Jack, I grew up trying to make it as a musician doing blue collar jobs without growing up with much money, a trust fund, school scholarships or an upper middle class background which means I had to learn to live on less, my mother and father ravaged by the Depression of '29 and guess what, here we go again.

I worked in industry, a paper plant, a hospital orderly, cleared fields of weeds as a part time hire, was a box boy, in the stock room of department stores, and finally found that I could supplement my music by teaching. I had blisters on my hands from work. Never made a lot of money but understood the plight of the working-class through personal experience.

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of my heroes as this country "nickels and dimes" us through their greedy selfishness. John Boehner may cry about his humble beginnings but he has turned his back on those who come up the hard way.

I guess the point of this thread is to ask if those who advocate for working-class America have experienced any of the hardships that they are now and have formerly gone through.
Those of us who have not have everything handed to them support unions and the rights of workers. I think that this is an important aspect of the power of the folk music revival.
It motivated Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and so many others to dig into this music and find its humanitarian roots.

Labor movements in the US are an ignored but crucial insight into our history. The gains by the IWW, the Knights of Labor, the early AFL/CIO, NMUA, and now AFSCME and SEIU are part of what makes this country what it has become and now Republicans are starting to destroy and dismantle democracy. If you think that the Republicans are on the side of working class Americans, you are sadly deluded.

There is a class war in this country and working America didn't start it.