Description
"It's not your father's working class anymore. It's more female, more diverse racially, and it doesn't wear Carhartt's and a hard hat anymore. Sleeping Giant is the first major examination of this dynamic and increasingly activist class and the role it will play in our political and economic future. What does "working class" mean in today's America? Today's workers don't just man the assembly lines. They watch our children and aging parents, park our cars, screen our luggage, clean our offices and hotel rooms, cook our take-out meals and stock our store shelves. And they are blacker, browner, and more female than the old working class. They are not as organized, in terms of their unions and political clout, but they are demographically powerful and are awakening to that power. The new working class is indeed a "sleeping giant," and Tamara Draut will blend up-close-and-personal individual narratives with historical background and sophisticated analysis to explain how they are about to change America for the better"--
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REVISED AND UPDATED WITH A NEW PREFACEToday’s working class is a sleeping giant. And as Tamara Draut makes abundantly clear, it is just now waking up to its untapped political power. Sleeping Giant is the first major examination of the new working class and the role it will play in our economic and political future. Blending moving individual narratives, historical background, and sophisticated analysis, Draut forcefully argues that this newly energized class is far along in the process of changing America for the better.Draut examines the legacy of exclusion based on race and gender that contributes to the invisibility of the new working class, despite their entwinement in everyone’s day-to-day life. No longer confined to the assembly line, today’s working class watches our children and cares for our parents. They park our cars, screen our luggage, clean our offices, and cook and serve our meals. They are us. With “Fight for $15” minimum-wage protests popping up throughout the country (and in some places winning) and economic inequality being recognized as one of the defining issues of our time, today’s working class will soon become impossible to ignore and foolish to dismiss. Sleeping Giant is the first book to tell the story of this extraordinary transformation in full and inspiring detail.
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