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Keywords: Working Class

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Biden's middle class in a divided America

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 November 2020
    9 Comments

    The priority given to the middle class was not new — Biden stressed it in speeches through the primaries and again as a candidate. And it is no doubt important. But when seen in the light of the passionate polarisation of the campaign, the closeness of the results, and the continuing mutual antipathy of the supporters of each party, rebuilding the middle class seems an unlikely source of healing.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The sunroom monk's cell

    • Rodney Wetherell
    • 01 September 2020
    5 Comments

    While I was musing I heard scratching noises, faint, bothersome, at the mind’s edge, rather like mice nibbling and scuttling, or polter-somethings working through the ceiling. Then my nostrils tingled — hints of a smell, or one remembered or imagined.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why COVID's got me crying in the shower

    • Fernanda Fain-Binda
    • 06 August 2020
    5 Comments

    The Stage Four lockdown announced by Daniel Andrews on Sunday shows how precarious it is for working mothers. When the going gets tough; our jobs outside the home are expendable.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grounded

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 20 April 2020
    7 Comments

    So rapidly have I adapted to this surreal existence in which we now find ourselves, the sound which was once an inseparable part of my morning routine — jets announcing the dawn as they droned overhead — has now become disturbingly anachronistic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Let's not snap back but spring forward

    • John Falzon
    • 10 April 2020
    25 Comments

    Already the ideological die-hards of neoliberalism are working out how the pandemic might be manipulated to lower wages and to snap back to the old economic normal. So now is when collectively we need to take over the framing and the forming of the future. Not to snap back but to spring forward.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Home is where the work is

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 19 March 2020
    4 Comments

    Overnight, my workplace has doubled in size. This once quiet space, filled with just the click-clacking of a keyboard and the occasional waft of classical music, now rumbles with the sound of my husband’s voice. He goes from one call to the next, discussing spreadsheets and renewals, holding conference calls and informal chats and performance reviews.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Solidarity in the face of a neoliberal inferno

    • John Falzon
    • 03 March 2020
    27 Comments

    The Morrison government despises the working class. There is no other explanation for its behaviour. For all the ‘lifters and leaners’ or ‘workers and shirkers’ guff that we’ve seen over the years from this and past governments, the truth is that, according to the neoliberal worldview, whether you’re in paid work or on social security, you’re despised unless you belong to its own big money elite.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Family diversity brings new reasons to feast

    • Amy Thunig
    • 08 June 2018
    4 Comments

    While we now lived in a less ethnically diverse region, our working-class, Indigenous Australian family grew more diverse. I was 12 when my sister Jay began to express an interest in Islam. That Christmas it was decided that to be more inclusive of her faith, the leg of ham would be taken off of the lunch menu. I raged against this decision.

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  • PODCAST

    Clare O'Neil on growth, fairness and power

    • Podcast
    • 08 March 2018
    2 Comments

    The persistent gap between the rich and the poor has left many people disillusioned about how the economy and governments function. What does growth mean under these circumstances? Is it still useful to talk about a working class? In this interview Labor MP Clare O'Neil takes on these questions and the policy questions they bear.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Lessons for ALP in UK Labour fightback

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 09 June 2017
    17 Comments

    When Corbyn invoked the many against the few, he did so while advocating free education, the renationalisation of utilities and a break from the US alliance. By contrast, Blair coined the phrase in a speech where he urged listeners to put behind them 'the bitter political struggles of left and right that have torn our country apart for too many decades. Many of these conflicts have no relevance whatsoever to the modern world - public versus private, bosses versus workers, middle class versus working class.' We all know which version sits closer to Shorten's heart.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A life in song for the working class

    • Tony Smith
    • 22 March 2017
    4 Comments

    Danny sang of farm labourers, poachers, mariners, union martyrs and miners. He did not simply perform the songs - that would be too much like exploiting them. His aim was to help preserve them. When he introduced a song it was clear that he had great respect for the tradition in which he fitted and that he had done extensive research into the song's provenance. The songs were important because of how they recorded aspects of working class life which mainstream histories might neglect.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump, masculinity and class

    • Colin Long
    • 10 February 2017
    15 Comments

    Much commentary on Trump's victory has veered between two explanations: either there is large proportion of the electorate with 'deplorable' attitudes to women and minorities; or economic dislocation has produced an angry white working class eager to punish political elites. These explanations are not mutually exclusive. The willingness to ignore or welcome Trump's misogyny is a symptom of the undermining of a deep sense of masculinity that, for some men, is their primary identity.

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