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Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying… We’ve shopped till we dropped alright, face down on the floor.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

People Roles Unique
It’s even occurred to me, as a teeny little subversive whisper of a thought, that if we stop mowing the lawn right now, it will probably be a long, long time before the yard gets overrun by lions and snakes.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Long Snakes Yards
we are reaching the point, if we have not passed it already, where the largest public housing program in America will be our penitentiary system.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Country Pass Prison Program Reach
There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Courage Difference Positive Thinking
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Patriotic Peace War
To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Expectations Police Poverty
Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Roles Sharks Taken
Warriors make wars, but it is also true that, in what has so far been an endless reproductive cycle, war makes warriors.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Endless War Warrior
Like many other women, I could not understand why every man who changed a diaper has felt impelled, in recent years, to write a book about it.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Book Men Writing
The urge to transform one’s appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress.” –Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets, 260.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Dancing Perfect Powerful
The fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Men People Sex
Consider the standard two-person married couple. … They will share a VCR, a microwave, etc. This is not a matter of ideology or even personal inclination. It is practically the definition of marriage. Marriage is socialism among two people.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Couple Ideology Married Two
We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles…bot h of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

First Positive Thinking Struggle
Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that’s when you get into selling the house.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Absurd Health House Job Jobs Once Support
Of all the nasty outcomes predicted for women’s liberation… none was more alarming, from a feminist point of view, than the suggestion that women would eventually become just like men.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Feminist Men Views
If there is no God or no evidence of God and certainly no evidence of a very morally engaged god, then whatever has to be done has to be done by us.
BARBARA EHRENREICH

Atheism Done Evidence God

Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

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Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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