Joan Walsh on College Educated Progressives' Prejudice Against the White Working Class

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http://www.alternet.org/joan-walsh-college-educated-progressives-prejudice-against-white-working-class




Joan Walsh, the former editor of Salon (and now editor at large), has in recent years become the go-to MSNBC commentator on working class issues. Born into an Irish middle class family in New York, she offers a personal and analytical perspective on why so many white working class families defected from the Democratic Party. Her viewpoint on blue collar politics is insightful at a time that the progressive movement is still wrestling with how to rebuild the New Deal coalition in a contemporary format.

Mark Karlin: What happened to the high school educated worker, who polls show vote in significant numbers for Republicans, even though the GOP economic policies are damaging to them? Did the Democrats abandon them, or did they abandon the Democrats? You argue that many voted for Obama, but still the siren song of the GOP has been luring this swing group for decades now.

Joan Walsh: I think it's important to remember this group did support Obama at higher rates than they did John Kerry or Al Gore. So they're not all hopelessly lost to the Democrats. But I think the obstructionism of Republicans, combined with the president's seeming more concerned about the banks than the banks' victims, left a lot of them disappointed, so they swung to the GOP hugely in 2010.

Mark Karlin: One of your most interesting personal anecdotes is your recollection of the hard hat rebellion in New York during an anti-Vietnam War protest decades ago. Can you recount the actual background to that incident (which represented a similar backlash in other cities) and what it represented?

[Iggy]

1. Important Topic

particularly given what I saw on several "progressive" blogs regarding the recent (still unresolved)
teacher's strike in Chicago.

"liberals" on these blogs were totally aping GOP/one percent talking points: "teacher's don't deserve to make
more money... teacher's are greedy.. treacher's don't need unions".

WTF?!

when I mentioned upper management in schools-- superintendents, can make $150,000 and well upward, many
commented "that's not that much.. or sounds about right".

thus it appears upper management people working in our schools systems "deserve" $300,000 per year
salary-- but teacher's actually working in the trenches.. teaching the kids of crack addicts/prostitutes.. they
don't deserve $70,000 per year??

uhhhh....