Broad Issue 82: ClassPower, August 2015

Issue 82, August 2015

BROAD A Feminist & Social Justice Magazine

Cover Art: Michael Fischerkeller

Class Power

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ClassPower quotes:

“So we must stand together to resist - for we will get what we can take, just that and no more.” ~Rose Schneiderman

“The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world ~Arundhati Roy beyond America.”

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in-Chief

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A Feminist & Social Justice Magazine

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Issue 82, August 2015

J. Curtis Main

Advisor, Consulting Editor

Class Power &

CLASSPOWER:

MISSION:

WSGS:

Connor Tonaka Website Content Editor

Class, power, and social stratification have been theorized by many to be the root of all oppressions and inequities.

In our second themed issue, we hope you find power in these pages that evokes and inspires dignity and access for all people.

Power

Broad’s mission is to connect the WSGS program with communities of students, faculty, and staff at Loyola and beyond, continuing and extending the program’s mission. We provide space and support for a variety of voices while bridging communities of scholars, artists, and activists. Our editorial mission is to provoke thought and debate in an open forum characterized by respect and civility.

Founded in 1979, Loyola’s Women’s Studies Program is the first women’s studies program at a Jesuit institution and has served as a model for women’s studies programs at other Jesuit and Catholic universities. Our mission is to introduce students to feminist scholarship across the disciplines and the professional schools; to provide innovative, challenging, and thoughtful approaches to learning; and to promote social justice.

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Society Must Be Defended Michel Foucault Blindness

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Class Isn’t Just Something

Women Review Sexist Vintage Ads

You AttendCasey Shimp

I’m a redneck and I love America

Poverty is the Worst Form

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of Violence Staci Obasi Indifference (The Wealth Gap)

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Slaughter (Subprime Crisis) Michael Fischerkeller

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Social Mobility Class Structure

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His Majesty Receives William Holbrook Beard

artic Two Sides of Humanity Teresa Vazquez

Marx’s Early Philosophy: Consequences of Species Being Jessica B. Burstrem

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Media Issue Ad BROAD website launch Theme, Mission, & Team Navigating BROAD’s Design Annual Theme Schedule Letter from BROAD: Curtis Contributor Guidelines

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J.D. A.J. De Gala

CONTENTS

de R Out?

ney Scares Me, you notice? J. Curtis Main

HEaRt

Awkward, Unspoken, & Bullshit Inequality X. Cathexis

HomeSchooling

Multitasking like most students, plus a child at home Jessica Burstrem

ing Above

American Dream ology Gaby Ortiz Flores

cles

Punctuation Marks Compassion, Service, and the Obelus of Class Division C.M.

&

Six Ways that Socioeconomic Class Translates to Power, from Birth to Death A.J. De Gala Why Donald Trump Makes the News About Every Topic Jessica B. Burstrem

Liberation Leaders Michel Foucault, Activist Philosopher

microaggresSHUNS

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Letter from BROAD State of the Magazine, September 2014 J. Curtis Main

ClassPower The ISMS rely on

Dear Readers,

Welcome to our second themed issue on class and power. This topic is ripe with challenge, even before content is collected and generated. Why? It seems that class may be one of the last great frontiers for people to openly discuss, admit, challenge, and radically, with justice and equity, transform.

What saddens me is how seemingly difficult it is, compared to our almost 20 other themes, to get people interested in class and power. In fact, it’s almost an after-thought for every BROAD team, one of those take it or leave it themes that, for a second time, has been relegated to a summer release.

Like gender, race, sexuality, or age, no one is without class and no one is inexperienced when it comes to power. Our lives are very much influenced by our class(es) and access to different types of power. Yet, especially in this country of such privilege- such astounding American privilege- many people express a lack of interest or capacity to generate ClassPower expression and activism.

Like whiteness, class can feel invisible to those who have access to wealth, power, money, education, status, resources, and other forms of ClassPower. But

regardless of where we find ourselves in class and power, there is much to discuss. Indeed, there is so much that needs attention and change for the better.

I find ClassPower to be at the center of all of our ISMS debates and inequities. I truly believe that in the past, still in the present, and yet to come, people find easy ways to create class systems, often binary ones, in order to keep resources and privilege for a named elite.

Allow me to explain.

Most humans can be split, from before birth and from a quick glance, into two categories: female and male.

Whether or not there is much merit to this distinction is not the point. What very often happens, however, is that the creation of different “classes” of people (read:

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For if we continue to deny our ClassPowers, especially around education, ethnicity, and affluence, we continue to allow the pitting of “these” humans against “those” humans.

Let’s stop this?

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sex and gender) in already stratified societies allows people to demarcate the haves and have nots. Sex and gender are binary classes, with males and men often marked as the haves. The distinction is arbitrary, yet the result of two classes of humans (classes rife with lies and limitations) has been eons of sexISMS across cultures.

And so goes the same for so many other binary systems- systems that are binary in root but also have spectrums of have to have-not. So, for age in much of the world, old is bad and younger is better. We have allowed each other and ourselves, again, to take an easy human marker- age- and apply restrictions to those less worthy. Children should be controlled.

Older people should be less trusted. People in their 20s are in their prime. And so on with ageISMS. Race, of course, is an easy one. Shall we control people based on a made-up system of skin-tone, hair tone and texture, and other phenotypic features that is somewhat tied to ethnicity? Sure, it’s yet another class system that is quite easily one of the quickest ways to split people into groups, into haves and have nots. For so long, white(r) people have been defined as the haves, and the darker the skin, the less affluence and power one often has.

What are other ways we, as humans, have split each other in classes? Who and how we love and plea-

sure (sexuality)? How are bodies perform and why (ability)? Our access to knowledge and abilities in retaining and communicating it (education)? Our various forms of theory and thought on our existence and what comes before and after (religion and faith)?

There are so many.

Some social psychologists believe that nearly anytime humans create defined groups, especially that exist in opposition to one another, stratification is likely to occur. I am often frustrated in people’s comfort in identifying each other’s differences beyond description. For example, noting a person’s size is not inherently bad or based in value or class. Some people are thin, some are thick, and there is an infinite number of human sizes. But when size relates to systems of power, in which some body sizes are devalued and others are given god-like priority, again, we have class distinctions that tie directly to power. Think of all our various physical differences as humans and how very few are not without some value judgment with links to class and power.

Thus, while the conversations, debates, movements, and activisms are occuring around the ISMS systems and we continue to procrastinate, ignore, and reinforce the core of the ISMS (ClassPower), we are in effect, shall we say, dismantling the master’s house with the master’s tools?

In stratified societies, when we break apart and redefine, toward justice and equity, ISMS, others appear.

Put differently, if we, say, fight racISMS and colorISMS but do not redically transform our tendencies to categorize haves and have nots, some other ways of grouping people will continue legacies of unjust and harmful ClassPower structures.

It is my hope that we tie ClassPower into our work toward justice and into our intersectionality activisms.

For if we continue to deny our ClassPowers, especially around education, ethnicity, and affluence, we continue to allow the pitting of “these” humans against “those” humans. Let’s stop this?

In BROAD solidarity, Curtis Founder & Advisor BROAD Info + Editors

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Class Action

Illuminated Slave

Class Action provides a dynamic framework and analysis, as well as a safe space, for people of all backgrounds to identify and address issues of class and classism.

Twitter: @classismexposed Facebook: /ClassActionNow YouTube: user/ClassismExposedor15

No friend to corporations, not a lover of money.

Be the change you want in the world.

Twitter: @LuminatedSlave

#WageAction Across the country and across industries, low-wage workers are standing up to join the Fight for $15.

Twitter: @WageAction Facebook: /WageActionMA Instagram: @wageaction

Equal Voice Action Our Misson: to engage, connect and build power among poor and low-income families to influence policies that improve the economic and social well-being of all families.

Twitter: @anEqualVoice Facebook: /EqualVoiceAction

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It’s odd, but I kind of realized that, as a family, we were both! While we did not have wealth, we had lots of credit. My father would find all sorts of creative ways to get us access to stuff rich people had. It both messed up my siblings and me but at the same time gave us a really fund childhood.

I lived abroad in Brazil and everywhere I went there were homeless women and children, often families. It was then that I better understand just how rich and lucky Americans are to have so much.

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ClassPower BROAD Voice, BROAD Communities Teresa Vazquez

Two Sides of Humanity Power. Just think it. Just contemplate the word and the definition. Do not go beyond that. Power. The definition does not appear like much. It is simply a string of words that help paint a clearer picture of another, often more complex word. Now, think of power in context to your own life within this big, yet small, world. What does it do to you when you focus on it beyond just letters? Beyond definition?

Does it thrill you? Does it send your head spinning?

Does it make you flinch with fear? Or maybe anger?

The way you react to just the simple speculation of power reflects who you are and what you think of yourself. It can even extend to reflect your experiences of society and how those experiences shaped what you expect from society. It reflects an intimate part of you.

For such a tiny word, it holds a lot within its grasp.

