Poverty and Disability: the Vicious Circle

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

I first started to look at disability as a class issue when 18 of our members from Piedmont Peace Project and I attended a national peace movement conference in Atlanta.  Six of us were disabled and three in wheelchairs, including me. No other group had visibly disabled people present, although I’m sure some hidden disabilities were there. We were in an accessible hotel, but when we got dressed up and went to the main event in a nearby historic church, we arrived only to find out we could not enter.  We could not get up the steps or inside the doors.

No-degree social movement thinkers

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

Who do you think of when you think of a social movement theorist? A professor? Two of the authors who have taught me the most about social movement strategy have only high school degrees: Linda Stout and the late Bill Moyer. I very rarely see either of them cited in the social movement literature. I suspect that their books haven’t reached all their potential audiences in part because of the authors’ lack of college credentials.

What about those hand signals?

Friday, November 25th, 2011

The same week that Steven Colbert pretended to mock Occupy Wall Street’s hand signals, I saw them used at an Occupy Boston General Assembly, and my Social Movements class studied the pitfalls of too much and too little “movement culture” – quite a serendipity!

Occupiers’ Demands and Working-Class Activist Traditions

Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Thanks to Occupy Wall Street and its spin-offs, a national conversation has broken out over the purpose of protesting. I understand why defenders of the Occupy encampments say that it’s OK to put forward only general issues; it’s true that just being there spotlights the problems with the economy. But last Sunday’s New York Times editorial declared, “It is not the job of the protestors to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders.” What kind of elitist baloney is that?

Building Solidarity and Dealing with Racism

Sunday, August 21st, 2011

In 1971, when I was “lead organizer” for what became the All Peoples’ Coalition (APC), I learned a different approach to dealing with some racism I encountered among working-class whites.

Connecticut Public Employee Activists Fight For Pension Justice

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Out of the limelight, public employee activists have achieved a near victory in their quest for a fair pension plan.  However, fulfillment of a national precedent setting grievance award to allow Connecticut state employees to transfer from a defined contribution 401(k) type retirement plan into the state’s traditional defined benefit pension system has been delayed.

After Wisconsin: Stop the Corporate Tax Dodgers

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

The protests in Wisconsin could easily spread.  While not every governor will recklessly attack collective bargaining, all states are facing major budget constraints.

The Plague of the Nonprofits

Saturday, December 4th, 2010

How do you talk with your friends about a problem you think they’re causing?  First:  get their attention.  That’s what my title’s designed to do.  But I don’t want to make you mad:  so I’m sorry to be confrontational.  It’s easy to condemn corporate power, profiteering and executive officer greed, for-sale politicians, and unresponsive bureaucracies, but not so easy to criticize innovative, small-scale, community-based or advocacy, progressive, entrepreneurial, relevant, low-budget nonprofits.  That’s what I propose here to do.

US Social Forum: A Sour Taste of Classism

Friday, July 30th, 2010

A month has gone by since I experienced my first-ever social justice conference, the US Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit, and I’ve been trying to erase my memory of that time ever since. The lack of logistical planning we experienced had a classist effect that seemed antithetical to the forum’s message, and I was left with such a bad taste in my mouth for the progressive left that I will carefully reconsider attending any conference in the future.