How the left can get its mojo back: Listen to working-class people of faith

I have provided career and life coaching advice to thousands of working-class students and adults over the years. If there is one truism I have found in all these interactions, here it is: People want, and need, to feel heard more than to be helped.

When things were hectic in my office as an academic counselor at North Shore Community College, I would joke with the students that if they gave me 10 minutes, I could change their lives. At times, it actually worked. The formula was intensive listening for seven minutes, and then three minutes of guided questions that pushed the student toward the path they already wanted, but needed permission to pursue. I saw and heard those students; I listened and showed love and acceptance. Given that, a person can feel capable of doing anything.

At the moment, the political left seems lost. It has lost power at every level of government and lost traction in culture and even the media. Everyone is trying to figure out what happened in the wake of the November election and what needs to be done to getting this country back on track. My advice is simple. Listen to the working-class people who are struggling, especially the folks at the bottom of the economic ladder, and even more specifically working-class people of faith. For all his hypocrisy and all his flaws, Donald Trump knew how to listen. Most liberals don’t.

The working-class people of faith I’m talking about are blue-collar folks of all races, colors and backgrounds who tend to believe in something bigger than themselves. They have been drifting further right ever since Trump came into the picture, while the left, as I see it, has lost touch with what the Democratic Party used to stand for in word and deed. Contemporary liberals seem baffled that they’re losing working-class people of faith to Trump. I am not confused by it, and neither is anyone else who is struggling at the bottom of the ladder. It is time to listen, and let me help by telling the stories of a few people who have come across my path and who are losing their faith in the liberal perspective and what they perceive as the political, cultural and media elite.

The first comes from my experience teaching in an inner-city middle school. The students were about 90% Latino, mostly first-generation immigrants and nearly all low-income. Many of the parents were undocumented, and some students were as well. Most of the involved parents I met were working at least two jobs, and were desperate for their kids to be safe at school and receive a quality education. Many were also members of conservative evangelical churches that taught a highly traditional understanding of family values that many liberals would view as backward or retrograde. Although most students in the district were reading well below grade level, there was a widespread perception that the system was teaching a progressive philosophy that felt like an attack on many families’ personal and religious views. 

Then there was the violence, which was at a level beyond what anyone can understand if you weren’t there. There was at least one violent altercation every single week. Violent threats against teachers and students happened every day. One large male student of mine punched a girl in the hallway, knocking her over into two other young girls. He stood over the three girls and said, “That’s what you b**ches get for picking on me.” I sent the student to the principal’s office, expecting not to see him for a few days. Instead, he was back in the classroom within an hour. When I protested, I was told that he had “properly processed” his feelings. In other words, the message seemed to be that as long as your abusive and belligerent male has a good reason to be angry, physical abuse should be tolerated and forgiven.  

Most of the teachers and administrators at this school were white liberals who came from privileged backgrounds, and had little in common with our students. These administrators felt that certain words were deeply offensive acts of violent, but actual violent assaults were less serious and could be tolerated. As I perceived it, and as many parents perceived, they were not providing the students with proper education or safety, all while ignoring or undermining the families’ cultural, spiritual and educational beliefs. Given those circumstances, why would we be surprised that these poor or working-class Hispanic voters were drifting away from the liberal perspective? The only Hispanic administrator I knew at the school told me that she felt ignored and overlooked. She eventually left. 

More recently, I worked for a while with a recruiter at a small company in Boston. He was let go last year, although he commuted up to three hours a day and rarely missed a day of work. He arrived at the office early and was often the last person to leave. He believed in hard work, but more than that, as a matter of pride and integrity he wanted to find candidates who would represent the company well. After this small company was bought out by a larger one that only cared about its bottom line, that kind of integrity became problematic. My friend was let go and the company started hiring people with little to no vetting. Retention plummeted, and the company lost its internal culture while reaping large profits for its owners and investors.

My friend was simply in the way of all that. He has been unemployed for the last year and is likely to lose his apartment. Now, he’s a person of strong liberal convictions who says he would never vote for Trump — but he told me that when Election Day came, he understood the desire. Many people like him who felt overlooked, ignored and hurt turned dark and cynical. My friend still voted for Kamala Harris but he wasn’t surprised that Trump won. He felt no hope that his luck would change or his story would be told. 

A couple of years earlier, at the same company (which shall not be named here), I worked with an operations manager who became one of my favorite people in the world. She was another first-to-arrive, last-to-leave type, always willing to take on work that had nothing to do with her job to make herself more valuable to the company. Everybody that met her loved her; she was honest, hard-working and kind, in that rare way that makes you believe in human possibility. She was a single mother to two boys and the primary caregiver to her mother. She too fell victim to the buyout I mentioned, and one Friday they let her go for no particular reason. Since then, she’s been unemployed for more than a year. She feels defeated. Her faith is waning and her spirit is weak. When we spoke about the election, she said, “Who cares? My people are ignored regardless.” I don’t think she voted for Trump either, but she feels no connection to what she sees as meaningless liberal values.

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Lastly, I will indulge your patience by talking about myself. I’ve been laid off four times in my life, and only recently started working again after losing my previous job. One close family member has already warned me, “Don’t f**k it up by telling them what you really think.” I must admit that’s been a problem for me. I have always been a very hard worker and passionate in my efforts for the students I’ve supported and the workers I have trained. I know it would be easier if I kept my sharpest criticisms to myself, but I’ve always found that impossible. I would agree that if you have a complaint about how things are done, you should follow that up with an idea about how to fix it and a willingness to take the lead in making that happen. More often than not, organizations, educational systems, companies and other systems just want good solders who do what they’re told and say nothing. I have tried to be that good soldier to create a stable life for my family, but my conscience won’t let me and my professional struggles have continued.

I see myself as someone who believes in the American dream and has tried to work hard and live with integrity. But failure has plagued me, and I have concluded that I would rather die broke and alone than sacrifice my ideals. So when I see working-class people of faith who believe they are being ignored or overlooked by the structures of power in our society, I completely understand their desire either to stay out off politics altogether — or try to blow it up, by voting for the guy who seems intent on disrupting the system.  

I could never bring myself to vote for Trump because of my training and background as a Christian minister. As I have written previously for Salon, I believe Trump to be a major factor in the systematic breakdown of the ministry of Jesus Christ in America. The closer evangelical ministers get to Trump, the further this country is from the genuine teachings of Jesus. But can’t claim that I don’t get it, because I do. I can feel and understand what’s happening with the shift in the American working class and with so many young men shifting to the right. If the Democratic Party doesn’t begin to address these issues, it will continue to lose power in the coming years.

While I realize that “woke” has become a right-wing cliché, that has happened for a reason. Liberal need to “woke” themselves  and start to recognize that they have lost the support of working-class people of faith because they stopped listening and speaking to them, and only show them contempt rather than respect. There are a lot of us, and we are not deplorable. We are tired, broke, hard-working Americans, and we feel ourselves losing. Listening to us is the only way to reclaim the integrity of liberal values, and the pathway to reclaiming the American dream.