I believe in raising expectations. Workers aren't getting bother to fight unless hour expectation is raised that they can actually do better, right by clubbing up a fighting together against their employer. I think there are different ways to raise expectations and would put very specific word choices on them. What i would hope for from from the more populous candidates in the campaign is that they would use more specific language that reflects what they really mean. It's not hard to wrap messaging around either the idea of the american dream, or even more so, to break it down into a handful of aspirational ideas. Do you think you should have the right to retire? Yes or no. Do you want health care
“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.