A Conversation with Betsy Leondar-Wright

Author of Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle Class Activists. Gabriola Island, British Columbia: New Society Publishers, 2005.

Class Action: What are your hopes for the book?

Betsy:  I wrote the book in the hopes of finding kindred spirits who care about class dynamics in social movements and to dialogue with them. 

I also hope the book will be a “wake up call” for those who haven’t been thinking about how class divisions shape social change efforts.  I hope the book will be useful to people of all class backgrounds, but I especially want to stir middle class activists.  Because I was raised middle class and live a middle class lifestyle, these are my people and I can get bossy with them.  I want to dialogue with other middle class folks about how our behavior and attitudes affect people of other class backgrounds.

Class Action: How are people responding to the book and your talks?

Betsy: I don’t have a big sample yet.  I’ve just done a dozen public events and six radio shows.  So these are my first impressions.

But I think a lot of activists find that Class Matters is ringing a bell. People are saying to me “I’ve never thought about class and social change quite like this –and now I have a language for it.”  Everyone has examples and stories they can relate to. Everyone is concerned about our class segregated lives and movements.  Everyone sees the need to build bridges across race, across class, and across red-blue states.  It strikes a chord. No one thinks we’re doing as well as we could be.  It is gratifying that I’m providing some tools and language.

Class Action:  What are you finding surprising as you talk with people about Class Matters?

Betsy:   It is striking how strong the myth exists of “people get what they deserve.”   I found talking about class to broader audiences or on the radio, that people want to talk about larger issues of fairness in the economy.  These non-activist audiences are not ready to have the conversation about cross-class issues because still don’t accept my premise of class divisions.  At the mere mention of “class,” people want to have the conversation about “don’t people get what they deserve in terms of merit?”  It goes right to the beliefs about economic fairness and how the economy works.

Again, I’m just at the beginning of this process and I’m not trying to paint a general truth based on a few visits to different communities.  But it is also striking how the state of working class organizing is very different around the country, especially in “right to work” anti-labor states. In a few towns, I asked people to think about the state of local organizing.  But there were some communities where people could not name a single grassroots neighborhood group led by working class or poor people.  There is a missing civil organizing sector.

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