It is heavy. It carries the weight of the world. It represents humanity. Power often defines culture and language. It creates. It destroys. It cultivates meaning and achievement. Power may only be five letters, but it bleeds its way into the depths of our history as a species.

It is survival of the fittest- fittest usually meaning most powerful. Charles Darwin may not have said these exact words, but popular belief credits him. Be-

sides, his ideas align with the phrase. To survive in this world, you must have all of the power. You have to obtain it and thwart others from taking it away from you. The moment it is gone from your grip you lose the battle. You die away from the planet as someone better, smarter, and more powerful replaces you. Humanity is often fighting one another to attain power and maintain it within its reach. Humanity bares its teeth ready for the enemy to snatch its power away.

It is in our nature.

There is something about this nature that exudes greed. Once you have one small taste of power, something impedes you from letting it go. Human beings have a need to display superiority among their fellow humans. History only proves that.

No matter what era or culture or country, chances are power had a place within that society. There is some sort of class system. There is some sort of second-class citizen. There is corruption and injustice.

There is an inequality of labor. There is a winner and a loser, with the winner writing the books that humanity remembers. Chances are that history favors one side, ignoring some of the worse realities for all of those other people, all those losers.

It begs the question...Can equality ever be achieved?

Should we even try? Can such a noble notion exist, survive, and thrive in such a power-hungry world?

srotidE + ofnI DAORB

I do not have the answer. I only know that despite that greed, there is a part just as strong in humanity that counteracts it. An inherent compassion motivates individuals to fight against all of that greed.

Collectively, humanity comes together and fights for the lesser man or woman.

It is that compassion that drives justice and change and love. It may be an innocent perspective of the world, but it is that compassion that leads me to believe that equality will be a long, trailing journey that must be taken. Equality is not going to happen overnight, and there will be many obstacles that break our spirits and tape our mouths. Greed will not come quietly, and neither will compassion if I have a say.

People with that power will not hand it over with ease and gentleness, but that does not mean that we cannot ask for it. That we should not ask for it. If current events are anything to go by, power has been too complacent. It needs a change, and we can be that change. Compassion can be that change.

Power will always exist. There is nothing to be done in that area, but how power controls, that can be revolutionized. Power can be shared among the masses.

No more winners or losers. No more second-class

srotidE + ofnI DAORB

Power will always exist. There is nothing to be done in that area, but how power controls, that can be revolutionized.

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citizens. We can all just be, because once power is shared, is it still the same? Or, is it something else entirely?

Power is transformative. Power is fluid. Power, in a beautiful place, is not greed, but compassion. I hope to see it as such one day soon.

words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough Casey Shimp

Class Isn't Just Something You Attend etsy.com/shop/CaseyShimp

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warning: results with assumptions class, wage, power

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words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough Staci Obasi

Poverty is the Worst Form of Violence lovethycanvas.com | etsy.com/people/stacilenartShort Bio

microaggreSHUNS it’s the little things that count BROAD People

Poor people brought it on themselves

just get a job | they’re so lazy welfare queens | government handouts | welfare state

You just don’t have any class prostitution is nasty and those girls love it | drug dealers have other opportunities

stop worrying about money! | it won’t break your bank

that’s so ghetto | white trash | trailor trash | hoodrat GET OUT OF DEBT NOW! | BE CREDIT FREE NOW!

people choose to live in poverty just go to the doctor! | they work the system American Dream | Land of Opportunity | Just work harder

Rising Above An act you do for yourself is an act of Love.

Gaby Flores Ortiz

The American Dream Mythology Lately I’ve been thinking a great deal about class and particularly around the way folks get compensated for the work that they do. Americans cling to a myth that if you work hard, you will be rewarded, you will grow wealthy, you will have the “American Dream.”

We are believers of meritocracy and yet we are not playing on an even field. We demand that people bring themselves up by their bootstraps and look down at those who need help, support, or resources in order to move forward. We have teachers being penalized for their students’ performance instead ac-

knowledging the fact that students are coming from homes where their basic needs are not being met. We have adjunct instructors in our colleges who receive such little pay and no benefits that many of them end up needing government assistance. We have become an oligarchy according to a recent research study. We are no longer a true democracy and those with money can ensure that the system continues to benefit not only them but their progeny as well. Most Millenials who are doing financially well are doing so because their own parents have wealth not because of any inherent attributes that they might have.

All of this is to reiterate that the U.S. is not a meritocratic system and that people are not adequately compensated for their work. On one hand you have CEO’s who are getting paid so much more than their lowest paid workers that even a modest estimate puts the ratio at 186-to-1. Yes, there will always be exceptions. There will always be people who work their way up from nothing but those are the exceptions, they are not the rule. A few people pulling themselves from their bootstraps every once in a while does not make the system we are working within equitable. We hear the argument from these bootstrappers

that they worked hard and anyone who works hard can also be successful. This, I am sad to say, is a lie. If this were true, if just working hard actually enabled you to be successful, then farm and factory workers who work hard anywhere from 10-16 hour days would be unbelievably successful. Servers who work long shifts and are often targets of harassment and housekeeping folks who work cleaning up other people’s filth would get paid far more than the minimum wage or less than minimum wage that they receive.

Others might agree that I am right and that it does indeed take more than just hard work. It also takes skill and education. This is, after all, the argument we use to convince students to pursue college. It’s the argument I heard all of my life from my own parents, for example. Go to school and learn so that you don’t end up a factory worker. Go to school so that you can be successful. It’s true that depending on your field of interest, pursuing higher education can make one immensely successful and wealthy. It’s also true that pursuing higher education (including pursuing advanced degrees) will not necessarily make you more wealthy or successful, may even financially disable you, may even work against your favor when applying to jobs, and may even be the reason why you make little money. Additionally, if you lack cultural capital (as many first gen students often do) and do not fully understand how to leverage not just your own education but networks and resources (or maybe you just don’t have access to networks or resources), you won’t be as successful as someone else who might have that cultural capital. Additionally, adjunct teaching jobs which pay poorly are becoming the norm in institutions of higher education instead of faculty positions that provide adequate compensation and benefits. This means that there are many people graduating with doctorates who finish their many years of study (and yes, this does require a great deal of hard work) with few prospects of positions that will provide good pay and benefits.

It is true that they have much to show in the ways of knowledge and their contributions to the field but knowledge alone will not feed you and will not allow you sustain a family should you choose to have one. Additionally, if you’re doubly unlucky you also have a ton of student loans to pay back which again constrains your financial mobility. I think it might be safe to say that getting an education, as rule, will not necessarily give you the “American Dream.”

I wonder how long it will take to fully dismantle the myth of the “American Dream.” I wonder how long it will take us to see the system as it truly is: a system that is inequitable, that primarily serves the already

We are believers of meritocracy and yet we are not playing on an even field. We demand that people bring themselves up by their bootstraps and look down at those who need help, support, or resources in order to move forward. wealthy, and that limits both our financial and social mobility. I wonder when we will start moving towards a belief system where people’s hard work in whatever way that looks is truly valued. It is not fair, in my opinion, to say that someone who works as a farm worker is not working hard enough, is not educated enough and therefore does not deserve to be compensated in such a way that allows both social and financial mobility. I’ve heard the argument recently, that McDonald’s workers do not “deserve” higher wages. I hear that argument made by people with degrees and I think it is because we have a problem with ego. We think that because we worked so hard to finish school that we “deserve” higher wages. It is because we bought into the idea that going to school makes you worthy of success and worthy of leading a good life. I don’t understand how we can be more deserving of providing for our families than someone who didn’t go to school. We have no idea what prevented them from going to school. Even if they didn’t want to go to school, they still deserve the opportunity to make enough money to feed their families, to pay their bills, and to live comfortably. “The American Dream” is a myth because not everyone can feed their families, pay their bills, or live comfortably despite their hard work or their level of education.

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words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough Cayla Lipscomb

Societal Circus etsy.com/shop/CLipscombProductions

Punctuation Marks to finish a conversation you have to start one C.M.

Compassion, Service, and the Obelus of Class Division At first, attempting to write this column about class and power, I wasn’t sure where to start. It was such a – ahem- broad topic to cover, I wasn’t sure where to start.

I felt like social classes were very far from my world, and didn’t seem to affect me. As a young woman just starting to make my way in the world, I don’t feel particularly powerful, either. I know I have privilege and I do my best to be conscious of it, but that side of the topic didn’t seem to have an easy, immediate draw for me as a writer, either.

Then I started to think a little more about social classes and the way we’re divided, by backgrounds, levels of education, access to jobs and money. Social class is really just the division of people by income level, whereby there’s a huge disparity in the holding of power. I thought about that as a concept, about money and financial topics and politics and that kind of angle, but it didn’t strike me as something I wanted to write about, or as something I knew enough about to speak eloquently and broadly.

Rather than study the divisions of class, I began to think about the people being divided. I thought about a service trip I took the summer after my sophomore year of high school. We spent a week working in the Appalachian Mountains region, specifically in Virginia.

