Barbara was a great writer and activist who told it like it is! Like most, I never heard of her until she published Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America which came out in 2001. Even then, Barbara was reporting on how Slick Willie’s NeoLiberal reforms and Age of Prosperity were absolute bullshit. As Dave Anthony said in 2019, NAFTA gutted the US and her book demonstrated how things were even worse for women, especially those on a single income with children.
Nickel was only one of her 20 books she authored. While researching this, I was correct in remembering Barbara’s time as a columnist for The New York Times. How fitting they had her filling in for Globalist Apologist Emeritus…Thomas Friedman, an asshole who was her complete opposite; plus he’s another reason why Fascism and illiberalism are on the rise.
Before becoming a full-time author, Barbara grew up an American Gypsy thanks to her parents’ constant pursuit of employment; Amerika! She attended university all the way to earning a PhD in cellular Biology. By 1970, in here words, she underwent a personal and political shift toward getting into the fight for women’s health. A couple years later, she left the cushy professorship to write and take up other causes: peace, social justice, economic justice and all those other whiney lefty things now abandoned by the shitty, NeoLiberal bosses in the Democratic Party. Barbara also used her fame and money to continue helping those in need unlike JD Vance or the Great Equivocator. However, she probably got shunned by the High Priests of Liberalism for backing Sanders and Nader, namely the thin-skinned Eric Alterman who just thinks his articles will save the democracy and the middle class, along with promoting the tired music of Dylan and Springsteen. He’s just another Trust Fund Baby cut from the same cloth as Nate Silver.
Thanks for all you’ve done Barbara! May your efforts not be in vain and I know I plan to get more involved with building up the DSA Party at the local level because America can’t be saved by a third party at the national level.