ll harvest your crops”). Given the recent one day strikes in some 60 cities by fast food workers, […]
President Obama’s Middle Class: the Rhetoric and the Reality
It should come as no surprise that President Obama focused on the “middle class” in his State of the Union speech. He mentioned that term six times, even calling it “our generation’s task…to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.” What the president didn’t mention was the critical […]
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 […]
Action on inequality: Getting class recognized as a protected category
As the economic inequality gap continues to widen, students at Grand Valley State University in Traverse City, Michigan, started saying that they were tired of “talking” about economic inequality; they wanted to “do” something. We feel that there is a growing emergency. Waiting for things to get better in some far off future began to […]
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 […]
A Forty Hour Week From the Other Side
As this election nears, I find myself passionate about a local issue: San Jose, following the stronger leads of San Francisco, Seattle, and Albuquerque, is proposing to raise the minimum wage from $8 to $10 per hour. I will be precinct walking on Saturday to help make this happen. This raise is more important than […]
Class Divide in Internships
Last summer I was hired as an intern for an education advocacy group in Seattle. It was my first time working as an intern and it took me several months to secure one for the summer. I have a year left before graduating from college. Facing a competitive job market after graduation, I decided to […]
Inciting critical thinking in 8th graders: An inspiring ‘Created Equal’ story
“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot. And then, just possibly, hopefully, it goes on.” — Audre Lorde A deep conversation about equal opportunity was incited recently in a group of Latino 8th graders participating in a summer program in a Boston public school. I and another Class Action intern, Anna Rodriguez, […]
Anatomy of a cross-class breakdown at a youth shelter
Last spring my friend J got a job at a shelter for homeless young adults. She has an associate’s degree in Social and Human Services and is working on completing her B.A. She is smart, hardworking, compassionate, and skillful. She has great recommendations from other nonprofits. Additionally, she spent time at this same shelter back […]
“Is This for a Rental?”
Ever gone to a hardware store to buy a toilet, sink, or door and have the salesperson ask, “Is this for yourself, or for a rental?”? We all know that if it’s for ourselves, the owners of property, we’ll be wanting something nicer, better-made, more durable, more functional and often more efficient. If it’s for […]
What’s needed at this political moment? 5 well-known leftists, 5 strong opinions
At the Working-Class Studies conference last weekend, I heard an amazing dialogue about class, race and movement-building by five progressive journalists and activist scholars: Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now!, Frances Fox Piven, Bill Fletcher Jr. of Blackcommentator.com, and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert of Demos, with conference organizer Michael Zweig, author of The […]
Poverty and Disability: the Vicious Circle
I first started to look at disability as a class issue when 18 of our members from Piedmont Peace Project and I attended a national peace movement conference in Atlanta. Six of us were disabled and three in wheelchairs, including me. No other group had visibly disabled people present, although I’m sure some hidden disabilities […]
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 […]
How working at a community college is like working retail
Expectations are a pain in the ass. There’s an old saying, “plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.” Yep I did it, planted and am now disappointed. I teach Sociology at a rural community college; I love teaching, but I don’t love that adjunct teachers like me are temporary, at-will employees. Who knew that the working […]