Teens from my church youth group, who were likely

disproportionally upper middle class and had steady, healthy homes to go back to, came to Virginia to do home repairs on houses and trailers owned by the people there. The tiny town we visited, Dungannon, had very few residents, all low-income families who couldn’t afford to fix up the aging homes where they lived. They were living in an unhealthy environment, and many no longer felt safe in their homes. My church friends and I were from a different social class than the people we were helping, without a doubt. For one thing, we all

Most importantly, the poor, the hungry, the “less fortunate”- they are not “others”, they’re not an epidemic, they’re not just a problem to solve. They are people.

We are people. had perfectly sound houses to come back to, supported by parents who always had enough to meet our families’ needs.

However, when we spent a few afternoons with a homeowner and her grandchildren whose house we were working on, we felt less and less like volunteer workers helping the poor, and more and more like friends helping out friends. We talked with our homeowner about her life, and spent time with her grandchildren on our breaks. She even made us cherry cobbler from her own homegrown cherries, to thank us on our last day working there. Class divisions were the furthest thing from our minds that day. We – student workers, homeowner making a life, children eating cobbler- we were all just a group of old friends, enjoying a moment in time.

I think it’s incredibly important to remember that all social classes-the marginalized and the powerful, the poor and the rich- are made up of people. The corporations and concepts and crooked politics that keep the rich so rich? Created by people. The greed and dishonesty that has led to such a brutal and significant class and power division in this country? All sins committed by people, who should be held accountable. Most importantly, the poor, the hungry, the “less fortunate”- they are not “others”, they’re not an epidemic, they’re not just a problem to solve. They are people. We are people. No matter how much or how little we have, we can always connect with each other if we try. We are all worthy of respect and rights and a place to rest our heads.

We could start by eliminating greed and corruption- if such a thing were possible. We should start by becom-

ing better able to recognize these negative forces in others and in ourselves. Then we can start striving to overcome greed, to keep it in check. We can call attention to injustice and give aid to anyone we can. We can stop prioritizing war and violence and pocket-lining, and start prioritizing people.

In searching for a typographical or grammatical symbol around which to base this edition of my column, what I found was the obelus. You’re familiar with it, even if you don’t recognize the word- it’s the symbol for division, seen most often on elementary school math homework. Two black dots, separated by a line running in between them- it’s a symbol of taking away one part of a whole, to see what we are left with. Right now, the wealth and the power is all sitting inside that dot above the line, held by a disproportionate few. If we divide by the rest of us, in our varying degrees of privilege, wealth, power, and lack thereof, what will the remainder be? What will be left over, if and when we try to resume the truth of equality?

There are many problems we need to solve before we can perform this simple mathematical equation. None of them are simple, none of them are easy. Maybe, not all of them are even possible to solve without getting into imaginary numbers. I don’t have those answers. I’m young, I’m inexperienced, and I was never much good at math.

One thing I know for sure- love and compassion are a greater power than greed. As cheesy as it sounds, class and power and money aside, that week in Dungannon, Virginia, spent changing real people’s lives for the better, is still one of the most valuable experiences of my life. Connecting with other people, reaching beyond the boundaries of class and power- I’d even say it was priceless.

I do think that if our societal math problem is a division, a separation- what we get at the end will be equal. It will equal community, it will equal a multiplication in health and happiness and justice. It will mean an equal chance for all of us, and that’s why class inequality is a feminist issue. It will take a lot of work, and when it’s done, maybe we can move on to the other problems on our list.

In the meantime, let’s sit together. Let’s eat together, and laugh together, and talk together, and try to find that common ground. We should remember that the variables in this equation aren’t numbers. They are people. They are us. The most important step in this problem, is coming at it together. It’s putting aside the obelus that keeps us apart, and finally getting our homework done.

QUOTE CORNER

tell-a-vision

MADADS

visions & revisions of our culture(s) What color is nude?

TELL-AVISION

SCREEN/ PLAY

BOOKMA RK HERE

TELL-AVISION

QUOTE C ORNER

BROAD FACULTY FEED

BROAD RECAP

LIBERATIO N LEADERS

CAREER CALL

Consider:

WLA REANIMA TED

VOLUNTEE R VOICES

1. What effect do you think it could have on young childrenBof color realize that their skin tones are not ROA DSIDEwhen they VISITING available on Band-Aids?

EDITOR MESSAGE ME but a variety of 2. Does it mean anything that bright-colored and patterned Band-Aids appear to be worth making flesh-toned Band-Aids don’t? Are there political implications to the notion of whether “there’s a market for that”?

MICindicative RO 3. Do you agree with Cristen that the color of Band-Aids is not of racism – just privilege? Or power? Do AGRES you think that there is a difference?

ADVA SHU NS

NCE

Link:

youtube.com/watch?v=NaMwLIsaklM

BROAD

WE’VE GO T MAIL

Liberation Leaders Illuminating Then & Now, Inspiring Forever Michel Foucault

Inspi res: Fouc ault c hal of po wer a lenged ou nd as r neg fluid mona and relat serted tha ative view io t r Fouc chal view nal as opp power is ault a of po o sed s w of its elf w serted th er. This is to a ith at t tions , and in a netw power em o say, ork o is not erges fp d of a c etermine ower rela d lass s ystem as a resu l t .

Bio:

In short, Michel Foucault was a philosopher who ganalyzed political, social, medical, and psycholo rical histo ical sciences in both a philosophical and manner. Michel Foucault was born on October 15, 1926 in Poitiers, France. Rising to prominence after the release of his first conical work of what ; would come to be known as History of Madness ....

1960 in this was his doctoral thesis completed As he gained increasing academic notability, Foug cault became known for his arguments regardin power relations and more specifically the relation of power to discursive networks as opposed to the widely-held belief that power is of authority.

Major Wo

rks:

His most in fluential w o pline and Punish, Ma rks are Discid nes zation, and The History s and Civiliof Sexuality of which s olidified h all is position of the mos as one t importan t social the philosoph orists/ ers of the 2 1st century .

ClassPower BROAD Voice, BROAD Communities A.J. De Gala

Six Ways that Socioeconomic Class Translates to Power, from Birth to Death I want to write about so many ways that socioeconomic class affects power and agency for this issue – and felt that it would be incomplete without – that I decided to make this list. In no particular order:

tionality among the prison population with respect to race and ethnicity.

1. The courts

Public K-12 schools are funded by property taxes, and property taxes are higher in wealthier communities.

There is not a direct correlation between funding and quality, of course, but there is definitely a trend. Money buys better facilities, newer textbooks, more advanced technology, and more teachers. That brings lower class sizes and better classroom environments in general, which also helps to retain the best teachers. Small classes, the best materials, and the best teachers with the most experience – now that results in the highest quality education. And students from poor communities don’t get any of that.

If you are of lower socioeconomic class, you are likely to have lower quality legal representation too. You may not be able to afford a lawyer at all, which could make you more likely to get an unfavorable result than your better-funded opponents. That could cause you to lose, which could cost you more money anyway. (Think, for instance, of a divorce case in which only one side has legal representation, or a lawsuit in which one side – the individual – has little to no legal representation, while the other – a corporation, say – has a whole cadre of attorneys at its beck and call.)

2. Prison That lack of financial resources can cost you here too.

Not only could it afford you a better lawyer, or at least sufficient time to discuss your case with that lawyer, but it could also change the very perception of your crime. We see drug use among, say, spoiled rich teenagers very differently than we see it among poor urban youth. And poverty tends to be associated with race/ ethnicity in some sinister ways as well. That, combined with racism, has resulted in an outrageous dispropor-

3. Education

4. Higher education It’s increasingly underfunded and thus more expensive for individual students. If you don’t have the money, you can get some funding, but mostly, you will get a lot of student loans. That can get you into a lot of trouble if you end up unemployed or underemployed afterward – especially if you don’t finish college, as minority students and first generation college students are most likely to do. But without higher education, your lifetime earning potential falls drastically… meaning that those whose parents didn’t go to college are already likely of

6. Heredity Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) believed that poverty was genetic because in eighteenth-century France, as in the United States today, the biggest predictor of an adult’s social class was his or her parent’s social class. Now, that is not surprising in a class-dominated society such as pre-Revolutionary France, but it might be a little more surprising in a supposedly not hierarchical society like the modern-day United States of America. We like to think of ourselves as a country in which one can pull himself up by his own bootstraps (See also: Horatio Alger) and achieve the American Dream. However,the reality is that the biggest predictor of wealth in these modern United States is being

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born into wealth. And likewise, the biggest predictor of poverty is being born into poverty.

Thus, if you are born poor, you are likely to remain poor.

You are likely to have little opportunity to escape being poor, you are likely to die young and poor, and your children are likely to repeat this same pattern.

This situation is absolutely unacceptable, and if you agree with me, I challenge you to brainstorm solutions.

How can we break this cycle?

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Poverty means you are likely to die at a younger age.

That may be due to having to work longer because you were unable to afford to retire, suffering from poor nutrition and/or health, being unable to afford proper health care and/or insurance, or some combination of these and other factors.

