Join the Institute for Policy Studies’ Inequality and the Common Good project, Class Action, Washington Peace Center, Teaching for Change, and Busboys & Poets for a dynamic and participatory workshop.
Building on insights from the groundbreaking new book Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures, the workshop, created by activists for activists, enables participants to look through a class lens at their own social justice work, and offers tools to draw on the strengths of all class cultures and build cross-class alliances for social change.
Betsy Leondar-Wright, author of Missing Class, will lead the workshop. Betsy is a long-time activist for economic justice who was Communications Director for nine years at United for a Fair Economy, where she co-authored The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide (2006). Since writing the book Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists (2005), Betsy has led more than 100 workshops all over the US on classism, cross-class alliance building, and economic inequality. Betsy is now the Program Director at Class Action.
Compellingly written for both activists and social scientists, Missing Class describes class differences in paths to activism, attitudes towards leadership, methods of conflict resolution, ways of using language, diversity practices, use of humor, methods of recruiting, and group process preferences.
Too often, we miss class. Missing Class makes a persuasive case that seeing class culture differences could enable activists to strengthen their own groups and build more durable cross-class alliances for social justice.