Ex-Washington Post Reporter Launches Book, Class War in America at Sankofa Books

WASHINGTON D.C., DC, UNITED STATES, October 22, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- With an eye on this year’s presidential election, former Washington Post foreign correspondent Jon Jeter debuts his new book, Class War in America: How the Elites Divide the Nation by Asking ‘Are You a Worker or Are You White?’ at Sankofa Books on Sunday, November 3.

While the winner of this year’s presidential ballot is a toss-up, Class War in America posits that there is a clear loser: wage-earners in the U.S., whose paychecks have not grown appreciably in nearly 40 years.

What explains the astonishing reversal of fortune?

Faced with a surging workers’ movement that emerged from the Great Depression, the Empire struck back, beginning with a Nixon White House that was obsessed with dismantling the liberal New Deal consensus by pitting white workers against Black.

The Reagan administration doubled down on the divide-and-conquer strategy and the Clinton White House yet again, creating the post-industrial dystopia that defines the nation today.

At his book launch at Sankofa, Jeter will address 160 years of struggle between employers and their employees, culminating in this unique historical moment.

Class War, published by DRUM Publishing, is a discomfiting book—the 1 percent has managed to beat the brakes off the 99 percent by exploiting white racism and class fissures within the Black community—but by no means hopeless. Jeter notes that between 1865 and 1990, every state in the vanquished Confederacy was home to an interracial political party or movement that enjoyed some measure of success in redistributing wealth downward

As the U.S. approaches its 250th birthday, there are signs that these Rainbow coalitions are reforming to demand a bigger cut of the spoils.

David Simon, creator of the HBO series, The Wire, had this to say about Class War in America:

“Jeter’s historical rendering of the American labor movement and capital’s incessant misuse of race as a means of dividing workers from each other is carefully and definitively chronicled. Race hate and racial fears have long been the most valuable weapon in keeping working people disorganized, alienated and, in the end, cheated.”

CLASS WAR IN AMERICA: How the Elites Divide the Nation by Asking ‘Are You a Worker or Are You White? is available now.

SANKOFA Video, Books and Cafe is located at 2714 Georgia Avenue NW in Washington DC. Founded in 1998 by Shirikiana and Haile Gerima and named after their internationally acclaimed film SANKOFA, it is liberated territory that hopes to be a place where thoughtful consideration of the past and future can take place via books, films, and programming particularly generated by and about people of African Descent.

JON JETER is a published book author and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist with more than 20 years of journalistic experience. He is a former Washington Post bureau chief and award-winning foreign correspondent on two continents, as well as a former radio and television producer for Chicago Public Media’s “THIS AMERICAN LIFE.” Jeter is a Knight Fellowship recipient – Stanford University’s highest professional journalism award — as well as the author of FLAT BROKE IN THE FREE MARKET (WW Norton, 2009), co-author of A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT (Wiley & Sons, 2010) and CLASS WAR IN AMERICA (DRUM Publishing, 2024).

DRUM PUBLISHING was founded in 2024 to restore the authentic Black voice that is largely absent from today’s public discourse. DRUM publications combine narrative nonfiction with Black scholarship to inform our collective decision-making in what is a critical moment in the nation’s history.

Malaga Smith
Communications Team
+1 510-704-1777
mal@malagacorp.com
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