#LaborTalks: America Unaffordable – a Conversation with Alissa Quart

“Middle class” is perhaps America’s most cherished identity. For several decades, however, stagnant wages, downsizing, and the increase of temporary work have steadily eroded the purchasing power and living standards of the broad swath of Americans typically defined as middle class. What are the underlying forces and policies that have made “middle-class” living increasingly unattainable or unsustainable?

In #LaborTalks: America Unaffordable – a Conversation with Alissa Quart, Alissa Quart, author of Squeezed: Why our Families Can’t Afford America, will join BISR faculty Suzanne Schneider for a wide-ranging conversation about ideologies of class, changing costs of living, causes of “middle-class” decline, and solutions to the pervasive problem of precarity. How, historically, has “middle class” been constructed notionally and statistically; and what does extreme inequality mean for American perceptions, and self-perceptions, of class? What can be done to reverse the steady decline in the American standard of living?

The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP below. #LaborTalks is co-presented by The Workmen’s Circle, The Sidney Hillman Foundation, Union Communication Services, Dissent Magazine, the Jewish Labor Committee, the DSA Jewish Solidarity Caucus, and The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. A reception will follow the talk.

Participants

• Alissa Quart

  Alissa Quart is the author of four non-fiction books. She also writes the Outclassed column for The Guardian. Alissa’s latest non-fiction book, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, was published by Ecco/HarperCollins in June of 2018. The book has appeared on the top ten and best forthcoming books lists’ of Publishers Weekly, The Week, Library Journal and Nylon. Alissa is the Executive Editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a non-profit devoted to commissioning, editing and placing reportage about inequality. She co-founded its current incarnation with Barbara Ehrenreich. You can hear Alissa talking about her work and her ideas here and here. She is a 2018 Columbia Journalism School Alumna of the year. She has also been a Nieman fellow, an Emmy-nominated video writer and producer,  and a professor. She lives with her husband, her young daughter, and their hamster.

• Suzanne Schneider

  Suzanne Schneider is Executive Director and Core Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, specializing in political theory and history of the modern Middle East. She is the author of Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine and The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism. Her writing about contemporary politics, religion, and violence has appeared in New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, n+1, and Jewish Currents among other outlets. She is currently working on a new book about the history and politics of risk.

Event Schedule

Thursday, 6:30-9:00pm
December 13, 2018

$0.00

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