Class Matters Workshops

Download this brochure for more information on Class Matters workshops.

If you're interested in hosting a workshop, please click here for a brochure, or contact me about booking an event.

Order Class Matters

Class Matters book cover

Order Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists by Betsy Leondar-Wright (New Society Publishers, 2005).

Press Coverage of CM

Classist Comments

What's the most classist thing you ever heard someone say?

(I'm not talking about someone like Bill O'Reilly or your right-wing uncle. More specifically, what's the most classist thing you ever heard a liberal or progressive person say?)

Read five interviewees' answers — and my own.

Here's what a few ClassMatters.org visitors have heard

New! More classist comments sent by viewers

Class and Other Identities

How do you experience class differently because of your race, ethnic group, religion, gender, age, or other identity? What class dynamics do you notice within your identity groups?

Here's how a few ClassMatters.org visitors answered those questions:

And answers from the Class Matters book:

Are There Class Cultures?

  • Book Tour Stories and Reflections

    Betsy Leondar-Wright

    Is Talking about Class Cultures a Taboo on the Left?

    The most fun I had on book tour with my book Class Matters was having unpredictable conversations with audience members and workshop participants, ranging from the deep and strategic to the annoying and absurd.

    By Betsy Leondar-Wright

  • Resource

    Class Cultures Comparison

    Hand-out by Barbara Jensen and Jack Metzgar at workshop on class cultures at 2003 conference of Working Class Studies Program at Youngstown State University

    Professional Middle Class Working Class
    Doing and Becoming
    —achievement-oriented
    —future-oriented
    —life as transformative
    —status concerns
    —individualistic    		 Being and Belonging
    —character-oriented
    —present-oriented
    —life as tangled web of relationships
    —anti-status
    —solidaristic
    Unintended Homogeneity
    —more cosmopolitan
    —weaker loyalties to persons, places, groups, institutional affiliations    		 Unavoidable Diversity
    —more parochial
    —stronger loyalties to persons, places, groups, institutional affiliations
    Best result:
    Individual achievement has positive human impact.    		 Best result:
    secure community
    Worst result:
    the lonely individual    		 Worst result:
    unachieved potential

  • Article

    Are There Class Cultures?

    Yes, in my experience, I think there are differences of experience that do in fact socialize most American people into one of four distinct cultural groups: chronic poverty, working-class/lower-middle-class, professional middle-class and owning class.

    By Betsy Leondar-Wright

  • Interview

    Barbara Ehrenreich

    Class Styles

    In an exclusive Class Matters interview, Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, reflected on working-class and professional middle-class activist styles, and how we all could use a healthy dose of working-class culture. Here's an excerpt from the interview.

  • Book Excerpt

    Class Culture Aspects to Labor/Environmental Conflicts

    Fred Rose did participatory research for his book Coalitions Across the Class Divide with union members and middle-class environmentalists and came up with a description of their cultural differences.