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5. Life expectancy

If you have had a drug conviction, by the way, you don’t qualify for any government funding of your higher education, thus basically dooming you to poverty and/or continued drug involvement.

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lower socioeconomic status, and thus less likely able to help you afford to pay for it. Working fulltime while trying to attend school won’t help you focus on completing your education either. Nor will the demands of a family. (If you have had a drug conviction, by the way, you don’t qualify for any government funding of your higher education, thus basically dooming you to poverty and/or continued drug involvement. And who is more likely to have a drug conviction? See #1 and #2 above.)

Driving in my car Listening to NPR 6 Presidential Campaign …

The commentator is talking about the 201 s are talking about domestic affairs on t And she says that the Democratic hopeful gun control, improving race relations, a Dare I hope that they will also talk about oyment, job creation, campaign finance tecting Social Security , reducing unempl address the unequal distribution of wea Will they talk about how government can said, “in American politics there are two Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has around Bernie Sanders.

Dare I hope that the people will organize s why: Browsing the Internet I find 5 good reason voters. He will not be beholden to Su from ns atio don ll sma ng citi soli is nie Ber 1. inviting the voters to stand behind him 2. He is a self-described Socialist who is great moral issue of our time”.

3. He has called income inequality , “the a long political career.

4. He has been true to his message over d together, there is nothing we cannot 5. He believes that, “when the people stan in American Politics and a better future Dare I let myself hope for a real change ?

Could my vote possibly make a difference Imagine.

broadside poetry in street lit style Maureen Murphy Erickson

Imagine

are, developing green technology… the campaign trail: wage equality, healthc the military spending budget, proaddressing mass incarceration, reducing e reform, and tax restructuring? called the 90-10 story? alth in our country, what Elizabeth Warren ple and organized money.” o primary sources of power: organized peo

uperPacs.

Corporate America. in taking on the greed of Wall Street and

t accomplish.” for all Americans.

HomeSchooling Multitasking like most students, plus a child at home Jessica B. Burstrem

Multitasking like most students, plus a child at home I am a student and a feminist just like you, so I am concerned about many of the same social justice issues that you are, but I have even more on my mind because I am also a single mom. So this column has a, ironically, BROAD focus, just like me, and just like BROAD itself. Sometimes I am writing about what it is like to try to balance work and school and family and other life issues; sometimes I am writing about U.S. political issues; sometimes I am writing about feminism and academia; sometimes I am writing about American popular culture -- but through it all, just like you, I am who I am, and I know that that shapes the way that I see the world. It’s always useful to be attentive to our own and others’ perspectives, after all, so that we can learn from them.

Buying Lobster with Food Stamps As many as 20% of American households received food stamps, or what is officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), in recent years.

Full disclosure: My household, here in Maryland, is one of them. For the month of July, we received $97 (which constitutes just over $3 a day for a family of two) on our Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card – which is a debit card for folks who get SNAP and/or welfare. The SNAP part can only be used for items characterized as food at the grocery store. This includes everything from bags of M&Ms and bottles of Coke to steak and lobster. And that, some people believe, is a problem.

For years, various states have considered further restricting what SNAP can be used to purchase – namely, just “healthy” food. The problem with this – as already implied by my use of quotation marks there – is that the definition of what qualifies as healthy is certainly subject to debate. Some bags of chips, for instance – such as Terra vegetable chips – are, in my opinion, a healthy choice, and in this case a good way to get kids to eat some vegetables if they resist them in other forms. Some loaves of bread, such as Wonder bread, I believe, constitute nutritionally empty calories.

Restricting processed foods, though – as some have proposed – would probably eliminate both of those options as well as many generally healthy convenience foods such as lunch meat. Are we telling these folks that, unlike the rest of us, they must have the time and the supplies and the skills and the energy to prepare all of their family’s food from scratch?

A further problem, of course, is that it’s condescending and patronizing to tell poor families that, just because they don’t have a lot of money, we’re not going to let them make their own decisions about what to eat.

Also – my child doesn’t deserve to have a piece of candy or a bowl of ice cream once in a while too?

What century is this?!

But there is another side to this discussion as well. Not only do people complain of seeing SNAP recipients use their benefits to buy junk food, but they also rail against SNAP going to pay for more expensive choices, such as quality meats and seafood. That is, steak and lobster.

So let me get this straight: You don’t want me to buy bad food with my government benefits, but you don’t want me to buy good food either….

We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

Also: again – I don’t deserve to eat high-quality food just because I don’t make a lot of money? Are we saying that working class folks don’t get to have discerning tastes or high standards about what they eat, for health or taste reasons, like those who are middle or upper class do? Do we really want to enforce that?!

We don’t buy imitation syrup such as Aunt Jemima in our house – just real maple syrup, actually tapped from trees, which we use sparingly. We don’t buy “American cheese” because it is not real cheese. We don’t buy Sunny D because it is not 100% juice. We don’t even like those products and wouldn’t want them if they were offered to us for free because we have learned to have a taste for better things – real foods – instead of the fake ones. And, truly, that is what they are.

But, for that, I have been called a snob. I have been called “part of the problem” for cultivating such preferences and understanding in my son, which is apparently only a problem because I am doing it while receiving government benefits.

For instance, for some months I utilized sign-up discounts and free sample boxes from friends to try

I have been called “part of the problem” for cultivating such preferences and understanding in my son, which is apparently only a problem because I am doing it while receiving government benefits. some home recipe delivery services – such as plated and HelloFresh – and blogged about it publicly on my Facebook page, thus earning referrals and being able to afford more shipments. These services, if you don’t know, provide fresh ingredients in exactly the right quantities to prepare a quick healthy homemade meal. Nonetheless, a “friend” was disgusted that I was receiving food stamps and yet could afford to buy fresh ingredients as well. (Actually, I just put the steeply discounted purchases on a credit card. Obviously an adult and a 13-year-old boy can’t eat on just $97 a month, even with the couple of bags of food that we get from a food bank every month too. We have to supplement that somehow. I am resourceful and make do however I can.)

As I see it, I am saving the government and the insurance company money that won’t have to be spent on our health care since we are actually eating properly.

All humor aside, this is a feminist issue because it’s about whether everyone in our society retains even marginal access to the best that our society has to offer.

The best jobs. The best education. The best homes. And, I submit: the best food.

I say, let them eat cake.

words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough Raymond Biesinger

Social Mobility Class Structure etsy.com/shop/raymondbiesinger

words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough Michael Fischerkeller

Slaughter (Subprime Crisis) michaelfischerkeller.com

ClassPower BROAD Voice, BROAD Communities A.J. De Gala

J.D. Let me tell you about my buddy, J.D. J.D’s one of the coolest people I know. He just has this easy-going attitude about him that really gets you to put your guard down. Then he hits you with his patented smile, and suddenly you’re smiling too. Soon after that, maybe you talk a little bit more, and then boom: now you’re both really laughing, like you’ve been buddies for years, even if it’s only been a few months.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to talk to J.D in a while- I just haven’t had the chance. I’m usually pretty busy with my own school schedule, and I’m sure he’s got work that he needs to attend to. Y’see, J.D’s originally from the South- I think he mentioned once that it was Louisiana or someplace around there. He moved here cuz he was looking for a job to try and support his parents, who lived there. I miss being able to go out and talk to him, but he understands: he knows that life’s like that.

I do remember the last time I saw him, though. I was walking down to his place with a couple friends of mine- we were bringing hot dogs and hot choc, since it was still the winter. As we approached in the cold

evening air, we saw him with his roommates, hanging outside and talking. Some of them were laughing, and some of them were smoking cigarettes. We all kind of dispersed and began to mingle, and I found J.D. amongst this circle by the wall of his place. I asked him how he was doing, and he told me that he was doing alright. He was still looking for a job, but who isn’t? He then cracked a joke and I laughed so hard tears were coming to my eyes. I asked him if he had seen the recent Bulls game, and we got to talking about how close we were to winning that game. I remember I was getting kinda pissed because I thought we should’ve won it, but then he told me, “Don’t worry about it, kid: let ‘em gel a bit.” I nodded my head and left it at that.

By that time, my friends and I were all invited inside his place, and as my friends and I registered our names on the place’s sign-in sheet, J.D. and his roommates were gathering around their usual tables. They were large and circular, and were stationed pretty equidistantly from each other, which was a good thing for the 20-50 member place, since that meant they weren’t bumping into each other too much. I didn’t like coming

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to visit. I told him that we were the lucky ones, and we said goodbye. We signed out of the sign in sheet, and we ascended the stairs from the basement, leaving the homeless shelter and emerging into the cold night once more.

I might sound heartless for saying this, but I don’t pity J.D. I don’t even think that J.D. wants me to pity him.

But I do respect him, because in my eyes J.D. is a man that deserves respect. I’m not gonna sugarcoat anything: his life is hard. He’s doesn’t sugarcoat anything either, and he’s told me time and again that it’s a struggle. But he doesn’t let that hold him down. Every time he’s knocked down, he gets right back up and tries harder. I don’t pity J.D, and he’s certainly not below me; J.D is a greater man than me, and I respect him.

