The Imposition of the Wordm Class

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As a labor organizer, it deftinitly disturbs me for us not to talk about e really poor people in poverty but i saythat that as an organizer, that's less of an issue. The imposition of the wordm class complicates that because it begins to immediately reinforce the idea that some workers who work for an employer are somehow above or different than other sets of workers working for the same employer. And so to put a point on it, at some point, no use to organize janitors. I organize chid workive ben. But the workers that i have spent the most time both helping to form unions and then building release rom unions and then winning contract campaigns have been health

“Building a wall won't save America's crumbling middle class,” Elizabeth Warren tells us. “Sanders healthcare will raise taxes on the middle class,” a CNN headline reads. “There’ war on the middle class,” a Boston Globe editorial laments. The term “middle class” is used so much by pundits and politicians, it could easily be the Free Space in any political rhetoric Bingo card. After all, who’s opposed to strengthening, widening, and protecting the “middle class”? Like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights”, “middle class” is an unimpeachable, unassailable label that evokes warm feelings and a sense of collective morality. But the term itself, always slippery and changing based on context, has evolved from a vague aspiration marked by safety, a nice home, and a white picket fence into something more sinister, racially-coded, and deliberately obscuring. The middle class isn’t about concrete, material positive rights of good housing and economic security––it’s a capitalist carrot hovering over our heads telling us such things are possible if we Only Work Harder. More than anything, it's a way for politicians to gesture towards populism without the messiness of mentioning––much less centering––the poor and poverty. This week we are joined by Jane McAlevey, a union organizer, scholar and Senior Policy Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center.