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Bridging the class divide

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middle class

The Work to Be Done This Labor Day

August 31, 2018 by Miranda Cunningham Leave a Comment

On Labor Day 2018, it’s hard to maintain hope. Many will labor on Labor Day (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Growing up in a blue-collar union household, working on holidays was considered a boon). Many labor in worse conditions than our parents and grandparents. The Gig Economy The gig economy leaves millions on their […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Classism in the Economy, Classist Corporations, Corporate power, Dismantlng Classism, Labor movement, Poverty, Systemic Classism Tagged With: activism, community organizing, downward mobility, low-wage jobs, middle class, Minimum wage, public services, race and class, social movements, unions

Breaking the Silence about Class in One Liberal Denomination

May 1, 2018 by Class Action 1 Comment

In 2012, I was lucky enough to attend a remarkable weekend-long Class Action Train-the-Trainers mega-workshop. I did not attend to learn techniques to raise awareness about class and classism but instead to improve my skills as a trainer on the topic of communications and marketing. While the focus of the Class Action workshop was, of course, on social class […]

Filed Under: Classism in Progressive Movement Groups, Religion and Class, Spirituality and Ending Classism, Systemic Classism, Teaching about class Tagged With: class awareness, class cultures, class inclusion, classism, low-wage jobs, middle class, owning class, poverty, privilege, working class

Class Background and Life Choices

October 24, 2017 by Class Action Leave a Comment

For years, I defined class in the traditional way: Class is the relative social rank in terms of education, income, wealth, status/position and/or power. But more recently I have added the final phrase “life expectations/choices.” In the last two years I made a conscious decision to be, I hope temporarily, “downwardly mobile.” I have seen how […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Classism, Classism in Everyday Life, Your Stories Tagged With: classism, downward mobility, middle class, privilege, stereotypes

Four Ways Nonprofits Can Address the Classism Within

September 21, 2017 by Class Action 1 Comment

Several years ago, I was sitting in a diversity training of a nonprofit I helped manage. We’d spent the morning talking about inequality within the organization around the issues of race, sexual orientation, gender and even political leanings. All of a sudden tears began to roll down one woman’s face. Despite obviously trying to hold […]

Filed Under: Class cultures, Class prejudice, Classism, Classism in Progressive Movement Groups, Dismantlng Classism Tagged With: classism, middle class, privilege, working class

Class Diversity Improves Your Nonprofit Board

September 21, 2017 by Larry Dansinger 1 Comment

Nonprofit organizations, which are legal entities that must be approved by state governments, allow people to join together and combine resources to achieve common goals. Most often nonprofits are started by people who are passionate about addressing social problems or responding to needs in their communities. So why do so many nonprofits fail to address […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class cultures, Classism in Progressive Movement Groups, Cross-class alliances Tagged With: middle class, owning class, poverty, working class

Trump’s Presidency: What We Deserve

June 29, 2017 by Gillian Mason Leave a Comment

Type “Trump voters deserve” into your search bar, and the two suggestions that pop up are “Trump voters deserve what they get” and “Trump voters deserve to lose healthcare.” To me, and I’d guess probably to you, this logic is completely unsurprising. In the Northeastern city where I live, we hear it every day – […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Building Economic Alternatives, Class prejudice, Classism, Classism in Politics, Classism in the Economy, Dismantlng Classism, Health care access, Owning class, Politics and Class, Poverty Tagged With: blaming the victim, budget cuts, classism, middle class, privilege, race and class, racism, snobs, stereotypes, super-rich, tax cuts, working class

Living “Relatively Visible”

May 4, 2017 by Rathi R 2 Comments

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 […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class prejudice, Classism, Classism in Everyday Life, Institutional racism, Race and Class Tagged With: classism, immigrants, low-wage jobs, middle class, snobs, stereotypes, working class

Spring Break?