I’m sorry, I forgot to mention what his name was, didn’t I? J.D are obviously his initials: his full name is John Doe.

A/N: Hey everyone. I’d just like to put this disclaimer: JD isn’t a real person, and his story isn’t 100% true.

However, before you begin saying that this was all a lie, I’d like to say that while I didn’t base his exact story on a real one, JD’s story is similar to plenty of stories I’ve heard whenever I’ve talked to America’s Fourth Class. And I wasn’t lying when I said that whenever I’ve talked to JD, I am conscious of how lucky I am. I’m not saying our fellow Americans don’t need our help. It’s amazing; the people you’ll meet when you talk, and the stories you’ll hear when you listen.

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. . . how hard it was trying to find a place to stay and a job- and to this point, he still hadn’t found either. I wondered how hard that must be. Being the middle class kid with . . .

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down here as much as being up outside: the lights were kinda dim, and the whole place seemed pretty enclosed. Plus, with everyone splitting up into their own groups, you kinda had to either stick with one group the entire time, or split your time amongst a bunch of different groups, but I guess it’s better than spending all your time outside, where it’s cold. I sat with J.D. and a couple of other people, and we just talked a bit more for a few minutes.

Finally, someone stood up and offered to lead a prayer.

We were all silent as the guy made some remarks, and then he proceeded with a general prayer that we all Amen-ed to at the end. After that, someone else began handing out chores to do after dinner was served, and finally people got to line up for dinner. I was pretty good, and I knew my friends were pretty good too, so I told J.D that I’d just hang back at the table and wait for him to come back. He said alright and lined up. A couple of minutes later, he’s back with a full plate, and even though I gave him a hot dog and some hot choc earlier, he eats his plate pretty quickly.

After he’s done eating, he imparted some wisdom to me. He’d told me about how hard the move was from the South to Chicago the past few times I talked to him- besides adjusting to the weather, how hard it was trying to find a place to stay and a job- and to this point, he still hadn’t found either. I wondered how hard that must be. Being the middle class kid with a stable life and home and attending a prestigious Jesuit University, I had no idea how that must’ve felt.

I told him that, and I said that if I were in his shoes, I’d have lost at least some hope by now, since it had been months since he moved to Chicago. But that’s when he told me his secret: he doesn’t give up. Life is tough, he admitted, but he knew that he just had to deal with it.

To go out there, looking like the best version of himself, and just keep trying to find something. And when he comes back at night, to recharge, and try again the following morning. He then encouraged me, and told me not just to keep on my path, but to count my blessings for what I had, and to never stop working. And I’ll tell you right now, never am I ever more conscious of just how lucky I am to be in my position in life as when I talk to J.D, or visit his place and talk to his other roommates.

It was getting pretty late after that, and one of my friends told me that we needed to get out because they were going to begin rolling up the big tables and taking out the sleeping stuff- curfew was coming up, and it was soon to be lights out. I told J.D that I’d try to see him again soon, and he told me how much he and his roommates appreciated my friends and I coming

words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough LaOohLaLa Boutique

Vogue Cover laoohlalaboutique.etsy.com

DS

A MAD TE QUO ER N COR

tell-a-vision visions & revisions of our culture(s) I’m a redneck and I love America

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EN/ E R C S PLAY

K MAR K O BO E HER

COR E T QUO ER N

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Consider:

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EM SAG MES

1. What does it accomplish when a white man and a self-defined redneck speaks up against white privilege and ITING S I V calls for other white people to take “racial responsibility”? ITOR ED 2. Would it have been different if someone elseIDEhad attempted to deliver this message? Is that problematic that ADS criticism of white people is more effective BROcoming from one of their “own”?

GOT E’VE W IL we expect “rednecks” to be 3. At one point he commits a Freudian slip and conflates rednecks and racists.MADo E racist? Is that fair? Might it even propagate racism that we expect ANCa certain kind of white people to be bigots?

ADV 4. He refers to many systems as racist: health care, justice, real estate, etc. How are these systems racist?

O ICR

Link:

youtube.com/watch?v=JGJt0JXX05M

M ES AGR S N U H S

D A O BR

HEaRt The beating, beating, beating of this cerebral, female heart X. Cathexis

Awkward, Unspoken, & Bullshit Inequality Socioeconomic status and class were words I was lucky enough to be ignorant of for a long time. My earliest memory of feeling awkward about the amount of money my parents had (can we note how silly it is to care about something there’s no way you or even your parents could really help?) was elementary school. My dad’s car at the time was a tiny, red Honda Civic. I remember thinking about how low our car was to the ground and how small compared to everyone else’s - but that was it. In a 6-9 year old’s mind, thoughts are like wisps of cloud and almost as soon as I had formed the thought - the awkward feeling was gone. Lucky kids.

Fast-forward to middle school in a new state, at a new private school. My parents were still not driving Audis or BMWs, but suddenly there were one or two kids whose parents’ had even more old/beat-up cars than mine. My 11-14 year old mind was much more aware of my surroundings. Awkwardness was becoming the norm rather than the 2 second exception. Now as I waited to be picked up from the car line after school, I witnessed my classmates laughing and making fun of the kids with cars not as nice as mine. It was awful, but my reaction was equal parts pity for those kids as fear for myself.

Besides cars, kids were starting to judge each other for other things by then - clothes, school supplies,

shoes, and lunches. What the heck? Looking back on it, I’m struggling to figure out why it fucking mattered what other people ate/wore. Was it because none of us wanted to be that one kid that looked different from the rest? So we became obsessed with having the newest/same things as each other? Is it because we hadn’t lived long enough to have an identity other than the possessions we owned?

In high school, the judgement was more silent. By this point, the kids with the most money had become a friend group. Going to a catholic school with uniforms, we still judged each other based on shoes and the clothes we wore on “dress-up” days. How much money my parents wasted on nice clothes that turned out to be nothing like my style. Gross. But what’s really telling is not just that my classmates now drove their own Audis, BMWs, and Mercedes to school, but that there were the token few who (*gasp*) took the public bus to school. My high school teachers were so used to teaching some of the most privileged kids in the city that when these token students were late because of the bus-they were accidentally told off and belittled until the teacher realized they weren’t lying…

The pieces started to click together at the end of high school. I found out a few of the kids who took the bus also lived in the “ghetto” that bordered my

extremely nice neighborhood. Where I grew up, there was no Aldi and Whole Foods that divided the classes’ food shopping experience. There was Kroger, the monopoly grocery store, and the place where I always felt the most awkward. Straddling my nice neighborhood and the ghetto, every kind of person went there to shop and every kind of car parked in its lot. In my fancy church clothes, I stood out like a polished pearl in a pile of thumbtacks. I thought I was going to suffocate or burn to into a pile of ashes the first time a mother struggled to pay for her groceries with food stamps in front of me. I was mortified for this woman. How must she have been feeling?

My awkward feelings about class and power as I was growing up were similar to my awkward feelings about other issues of justice - that I was not even aware were issues of justice. When I took my first sociology class in college and started to learn names for all the things - the inequalities - that had made me feel so awkward growing up, I was forever changed.

What?! The fact that kids judge each other based on their possessions and what their parents get for them has been studied?? And its called the economy of dignity? Whether or not parents can afford to send their kid to summer camp, to play on sports team, or to learn an instrument greatly affects that kid’s ability

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS? THESE THINGS ARE SO IMPORTANT. to succeed in life?? And it has a name - concerted cultivation? HOLY CRAP. You mean the reason the kids who took the bus or had the worst cars were African-American and lived in the ghetto next to my neighborhood is because of decades of racist housing policies that decimated the amount of wealth African-American households had accumulated up to the 1950s?? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS? THESE THINGS ARE SO IMPORTANT. I felt awkward. I was becoming conscious of all the things that are wrong in our society. But I had to attend a university that costs $50,000 a year before someone mentioned it to me?! That’s fucked up.

I felt awkward. I was becoming conscious of all the things that are wrong in our society.

But I had to attend a university that costs $50,000 a year before someone mentioned it to me?! That’s fucked up.

I had to go further into my classes as a sociology major before someone dared to mention the name Karl Marx and that maybe communism isn’t the evil system American politicians (and everyone else who benefits from capitalism) make it out to be?! Also fucked up.

You mean the other 15,000 students attending my $50,000 LIBERAL ARTS, “JESUIT”, SOCIAL-JUSTICE LOVING university don’t even have to take a sociology class and MAY NEVER HAVE THESE CONCEPTS INTRODUCED TO THEM YET THEY ARE REQUIRED TO TAKE RELIGION CLASSES ABOUT SOME GUY’S LIFE BECAUSE HE PREACHED LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE (never mind that this university also won’t allow gay marriage in their chapel despite the student government’s attempts to overturn that)?!?!?!

WHAT FUCKING BULLSHIT And that, kids, is the story of how this 20 year old came to an existential crisis her second year at university realizing that she was wasting so much money on classes that are dumb as fuck while there are people out there who need help and whose plight she now knows the history of and reasons behind.

