Fall Issue 2015
NEWSLETTER

The White Working Class Roundtable Newsletter is a bi-monthly publication that provides information and discussion about the white working class--a critical group in American politics and society.

 

The Newsletter is a project of the Democratic Strategist. Its goal is to assist Democrats to reach out and regain the support of this once Democratic constituency.

 

Each issue of the newsletter will highlight new and significant articles, polls and other sources of information regarding the white working class, focusing particularly on materials that discuss and evaluate strategies Democrats can employ to gain greater support from this still-critical electoral force.

 

In the coming months the Newsletter will also plan an ongoing series of original roundtable discussions among leading Democratic strategists and thinkers. These discussions will follow on the June 6th Roundtable on Progressives and the White Working Class that was organized in coordination with the Washington Monthly and the Democratic Strategist. That online roundtable gathered the largest group of top experts since the Reagan era to share ideas in this area.

 

We look forward to your interest and active participation in our work. You can subscribe to the Newsletter below. 

Read the Book
The book very dramatically shows:

That white workers remain a critical swing group in American politics.

Dear Readers,

The most dramatic development in the 2016 election campaign has been the rise of Donald Trump and the tremendous popularity he has achieved among white working class Americans. As Ron Brownstein notes: "Trump is displaying a striking strength among the Republican Party's growing ranks of [white] working class voters, The billionaire developer is building a blue-collar foundation."

This development has profoundly transformed the outlook for the 2016 elections and made the unexpected political volatility of white workers the most complex and important trend in American politics.

The White Working Class Roundtable is therefore pleased to present a thoughtful new Strategy Memo that considers the tremendous implications of this change.

You can read the memo HERE.

We are also pleased to offer the Fall edition of the White Working Class Roundtable Newsletter. This new edition includes around-up of significant new articles about labor and the white working class and book reviews and discussions about a number of recent books on this subject.

We believe you will find both the Strategy Memo and the Newsletter useful and important.

Ed Kilgore
Andrew Levison
Coordinators, The White Working Class Roundtable
Two important reports on African-Americans, Latinos and labor

Black Lives Matter at Work: New Report Offers Resources for Labor Activists To Fight White Supremacy  
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Report from the The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA): "Latino Workers and Unions: A Strategic Partnership for America's Progress"  
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Recent Articles about Labor
  
The Cost of a Decline in Unions
 
Larry Summers: Stronger unions must be part of the national agenda
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Labor rides a building backlash  
On Labor Day, a look at the state of the unions  
 
Little to Celebrate on Labor Day  
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How the NLRB Just Radically Changed Labor Relations 
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How to Get Low-Wage Workers Into the Middle Class 
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Going Beyond Labor's Limitations: Larry Cohen Reflects on His Time as a Progressive Union President
 
 
Why Unions Win When They Win 

The List of the Fight for $15's Victories-Tangible and Intangible-Is Getting Longer
 
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Two important books about the white working class 
Reviews and discussion about Andrew Cherlin's Labor's Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America and Richard Putnam's Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis.

The Real Story of the American Family: Two new books explain how rising inequality shattered the working-class family of the mid-20th century 
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Left Out 
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Immobile in America: Robert Putnam marshals the evidence that class is eclipsing race as our central source of inequality, and killing the American Dream.  
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The Death of American Unions Is Killing American Marriage  
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Putnam's Poignant Folly: Empathetic Blaming 
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Op Ed by Richard Cherlin - the missing working class
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Articles about growing class distinctions in America that are related to the Cherlin and Putnam books

The dangerous separation of the American upper middle class
 
Not just the 1%: Upper middle class income separation
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America's new aristocracy: As the importance of intellectual capital grows, privilege has become increasingly heritable
 
Is a Hard Life Inherited?
Other books about the white working class

The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It
 
Class Lives: Stories from across Our Economic Divide
 
Boom, Bust, Exodus: The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
 
The Power of the Past: Understanding Cross-Class Marriages
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For richer or poorer: The challenges of marrying outside your class
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New Labor in New York: Precarious Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement   
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Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty  
Read More... 
Upcoming Conference on the Working Class

HOW CLASS WORKS - 2016

The Center for Study of Working Class Life is pleased to announce the How Class Works - 2016 Conference, to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, June 9-11, 2016