I don't know what the above was, but hey. An interesting to think of: In most countries in the world, class is the most noticeable difference among peoples. Here in the US, we see ourselves way more along racial lines than class lines. This is not an accident.
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Well, as I hinted before, we had two weeks to delve into a bunch of readings on class and specifically organizing among white working class people in common struggle/solidarity/coalition with multi-racial working class organizations.
Let's Talk about Class, Baby, let's talk about You and ME
There was definitely this sense in the air that SOMEthing was going to be revealed. Most clearly, we were going to step out of the economic closet and expose to each other our class backgrounds. So far in this program, as well as in most activist circles, we've been unified by our politics, our relationship to white privilege, and for many of us, an anarchist culture. Sure there have been queer/non-queer, trans/non-trans, male/not male distinctions, but those are things that due to awesome gender work over the decades, are usually brought up for recognition and discussion. But, really, how often, do activists in general settings, bring up class divisions?
The readings, along with a written homework from Catalyst, guided us to understanding where we fall on the class spectrum, both within our parent's family and as adults, though mainly we focused on which class(es) we grew up in. The article we primarily used to do this is Paul Kivel's article "Where are you in the class system?" which asks you to evaluate things like the house(s) you grew up in, your access to medical care, what type, if any, of vacations your family had, you/your family's leisure time, and where you shopped for clothes, food, and other householdy things.
For me, and as I found out later for most of the other people in the lower classes (and possibly everyone), this reflection into my family brought to the surface some pain and anguish that I haven't felt in a long time. It was a lot about remembering the drug abuse and violence in my household, which I know isn't exclusively class related, but there is some connection to how it all pans out. What was especially curious was how, despite the fact that my mom was and is often on welfare, social security, and food stamps, that we moved at least 13 times by the time I was 17, that we shopped at thrift stores and Kmart (when Kmart was really a shameful thing!), that we never went on vacations, ate a lot of crappy boxed foods, and often had electricity and water shut off for lack of payment - I still questioned whether it was right for me to say I was poor/lower/working class. This I come to find out, is EXACTLY what the capitalist system WANTS ME TO DO: to believe that I belong to the middle class, that I have nothing in common with the working class, because they are people of color, that again, I have nothing in common with. I fall into the idea that the "working class" is noble and honorable, doing everything they can to succeed. Picture single moms working three jobs to make ends meet. I didn't feel like I could call myself that because maybe my parents could have had money, but they got sucked into "bad choices" like gambling, drugs, alcohol. Of course my father definitely grew up poor and lost his parents young, and even though he at some point had a successful business, he squandered all the money because he never learned to save. So his life story speaks to the culture of poverty that keeps people in it.
Class Caucuses
What we did during session was break into caucuses according to class and each get to speak for 3 minutes within the caucus on how we grew up and how white supremacy impacted us in relation to our class. The class divisions were defined as
- Poor/Low Income (Family income between $0 - $24,000, average net worth negative $8,900)
• Substandard housing or homelessness
• Long-time use of public benefits, such as welfare
• Chronic lack of health care, food, or other necessities
• Frequent involuntary moves, chaos, and disruption of life
- Working Class (Family income between $24,000 and $62,500, primary net worth, if any, is in home)
• Little or no college education, in particular no BA from a four year college
• Low or negative net worth (assets minus debt), usually modest income
• Rental housing, or one non-luxury home long saved for and lived in for decades
• Occupation involving physical work and/or little control in the workplace
- Middle Class (Family income between $62,500 and $94,000, average net worth $161,000, primarily in home and savings for education and retirement)
• Two to four years of college, sometimes a degree from a professional school
• Homeownership
• More control over the hours and methods of work then working class people have, and/or control over others’ work
• More economic security than working-class people have, but no way to pay bills without working
• Social status and social connections to help the next generation remain in the same class
- Managerial Class (Family income between $94,000 and $373,000, average net worth $344,000 )
• Education at elite private schools and elite colleges, or at public universities without student loans
• Large inheritances
• Luxuries, multiple homes and international travel
• Social connections, status, and financial knowledge to help the next generation remain well-off
• Depends on salaries, not investments, to pay bills.
- Ruling Class (Family income above $373,000 and net financial wealth at least $2,045,000)
• Enough income from assets that they don’t have to work to pay basic bills
• Education at elite private schools and elite colleges without student loans
• Large inheritances
• Luxuries, multiple homes and international travel
• Social connections, status and financial knowledge to help the next generation remain wealthy
- Moving around a lot
- Interactions with state agencies such as Child Protective Services and Police
- Drugs, alcohol, abuse (Our moderator pointed out that those things are highly common in other classes, but other classes have more economic protection from the impacts)
- Educational tracking away from non-white poor kids
- Our parents not wanting to admit they were working class, and pushing us to be upwardly mobile
- Young/single moms
The blow was softened by the fact that local class-based working groups have invited each of the caucuses to a special potluck to continue the discussions. The poor/working class one is going to meet tomorrow. We then shared report backs from each caucus with the larger group, and this was the moment when everyone got to see where people fell. It was pretty evenly divided among the classes, which I guess was a bit surprising to me, as I never really get that people I know really are upper class.
We looked a little bit about how our class background motivates and impacts our social justice work. I got to publicly air my shameful distaste for Marxist theory (I'm sure it's good theory, there's just something about it that's too academic, stuffy, old dead white man for me to swallow.)
Where's the Liberation?
In my opinion, we didn't get too much into the liberatory class strategy as I was expecting. The general format of the sessions has been to delve into the painful histories and constructions of oppressions, then talk about how to counter those huge systems, including lots of examples. This Sunday we steeped in the "Wow, class divisions suck!" part but didn't get enough of the "Now that we understand, this is how we break this shit!" part. Certainly the readings did lay out a lot of examples of awesome white working class organizing, but we didn't hear enough about where middle and upper class activists fit in. Others noticed this, and a lovely person did take on the challenge of organizing a cross-class workshop/discussion event.
Organizing Poor White Folks
The readings also looked more into the strategies used during and immediately after slavery to fracture the unity of the lower classes by convincing the whites that they had more to gain by unifying with the white upper classes (but without actually gaining significant wealth). Then several articles went into the work of modern movements of white working class people - such as JOIN, The Young Patriots, the IWW, and the Piedmont Peace Project. I won't talk much about these groups, since you are on the internet and could look into them yourselves. Just know that they're radical and inspiring. Picture the Confederate Flag flying alongside the Black Panther flag - they really did that!
Dual Welfare
One of the readings also brought up the reality of dual welfare. That when you hear welfare, you think of food stamps and WIC checks for single moms. But what about corporate/agricultural subsidies (not to even mention the bailouts) or other tax deductions? The corporate rich get the government handouts without any of the stigma passed on to welfare for the working class. Same thing - veterans can be proud to claim their veteran's benefits for doing the often racist, imperialist work of war, yet it is a shameful matter for the women raising our future generations to get food assistance. It's all about the spin
also, of course, when people speak of how much of our budget is spent on welfare they don't realize that a whole chuck of that is corporate welfare.
ReplyDeletei coul dnever figure out what my class was. is there a magazine quiz for it?
ReplyDeletewhat if your parents worked partially in the "cash only" market but had millions of it? that doesn't really make you ruling class, but i guess upper class. and then they lost a lot of it, i guess they became middle class then. and now upper class, even though they still sort of live month to month. colombians are complicated.
everytime i'm in a rgroup and people are asked to identify they're class, they're all in the middle. shame runs deep all over.