But what is the answer to all the awkward, unspoken, bullshit inequality in the world?

Is the answer buying the latest phone/TV to distract you from the awkwardness? Is it getting drunk every weekend and doing drugs to keep the crisis/guilt at bay? Is it making excuses that you’re not smart or talented enough to make the world a better place?

Nope nope nope nope nope.

So you were unaware of all the inequalities you have been contributing to/maintaining for a long long time. 1) That’s not ok and that’s why you’re going to get your ass up off of your literal or metaphorical couch and start thinking about what really matters.

New iphone or kid growing up a ghetto not being shot by police because he’s black? 2) Continue to educate yourself. Never stop learning about others’ lives and experiences. Why else are you alive?? Do you want to be 90 years old and realize you never talked to someone different from yourself? You can travel the world just by talking to strangers… 3) Educate others. We gotta raise awareness peeps. Nothing’s going to change - the awkwardness (at best) and suffering/death (at worst) is not going to stop unless more than just you and me know about all the bullshit out there. Are you about to whine that it’s too hard and there are so many other things you want to do? Then I hope I never have to meet you.

words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough William Holbrook Beard

His Majesty Receives

broadside poetry in street lit style Gabriela Natalia Valencia

Circadian Population

It is not that I was made for loving but that we were born in need, ks, and when light rises over the smoke stac the body stirs to make and make things out of itself if nature allows it.

. were born carrying e W y. rr ca to rn I was not bo ncies of my belly The imagined vaca es of skin hold as do the flak ves. ion against oursel ect ot pr r fo w se re our bodies

Know that when the hour comes that we were created by one another, that your father might have been my mother if the numbers fell into place, that your body might still be my body if one day we gather again somewhere in the earth or out.

It was more than the chance of feeling bigger or smaller than you were.

It was the rain and the other ancient cycles you thought you were apart from.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

“

quote corner

just words? just speeches?

Helen Keller

The world is not moved only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Until the great mass of people shall be filled with the sense

The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood and all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people.

So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

ClassPower BROAD Voice, BROAD Communities Jessica B. Burstrem

Why Donald Trump Makes the News About Every Topic I’ll give you a hint: It’s the title of this issue.

run. The alternative could be highly problematic.

The other day I was watching the news, and on came a story about the recent shooting outside the Marine base in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This was within 24 hours of the shooting itself, and the public was still getting information about exactly what had happened.

Suddenly, in the midst of the story, I was hearing Donald Trump’s name. What, I wondered, could he have to do with this story? Was he there? If not, how was a man who has never actually held a political office and is merely one of dozens running for the Republican nomination for the President – oh, and a wealthy man – getting his opinions on seemingly every subject into the nightly newscast? Is it really, as some say, just because America loves celebrities and scandal, and Trump seems to be very good, these days, at representing both? Or is it because this man just has lots of money, and thereby power, and so manages to get his voice heard whenever, wherever, and however he likes?

He’s un-American! my friend replied, only half-joking.

A Republican friend of mine, when I told him about Trump’s latest faux-pas – stating that Sen. John McCain of Arizona is not a hero just because he was a Prisoner of War (POW) during the Vietnam War – got upset and exclaimed, Why is he even allowed to run for President?! Can’t he be kicked out of the race?

No! I responded. That would be un-American!

After all, if you are eligible, you should be allowed to

Ah, but he is all too American, my friend. We may not totally fit the definition of a democracy (we don’t), but we are a capitalist nation. Money is power here, more and more, all the time.

I lived in Arizona from 2006-2014, before moving to Maryland, where I live now. And while there are many things wrong with politics in Arizona, one thing that was right – before the Supreme Court overturned it in 2011 – was its public financing of political campaigns, which allowed less well-funded candidates to afford equal airtime with their better-funded opponents; it thereby enabled candidates to reject private funding and the interference in the political process that can come with it and yet still be able to afford to run. This allowed less well-funded candidates to afford equal airtime with their better-funded opponents; it thereby enabled candidates to reject private funding and the interference in the political process that can come with it and yet still be able to afford to run. This effectively prevented political scandal for well over a decade in Arizona, where corruption had been all too common before, until it was overturned. (Why, you ask? Because it supposedly had a “cooling effect” on the wealthy candidates’ right to free speech. Apparently if I get to talk as much as you, then you don’t feel quite so free to talk quite so much, or some such nonsense. What can

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I say? It was a year after the infamous Citizens United decision, giving entities the same free speech rights as people in this country, and I don’t agree with that either.) In other words, it is now illegal for us as people to try to equalize the access to the media by equalizing campaign budgets.

Airtime, sadly, is not free. And if you can’t afford equal airtime, then studies show, you just won’t get elected.

Before the Sen. McCain remark, Trump was actually leading the polls among Republicans (see the Washington Post-ABC News poll results posted 20 July 2015.)

This could lead him to another opportunity to dominate the conversation as well, since historically only the ten frontrunners get to participate in the televised debates.

All that means that most of us are effectively not allowed to run for President. Meanwhile, the arguably least qualified candidate among all of those running for the Republican nomination? He’s the only one we can hear. That’s, I would guess, why he is leading in the polls. As one commentator aptly described it the other day, “He is sucking up all the air in the Republican Presidential race.”

Indeed, sometimes he does make it feel difficult for the rest of us to breathe.

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Trump, of course, doesn’t need any help.

Nonetheless, that doesn’t seem to stop him from crying. Loudly.

Everywhere I turn.

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or give up. Personally, I don’t like either result.

Trump, of course, doesn’t need any help. Nonetheless, that doesn’t seem to stop him from crying. Loudly.

Everywhere I turn.

Those who do have something to say, on the other hand – viable solutions, useful perspectives, well-researched information – them, I can’t hear at all.

Trump is thus actually making us more ignorant.

This isn’t just about unequal opportunities to hold public office either, though, although that is bad enough.

It’s about whose voices get heard altogether. If those with the most money are best able to be heard, then it stands to reason that those without will not.

I can’t resist the obvious joke: He might have power, but he doesn’t have class.

And if you can’t hear someone crying out for help, either they will have to get louder (with a gun, perhaps, as we have unfortunately also seen all too often of late)

Actually, we have made a start. I like the trend of American public opinion shutting down Trump’s access to the airwaves left and right. His projects have gotten blackballed because even the big media corporations have learned that Americans don’t like companies that support those who profess certain unacceptable, “un-American” opinions. If it’s not censorship to deny public funding to those of us less able to fund our own political campaigns, it’s certainly not censorship to take away private funding and private hosting of bigots’ television and radio shows. No one is preventing them from speaking.

We’re just not letting them use our megaphones.

When will we stop allowing power to folks like him, though, whose only claim to it is the ability to buy it?

The people still do have some power after all. Keep it up.

quote corner

“

just words? just speeches?

Frederick Douglass

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.

bookmark here find your next social justice text here BROAD Readers

Released: 1978

Genre:

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side sat down be “The woman , d him tightly e c ra b m e , him foreently on the e kissed him g e, softly on th c fa e th n o , head ill e that this w e eyes, ‘You’ll se een ill, no on b ’t n e v a h u pass, yo te to m one minu o fr d n li b s e go the next.’”

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erenarrative wh e u g la p n ia op to go ovel is a dyst ddenly begin su y it c d Saramago’s n e le m s of an unna d more peop n n e a iz it re c o e m s th A in ss. socionly whitene e blindness, it h w e th blind, seeing to r g, and powe ntry fall prey u in o c th o e n th s n ss a e ro ac oney m Inside structure. M st resources. o m e th to ety loses its cess to ith access ggle over ac s to those w ru g st n le lo p e o b e ed p , a group of icine. An arm d e Overview: m d n a r, a quarantine od, wate t these e, but it is no ” that essities like fo n c ss ti e e n n n c ra d a n si u li a q b b n e e power in th . Compassio mic of “whit s d e e n rl a id iz o p w se to e w d n ty e a n ri n li o y b b min ne the ve in the ntin“A city is hit orities confi lenes who thri se a small co e th o u l a u a c ss A in . e le e v m th li n ri o c ru to o e ere th a drive ir own spares n tions ether for the spital, but th another and g o ra e h n to d l o o d r ta n fo n a fo e g b n m li to the a e empty escriptions, this in characters d e captive, st a c n to m si o f a ss o ry b e e t n n v n it e e e v w s g e ulf bees and one eye ment hold en. There is Lacking nam ntually, the g them e l. m v g a o E n iv . w o ll rv a g m t a su in a lt e ed u s— e and assa ssed, is bridg g uld be anyon o o es her charg re c d p id a p rs u o g s, te e c d o n h ra ss a a la w ch dark g vileged ss is nightmare ss. Social cla and poor, pri proer, a girl with e h n ir c th d e ri o n th n li m e b d o e e n n a tw th h , force of d a way n streets a boy wit e equalizing manity to fin gh the barre dings are u th u n h u y ro g o b in th rr v a su — ve le e rs , a of te of dismantled nging narrati ncanny as th e ry ly u ll o e a s v st a h ti c s c ld e a e -o ff h m e e it o g c s the a e dark. W ht to the cession be dness reclaim embling horrors of rd through th ading, Saramago cuts rig n a li B rw s fo A . g ion in harrow es close re res the quest vivid and tr rc we lo o fo p th p x t s e a a e d h th k n it o a le v w y e e st aders erienc ed and a plague, it ry, leaving re e human exp gued by gre th by tu o la th n b p f e o c d d rl n rt th o u a e e o w ti h b a n s r ope fo the twe irit that’ ess. ther there’s h e human sp t Summae e th h k f c w o f Ja o n ell as blindn – io ” w . is s v th a g e n ic re erful st st ju g in d exhilaratin ds.com. a e R weakness an d o o G ry from

Inside R Out? White? Male? Feminist? YES. J. Curtis Main

Money Scares Me

But did you notice?

