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

Order Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists by Betsy Leondar-Wright (New Society Publishers, 2005).
Press Coverage of CM
- Tim Harris interviewed me for Real Change: Read the interview
- Marc Cooper interviewed me for The Nation magazine's Radio Nation: Listen to the interview (MP3 file)
- Ben Merens interviewed me for Wisconsin Public Radio: Listen to the interview (Real Audio file)
What Do We Mean by "Class?"
Resources
Learning more about cross-class alliances...
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.
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:
- White women from working-class backgrounds
- White middle-class women
- Middle-class women of color
- White male labor activists
- White middle-class activists
- Christians and class
And answers from the Class Matters book:
Are There Class Cultures?
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Book Tour Stories and Reflections
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.
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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
—individualisticBeing and Belonging
—character-oriented
—present-oriented
—life as tangled web of relationships
—anti-status
—solidaristicUnintended Homogeneity
—more cosmopolitan
—weaker loyalties to persons, places, groups, institutional affiliationsUnavoidable Diversity
—more parochial
—stronger loyalties to persons, places, groups, institutional affiliationsBest result:
Individual achievement has positive human impact.Best result:
secure communityWorst result:
the lonely individualWorst 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.
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Interview
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.
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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.