After a recent Real Change Listening Circle we convened at Seattle University (SU), an older female participant described the essence of these experiences: “People are speaking at a much more personal level than people ever could to strangers.” She acknowledged she had “an older black man on my one side and a young undergraduate student on my other side. Why would they, why would people in those circumstances … come across somebody like me and tell me these intimate things?”
Listening circles gather diverse groups of people to talk about issues of class and economic inequality. The focus is on personal stories and experiences. In this particular group, we had 13 people: three Real Change vendors, two donors, two SU students, a couple of Real Change volunteers and several members of the community. For three hours we shared our direct experiences of classism and of class privilege and the assumptions we made about people across the class spectrum. The listening circle embodies a core principle of Real Change: Building an effective movement for economic justice hinges on our ability to transcend our differences and work for a common cause.
These events create a felt experience of the impact of economic inequality and vulnerability. Said one participant: “The stories that participants told and heard during the listening circle augmented my notion of the injustice of the society I live in.” He continued, “It’s so depressing, but then it’s so encouraging. I’m always admiring when people of a lower-end or oppressed class are willing to listen to other people who are of a higher rank in this stratification we’ve set up... I’m just always in awe of that.”
I know from personal experience that cross-class dialogues are meaningful to those of us with privilege. We tend to take away a sense of connection and the inspiration to fight for change. One of our participants, a middle-class community organizer, said it well: “Stories engage us, stories change us ... Connecting with other people, with their stories, that’s what fuels activism.” But what is the benefit of these conversations for the people at the lower end of the class spectrum? If their presence serves only to benefit those of us with class privilege, then the whole experience seems hollow.
In follow-up interviews with participants, we sought out vendors and other low-income participants, seeking to learn about their experiences of the listening circles. What we heard was affirming. One low-income participant said, “At the center, everybody needs something, those same basic needs. It’s easier to connect to people when we see that they are similar to us.”
A Real Change vendor echoed this sentiment, saying, “I am developing cross-class relationships every single day — but [class] is something that we don’t openly talk about. There’s a lot of fear; people are afraid to reach out to different classes, or don’t know how... It’s hopeful that people just came out to do [the listening circle] because they cared.”
By expanding our appreciation for differences in class background and position, we can lessen misunderstandings and tensions in mixed-class organizations and movements.