I do not have a good relationship with money. Rather, it is tense and difficult, and causes me great anxiety.

This may never change. My sibling Holly is the same way. We worry about money ALL the time.

Yet, if you look at our wealth, education, and access to shelter, food, water, healthcare, and other resources, you might say we appear out of touch with reality. We are white, American, able-bodied (almost), college educated, and have or have had decent careers with lower to middle class status.

So why does money make us nervous? Why does every dollar we spend, and yes, I mean every dollar, have to come with second-guessing, guilt, and worry?

Aside from our family’s tendencies toward anxiety and busy minds, our experiences growing up with money may forever keep us worried.

For example, I used to hate to ask for lunch money every morning before school. It was a chore. I would feel bad, as one of five kids, for putting my mother into a money-hunt half the time for a dollar and some change. Yes, there were many times where we had the money. But it was rarely if ever not a problem. Just writing this is bringing back memories that make me sad and upset, memories I have tried to bury.

I also used to despise clothes and shoes. So many other kids in school or in the neighborhood had new Jordans and nice jeans. I had hand-me downs from

my brothers that were old, worn, and out of style. We would get our clothes from Sears, on sale, and through credit. Maybe. This, too, was nerve-wrecking; we did not have the money for all of us to get sneakers and clothing for the new school year or when things were ill-fitting or worn out. I used to hate clothes and shoes.

I felt shamed.

There were constant emergencies with the power bill or cable bill. Our power was cut off on many occassions. Or was about to be. Or could be. Or should be. I remember so many bounced checks, overdraft charges, and defunct credit accounts as a kid and teen.

One distinct memory was at Kmart. Per usual, our father let us run around and look at all the nice new things, toys, and food. He did not care. We would fill up a cart, maybe even two. In this one occassion, specifically, there was no money in their checking account. So, in line, we went from so excited about all the stuff we were taking home to terrible embarassment as the cashier told us the check would not clear due to insufficient funds. We left a full cart.

But this happend often, especially at the grocery store.

Checks would not clear. We would have to put things back. Or just leave.

In my adult life, especially at Loyola, I have felt so very foreign and odd around folks from affluent backgrounds. This arises weekly if not daily regarding food

When I go to restaurants and bars, I cannot shake the server life. I know what goes into running a restaurant, and often, I don’t want to remember, so going out can elicit memories of this work. There are so many people who are used to spending so much money on food and beverages, almost daily. Perhaps they have had access to extra money, maybe their whole lives?

Just yesterday, I did not return a Redbox DVD and had it for two nights. I was mad at myself for wasting $1.50. Anytime I can save money, I try. Anytime I can

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And, it is not just about money. I spent 9 years serving and bartending food and beverages. Serving people conjours class power distinctions that are at times tough to swallow. People can be very mean and degrading, and since we worked for $2 an hour, we relied on tips, so no matter how cruel guests were, we had to put on a happy face to get paid (of course, 95% of the time, with no benefits). It was grueling work both in body and mind.

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Yet, really, it’s not a life I feel comfortable and confident doing. We did not eat out a lot growing up, and if we did, it was not fancy or expensive. Eating out costs a lot of money. Anytime people want to eat out or drink at bars or clubs, I immediately get uncomfortable and anxious and think about how expensive it is.

I worry. It is hard for me to enjoy being served.

This, too, was nerve-wrecking; we did not have the money for all of us to get sneakers and clothing for the new school year or when things were ill-fitting or worn out. I used to hate clothes and shoes. I felt shamed. srotidE + ofnI DAORB

and beverages. I will often tell people that I don’t like eating out because home cooking is healtier, which is often true. I also often tell people that I don’t like “drinking out” because, as a former bartender, I make great drinks at home.

spend money, I think of ways that I can not spend it.

There is not an on or off switch to my money concerns. There is immense guilt in buying nice things, especially new things. Yet at the same time, due to our country’s obesessions with wealth, fame, and material things, there is also immense shame in those of us who have not or do not have wealth.

My dear friend, Gaby, recently shared how people who cannot or almost cannot get by on their incomes and with their resources have a lot of added stress when it comes to spending money and making financial decisions. As if people with less resources need any more stress!

If you are lucky enough (and it’s SO MUCH about luck, not drive, intelligence, and work load) to have wealth and power, try and be more mindful of the folks around you carrying extra burdens regarding money.

Just because you can spend money on food, clothing, movies, entertainment, bars, and so on, does not mean people around you can as well. The playing field is neither equal nor equitable, and most if it has to do with keeping an elite class of people very rich. Do not forget this.

quote corner

“

just words? just speeches?

Saul Alinsky

The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by values that give meaning to life.

No politician can sit on a hot issue if you make it hot enough.

Always remember the first rule of power tactics; power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.

If people don’t think they have the power to solve their problems, they won’t even think about how to solve them.

The cry of the Have-Nots has never been “give us our hearts,” but always “get off our backs”; they ask not for love but for breathing space.

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NG ISITI aberrant 2. Does that explain why those vintage ads probably are Vnot for their time, and probably did not draw OR T EDI much negative feedback at the time either, even though it would today?

IDE ADS 3. What does it mean about power if a marketing company thinks that an effective BRO GOTway to sell something today is E’VE W to depict a sexualized “woman [who] looks like she doesn’t want it”? Do you agree MAIL that this approach only markets

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ANC ADV 4. Do you agree that it would be better if both the ICROman and the woman were depicted as sexualized in the shirt ad?

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ClassPower BROAD Voice, BROAD Communities Mandy Keelor

Marx’s Early Philosophy: Consequences of Species Being

The understanding of man as a species being is a key aspect of Karl Marx’s early philosophy on the crises of capitalism. According to Marx, man is a “species being” because he “treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being” (Tucker 75).

Marx’s life work is ultimately an attempt to reveal the economic conditions which have enslaved man and kept him from fulfilling his species being. In several works, Marx argues that the alienation and objectification of man’s life-activity or labor by capitalism, which has been a process of history itself, is the source of man and society’s state of crises.

Alienation in Marxist philosophy occurs when humans are removed from the abilities and resources which make them human. Marx writes of alienation occurring through the means of production and relations of production in capitalist societies. Workers, according to Marx, are alienated not only in their relationship to the products of

Rather than labor being the life-activity of the species being, labor exists outside of the worker as an external object that is alien to him (Tucker 72). This is incredibly important because while “...in the first place labour, life-activity, productive life itself, appears to man merely as a means of satisfying a need-the need to maintain the physical existence,” according to Marx in the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844”: Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species-its species character-is contained in the character of its life-activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species character. Life itself appears only as a means to life (76).

It does not matter whether the labor occurs in a factory or domestic service industry, the worker’s labor is forced and only a means to life-activity or subsistence rather than life-activity itself (Tucker 74).

The actual means of production, the division of labor which Marx observed in industrial society of the 19th century, is certainly one aspect of workers’ alienation.

However, workers’ relationships to one another are also estranged because of the division of labor, which results in man’s general alienation from man. Class consciousness, or man’s perspective of himself as a worker, becomes the only way man can establish a relationship with another man (Tucker 77). So man’s alienation from the product (means of production) and thus from himself and other humans (relations of production) is part of man’s estrangement from his species being under capitalism.

Objectification is the other aspect of man’s estrangement from species being. In the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844” Marx describes the objectification of labor as when “the product of labour

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While Marx, Hegel, and Fuerbach’s opinions on man’s alienation all differ, they all suggest that man’s alienation from himself makes him less human or keeps him from fulfilling the human state.

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Instead of their being realized [realisiert] in the production process as the conditions of its realization [Verwirklichung], what happens is quite the opposite: it comes out of the process as mere condition for their realization [Verwertung] and preservation as values for-themselves opposite living labour capacity.

The material on which it works is alien material; the instrument is likewise an alien instrument; its labour appears as a mere accessory to their substance and hence objectifies itself in things not belonging to it (253).

BROAD Info + Editors

BROAD Info + Editors

their labor but in the act of producing the product itself (Tucker 73). As Marx states in “The Grundrisse”:

is labour which has been congealed in an object, which has become material” (71). While it is natural for humans to create objects of expression, objectification under capitalism results in “object-bondage” or “loss of the object” (Tucker 72). As the worker creates more commodities, he becomes poorer and devalued.

