Bridging The Class Divide

A progressive from a working class background, in Bridging the Class Divide, author Lind Stout (1996) provides an account of how middle-class activists may be unaware that the contribute to the class divide that occurs within current social change movements. Stout comes from a working-class background in North Carolina. After years of hardship, struggle, and achievement, she eventually became one of the founders of the Piedmont Peace Project (PPP), a group that has enabled marginalized working-class people to have a voice in change while attempting to bridge the class divide. In Bridging the Class Divide, the author outlines her vision for the future in the Introduction. In this vision she hopes for pollution-free air and water, equality for all individuals of all groups and classes, and a variety of other progressive ideas that are truly inclusive of all Americans.

In Chapter One, Growing Up Poor, the author describes her childhood and upbringing in the south. Her parents were so poor that a near-fatal car accident leaves then without recourse against the driver that hit them. So, too, her mother's leg is amputated in the crudest manner and leaves her with lifelong pain and disability. From these origins, Stout (1996) learned from her Quaker surroundings and upbringing that "not one of us could be free until all people could be free," (27). In Becoming an Activist, Chapter Two, Stout describes her involvement in various movements like the

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