For classist put-downs, a maximum wage just may be the ultimate antidote. How raw can class contempt get? Take a look at the venom that oozed out earlier this spring from Ronald Havner, the CEO of Public Storage, America’s biggest self-storage company. This year, for the first time ever, enterprises like Public Storage have had […]
owning class
Breaking the Silence about Class in One Liberal Denomination
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 […]
Trump One Year Later: Most of Us Live in Dread
I had a discussion with my doctor late spring 2017. I was having gastrointestinal issues, and I said to him that I kept wondering whether the anxiety that I felt about the Trump regime was affecting me physically. My doctor responded very seriously and with a straight face. He replied that many of his patients […]
President Trump, One Year Later
After 12 months that have felt like an eternity, Mr. Trump remains as greedy and volatile as ever. Donald Trump campaigned on the pledge to “Make America Great Again,” but he never did specify exactly who he wanted to make the country great for. After a year in office, we can deduce from his actions […]
Homeless Shelters as Band-Aids: Housing Is a Human Right
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 25: (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, […]
Class Diversity Improves Your Nonprofit Board
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 […]
Trump’s War on the Poor, Working-Class and …
When explaining why his cabinet is filled with billionaires, President Donald Trump uttered what might just earn him Class Action’s 2017 Most Classist Comment of the Year Award. Mr. Trump said, “Somebody said why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy? No, it’s true. And … I said: ‘Because […]
Five Classist Pitfalls to #Resist in Your Activism
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 […]
Charity vs. Solidarity Work
Settling in after a short but intense trip to Standing Rock, I took to Facebook, curious about what had transpired at the camp during my 10-hour drive home. Expecting to see updates regarding activities of the thousands of water protectors and their allies, I was instead startled by a Facebook post advertising tee shirts. The […]
The Growing Problem of Top Heavy Philanthropy
And What to Do About It New research from the Institute for Policy Studies and Inequality.org, finds that the philanthropic sector is increasingly dominated by the 1%, their own private foundations and donor advised funds. In the resulting report Gilded Giving: Top Heavy Philanthropy in an Age of Extreme Inequality, Class Action Board member Chuck Collins, Helen Flannery and […]
Beyond Trump: Creating Class-Race Alliances
Part of the White, Working Class, and Worried about Trump (#WhiteWorkingClassVsTrump) Campaign*: I grew up in economically depressed, though beautiful, northeastern Vermont. My family was on and off welfare throughout my childhood, and we were always poor. As a child, I was acutely aware of the ways poverty set me apart from other people. As I […]
Beyond Trump: Donald Trump Needs Our Racism
Part of the White, Working Class, and Worried about Trump (#WhiteWorkingClassVsTrump) Campaign*: Throughout the 2016 election cycle, the U.S. electorate has subjected to overt and systemic racism from the Republican candidate Donald Trump. We have also borne witness to Trump exploiting white racial fears in order to garner the support of white people, in particular the white […]
Being an Owning-Class Activist
All of us are more than a label, right? We each are more than one of our identities standing by itself. We are complex, changing, contradictory beings, and a mystery in many ways. And yet, our identities do matter – at the very same time as those identities are not all of who we are. […]
Wealthy, Come Home
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 […]
No Interest in Sharing the Wealth?
As a young person with inherited wealth who is public about my identity, sometimes my friends will ask me for a gift or for a loan. I don’t always say yes, but when I do lend money, I don’t charge interest. This comic makes a case for people with more than enough financial wealth to […]
Oh No He Didn’t!
Check biased behavior before it keeps your holidays from being merry and bright. As I thought last week about Thanksgiving dinner and hosting my extended family, it dawned on me that I should also think about – and be prepared for – the many ways that the dinner conversation could take an unpleasant turn. The […]
Intrusions on solidarity work
For the past year, I have been having conversations in the predominantly White, middle class, progressive faith community where I worship, about making choices so that our actions would match up with our “all for equality” attitudes. Many times I have said things to my fellow worshipers like… “In order to show up for justice […]
Arrested Development & the pitfalls of the wealthy
Why do so many TV watchers love Arrested Development (whose latest season was released on Netflix last night)? Is it just another sit-com in the cringe-inducing comedy genre, like The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm? I think there’s another factor: the show accurately illustrates some common maladaptive life paths of people who grow up in […]
A memory of Helen Ladd, 1924-2012
Years before I met Class Action’s co-founder Jenny Ladd, I met her mother, Helen Pratt Ladd, who passed away last week. Our first encounter revealed what a great cross-class ally she was. In 1989 I was a tenant organizer at a very small affordable housing group – so small, in fact, that I was the […]
“Jumping the Broom”: African American class divide
When you were a young child, did you think about getting married? We may plan our wedding and visualize the person of our dreams, but we never stop to think that our class backgrounds and family values could possibly clash with theirs. In the movie Jumping the Broom, Sabrina Watson and Jason Taylor come from […]