Material objects (private property) increase in value not only on the world market but to the worker. In Marx’s words: With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity-and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally (Tucker 70).

Even though the commodity is the work of his own labor and expression, the commodity is able to be sold back to the worker in a capitalist system because it is alien to him. Private property, the property relations of capitalism, is thus both “the product of alienated labour” and “...the means by which labour alienates itself, the realization of this alienation” (Tucker 79).

Rather than the product of man’s labor being the expression or realization of himself, the product is the objectification of his labor and the alienation of himself. Marx argues at this point that, “Indeed, labour itself becomes an object which he can get hold of only with the greatest effort and with the most

irregular interruptions” (Tucker 72). It is actually the objectification of workers’ labor which enables the bourgeoisie to exploit labor continuously in the effort to sustain capitalism.

Of course, this objectification, with its inherent contradiction to man’s free state as species being, leads to crises of capital accumulation and thus the economic contradictions inherent to capitalism itself. Subsequently, man’s species being is objectified and estranged: what would have been the joy of life-activity, labor, becomes simply a means to subsistence and indeed the disadvantage of his species compared to other animals (Tucker 77).

BROAD Info + Editors

BROAD Info + Editors

Capitalist society, the society of inequality, will transform so that even the individual can negate the negative side of life and realize their positive potential, their species being.

BROAD Info + Editors

BROAD Info + Editors

In sum, Karl Marx suggests that the conditions of alienated and objectified labor which sustain industrial capitalism result in the dehumanization of man.

This dehumanization happens to both the bourgeoisie and proletariat, but is much more extreme for the latter. In “Alienation and Social Classes” Marx says: The possessing class and the proletarian class represent one and the same human self-alienation. But the former feels satisfied and affirmed in this self-alienation, experiences the alienation as a sign of its own power, and possess in it the appearance of a human existence. The latter, however, feels destroyed in this alienation, seeing in it its own impotence and the reality of an inhuman existence (133).

This dehumanization, man’s loss of his species being, occurs when the conditions of estranged labor (alienation and objectification) separate man from nature, and from himself. It results in man feeling free only while he exercises his “...animal functions - eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing up etc” (Tucker 74). In this way capitalism creates conditions which are intolerable to human life in many ways.

While Marx wrote about alienation and objectification of species being more than a century ago, his theories are still relevant to today. Modern pop culture is a great example of how species life and expression has been commodified and sold back to capitalist consumers not just in the U.S., but around the world. The white, male owners of the U.S.’s music industry have alienated the Black experience from hip-hop music, packaged it in harmful stereotypes, and sold it back to White, young adults since the 1980s. Instead of being primarly about self-expression, African-Americans today seek out hip-hop as a means to subsistence, not life-activity and expression itself.

Even street art, which just ten years ago was still an underground counter-culture, has been commodified for capitalism. Street art used to be appreciated for its spontaneity, temporary life, and quasi-legality. Today, however, it is common for buyers on the market push recreated street pieces’ prices into the millions of dollars just so their clients can enjoy a permanent piece of that artist in their home and claim that they have it for bragging rights. For street artists like Mr. Brainwash, a copycat of greater artists like Bansky and Shepard Fairey, the labor and expression has been about a means to get money from the beginning.

Mr. Brainwash is an interesting example because the objectification of his art has truly led him to a “loss of reality” in that many former friends, whom he lost because of a gross display of competitiveness (i.e. relations of production), think that he has gone crazy (Tucker 71).

Another example which should be brought up in regards to alienation and objectification today is education. I can’t think of a space in which the worker (student) and product (education) are more estranged except in low-wage industries. Relationships between students have deteriorated due to competition within a grading system that commodifies education itself.

Rather than the labor of learning being a life-activity and realization of self, students are alienated from learning through the division of education into numerical and alphabetical values which are impersonal and alien to students.

I would argue no generation has loathed the futility of college preparatory curriculum, which devalues critical thinking and human creativity in favor of academically-approved textbook answers, as much as the current one. Yet, our alienation becomes pleasurable when we do receive an ‘A’ grade and, as Marx predicts in “The Grundrisse,” thus the student “...who has become poorer by the life forces expended...otherwise begins the drudgery anew, existing as a mere subjective labour capacity separated from the conditions of its life” (254). The result is the internal contradiction of students going to school but not actually learning anything.

So the alienation and objectification of labor, the life-activity of man’s species being, is both the means and ends to capitalism because of its inherent contradictions. While Marx, Hegel, and Fuerbach’s opinions on man’s alienation all differ, they all suggest that man’s alienation from himself makes him less human or keeps him from fulfilling the human state.

In “Alienation and Social Class,” Marx predicts, from a dialectical materialism perspective, that “...this dehumanization which is conscious of itself as a dehumanization...hence abolishes itself” (134). According to Hegel’s work, contained within everything are seeds of opposing forces which in order to develop must

continue to negate one another until the full potential of the organism is realized. Thus the consequences of the alienation and objectification of man’s species being is that not only will man’s consciousness of his dehumanization negate itself, but the crises of accumulation will eventually negate the profits of capitalism.

Capitalist society, the society of inequality, will transform so that even the individual can negate the negative side of life and realize their positive potential, their species being. To Marx, workers’ alienation and objectification from their labor in capitalist society is crucial because it is indicative of man’s inability to fulfill his potential as a free species being. In the end, the point that one should draw from Marx’s theories of alienation, objectification, and their relationship to species being is that it is class inequality which keeps man from fulfilling his human potential.

Works Cited Tucker, Robert C. “Alienation and Social Classes.” The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Norton, 1978. 133-135. Print.

---. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Norton, 1978. 66-125. Print.

---. “The Grundrisse.” The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Norton, 1978. 221-293. Print.

message me we asked. you answered.

BROAD people

BROAD August 2015

Yes, it’s called greed.

I wouldn’t know!

Yes if it was taken from others who do not have enough.

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Is there such thing as having too much wealth?

Aren’t there statistics that show the really rich are less happy?

Not if it’s measured in love, happiness, and community!

Does ANYONE really need to have billions of dollars? How did they get it? Are other people in need when they have that much and don’t share?

BROAD Info + Editors

Yeah, of course. I think it leads people to selfishness and mistreatment of others.

words are useless sometimes words aren’t enough Michael Fischerkeller

Indifference (The Wealth Gap) michaelfischerkeller.com

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(a) promotes justice in openhanded and generous ways to ensure freedom of inquiry, the pursuit of truth and care for others. (b) is made possible through value-based leadership that ensures a consistent focus on personal integrity, ethical behavior, and the appropriate balance between justice and fairness. (c) focuses on global awareness by demonstrating an understanding that the world’s people and societies are interrelated and interdependent.

EXPECTATIONS & SPECIFICS: • You may request to identify yourself by name, alias, or as “anonymous” for publication in the digest. For reasons of accountability, the staff must know who you are, first and last name plus email address.

• We promote accountability of our contributors, and prefer your real name and your preferred title (i.e., Maruka Hernandez, CTA Operations Director, 34 years old, mother of 4; or J. Curtis Main, Loyola graduate student in WSGS, white, 27 years old), but understand, in terms of safety, privacy, and controversy, if you desire limitations. We are happy to publish imagery of you along with your submission, at our discretion.

• We gladly accept submission of varying length- from a quick comment to several pages. Comments may be reserved for a special “feedback” section. In order to process and include a submission for a particular issue, please send your submission at least two days prior to the desired publication date.

• Please include a short statement of context when submitting imagery, audio, and video.

• We appreciate various styles of scholarship; the best work reveals thoughtfulness, insight, and fresh perspectives.

• Such submissions should be clear, concise, and impactful. We aim to be socially conscious and inclusive of various cultures, identities, opinions, and lifestyles.

• As a product of the support and resources of Loyola University and its Women Studies and Gender Studies department, all contributors must be respectful of the origin of the magazine; this can be accomplished in part by ensuring that each article is part of an open discourse rather than an exclusive manifesto.

• All articles must have some clear connection to the mission of the magazine. It may be helpful to provide a sentence or two describing how your article fits into the magazine as a whole.

• The writing must be the original work of the author and may be personal, theoretical, or a combination of the two. When quoting or using the ideas of others, it must be properly quoted and annotated. Please fact-check your work and double-check any quotes, allusions and references. When referencing members of Loyola and the surrounding community, an effort should be made to allow each person to review the section of the article that involves them to allow for fairness and accuracy.

• Gratuitous use of expletives and other inflammatory or degrading words and imagery may be censored if it does not fit with the overall message of the article or magazine. We do not wish to edit content, but if we feel we must insist on changes other than fixing typos and grammar, we will do so with the intent that it does not compromise the author’s original message. If no compromise can be made, the editor reserves the right not to publish an article.

• All articles are assumed to be the opinion of the contributor and not necessarily a reflection of the views of Loyola University Chicago.

We very much look forward to your submissions and your contribution to our overall mission.

Please send your submissions with a title and short bio to Broad People through broad.luc@gmail.com.