FROM THE BARRICADES FOR AUGUST 8/14/2007

Posted by Jon Pike Aug 14, 2009

I have to write this blog post in honor of Barbara Ehrenreich. When the foreclosure crisis first hit, she observed in a column, that people had, at one time in this country, offered physical resistance to foreclosure of people's home. She was lamenting that this was not happening. SOme of her books, especially, the under-rated, Bait and Swith demonstrate this. I call Bait and Swith underrated, because Nickeled and Dimed, gets all the love. The latter is about the alarmingly high cost of being poor in America. As a heavily-industrialized country, being poor is surprisingly, expensive. We have all sorts of things built into our economikc system that make climbing out of poverty, difficult.

The former book is about the decimation of the middle manangement in this country. It's very easy to hate middle management, becsause, when things are going well for them, they tend to look down their noses at others. Trust me, I lived in a city that had an insurance company with a large middle-management corps. Their children were near impossible to abide. But, the upshot of her book is that middle management, maybe more than the poor, are brought up to think that poverty, or any economic reversal is their fault and their fault alone. They are taught to be ashamed of economic reversal when it happens to them. In times of crisis, it's everyone for themselves and their is no class solidarity.

As the Rosemary Williams case shows, their is class solidarity forming at the lower reaches. Their are people still fighting foreclosure of property. Those who are helping Rosemary, have little of their own, yet, they are making common cause.

What will be interesting to see, is if the middle management hit by the foreclosure ciris ever get to the state where they fight foreclosure together and with the the poor. The one thing they have in common with the poor, is that they are not on the top. There are people above them. Will they come to think of themselves as part fo a collective? We will know there is a sea change over how we look at economic reversals when we see the middle class fighting foreclosure as the poor are just starting to do now.