March 23, 2017 by Jade Obler Leave a Comment

When I think of spring break, I think of MTV and early 20-somethings soaking up the sun. I believe that this ideal spring break is becoming more and more mythical with the rising costs of education. Classism enables wealthy students to obtain degrees debt free while low-income and working-class students are faced with more and more debt. I […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class cultures, Class in Higher Education, Cultural capital, Dealing with privilege, Pop Culture Classism Tagged With: classism, education, middle class, spring break, working class

How Class Affects My (Breaks from) Class

March 23, 2017 by Jude Diebold 1 Comment

As a teenager, I became acquainted with our modern society’s expectation of “spring break” through MTV’s spring break specials. I remember as a teen feeling an acute sense of “fear of missing out“ when seeing slightly older peers dancing on the beach and swimming in the ocean. Growing up in rural Ohio, I was nowhere […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class cultures, Class in Higher Education Tagged With: class cultures, education, middle class, spring break, working class

Five Classist Pitfalls to #Resist in Your Activism

February 13, 2017 by Davey Shlasko 4 Comments

In a moment of potentially revolutionary activism and mobilization, don’t let classism undermine your efforts. The past few weeks have been both terrifying and inspiring. In the midst of ascending totalitarianism and the drastic, likely unconstitutional roll-backs of basic rights, we are also seeing a swift mobilization from both new and established activists. Organizations and […]

Filed Under: Class prejudice, Classism in Politics, Classism in Progressive Movement Groups, Cross-class alliances, Dealing with privilege, Internalized classism, LGBT & Class, Politics and Class Tagged With: activism, class cultures, classism, community organizing, middle class, owning class, privilege, social movements, working class

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

Changing Classes, Changing Vacations

August 25, 2016 by Class Action Leave a Comment

I was born to two African-American strivers. My dad had been born poor and my mom came from people who had “clawed their way up,” according to my maternal granddad, from “dirt poor to lower-middle-class.” Family difficulties early in her life, however, meant that Mom grew up working-class instead. My parents shared a great love – […]

Filed Under: Cultural capital Tagged With: class cultures, class mobility, middle class, privilege, working class

Housing Is a Right not a Luxury

August 4, 2016 by Jeff Hall 1 Comment

While most of us know that housing in the Boston area is getting more and more expensive, you may not have realized that between 2000 and 2007 Boston was the most rapidly gentrifying city in the country, outpacing both New York and Washington, D.C. And the rate of gentrification is not the only challenge that Boston residents face. […]

Filed Under: Affordable Housing, Building Economic Alternatives Tagged With: affordable housing, gentrification, low-wage jobs, middle class, working class

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

First in the Family: Social Mobility as a
First Generation College Student

May 1, 2016 by Vivianna Lee Alvarez 2 Comments

As the first in my family to pursue a college degree, I have found challenges in navigating the privileges and isolation encompassed in the system of higher education. Both of my parents moved to the United States in the late 1980s – my mother from Hong Kong, China and my father from Monterrey, Mexico. Neither […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class in Higher Education Tagged With: academia, education, first generation college students, middle class, poverty, working class

African Americans and Classism:

February 29, 2016 by Class Action 2 Comments

It’s Complicated When I started this post, I thought it would be a straight-forward musing on classism on and in African-American communities. A few minutes in, and I found that I didn’t know where to start. Should I write about the devastating effect that the intersectionality of classism and racism has on individuals and communities? Should I […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class cultures, Class prejudice, Classism, Dealing with privilege Tagged With: classism, education, intersectionality, middle class, privilege, race and class, racism, stereotypes

Championing Postal Workers Is Good Class and Economic Sense

November 19, 2015 by Maynard Seider Leave a Comment

I watched the second Democratic debate hoping that Senator Bernie Sanders would clearly articulate an economic policy that would differentiate him from Hillary Clinton, that would advance the interests of American workers and that would easily resonate with the millions of debate viewers. Unfortunately he didn’t. Instead he continued to lash out at the one […]

Filed Under: Building Economic Alternatives, Classism in Politics, Dismantlng Classism Tagged With: blaming the victim, boycott, low-wage jobs, middle class, middle-class jobs, public services, unions

Seeing the World: The View from Above

August 4, 2015 by Lily Luo 2 Comments

Ever since I was a little girl, my parents have taken me traveling all over the world. They have always told me how lucky I was to have been exposed to these different cultures, how open minded it made me, and how it made me unlike “those other kids” who had never traveled outside their […]

Filed Under: Class cultures Tagged With: middle class, privilege, travel

Who Are the Despicable Racists?

June 30, 2015 by Katey Lauer 4 Comments

We all know that a young white man murdered nine black worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, S.C., just two weeks ago in an act of terrorism. After a wave of murders at the hands of police across the country, it is the most recent acute attack on black lives and […]

Filed Under: A World Without Classism, Class prejudice, Race and Class Tagged With: class prejudice, classism, middle class, race and class, racism, snobs, stereotypes

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

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