class conciousness building

Three women and one police officer having a conversation under an overpass with trees in the background. The women are standing in a semicircle facing the officer, who is holding papers and a remote control. There are string lights hanging from the overpass.

Capturing attendees experience at Lighting Up Arthur Avenue in North Nashville, Tennessee; a dinner and jazz concert under Interstate 40, the highway that forced over 128 Black businesses to close and many out of their homes. Thanks to the years-long work of M. Simone Boyd and Anna Dearman, the underpass is soon to have lighting, art, and renewed structural safety in the “Be As Water” installation as it connects one of the last through streets that was here before the highway.

Photo credits: DaShawn Lewis, 2023

  • My work in non-conventional philanthropy – shifting resources to end systemic oppression and relocate power – began when I was a young person, asking fiery questions about why I had my needs met, and why some of my friends and neighbors did not. I fundraised people around me who had more than they need to close gaps, went deeper in building cross-class relationships, and practiced telling the truth about my own legacies of multi-generational material wealth. 


    Over time, I have learned that part of my work is to stay in conversation with folks around the topic of class in the recognition that the strength of our ability to build a new world depends on us all building class consciousness. For me, class consciousness means having an awareness of the social conditions of your experience economically and materially, building the analysis of how that experience differs from others in an economic hierarchy, and taking the step to identify how our position informs our responsibilities. As we live through the greatest transfer of material wealth yet, I am energized by the thought of engaging with more individuals, families, groups, and organizations on this topic. This offering can take shape through 1:1 coaching, a few planned calls, and/or in facilitation group settings. 

    • 1:1 support for a young person beginning your journey in non-conventional philanthropy, divestment, and/or redistribution 

    • Inter-generational dynamics with a parent and adult child struggling to find connection in your values that feel too far apart from one another

    • A group of funders ready to go deeper in building their class analysis and/or expanding their understanding of inheritance

    • A group of cross-class community members who want to break the ice on how to talk about money with one another, and be strengthened by it

    • Helping participants understand, own, and work with class positionality in the world

    • Helping participants identify how ancestral legacy and lineage, including race and culture, intersect with class

    • Developing a redistribution/giving plan that feels accessible while stretching 

    • Thinking through your relationship to money on various levels including materially, energetically, spiritually 

    • Working together to find connection with family or parent and a plan for moving forward 

    • Creating a container to bring money, class, and expansive understandings of inheritance to the forefront in a group setting, with individuals of the same class, or varying class experiences 

  • "Lathram has a particular ability to facilitate reflection and dialogue within communities of class privilege, helping translate analysis into responsibility and action. Her contributions have strengthened our work and reflect a clear dedication to advancing economic justice. We trust her integrity and believe her work will make a meaningful contribution to building greater class consciousness and solidarity."

    —Benny Overton, Co-Director, Southeast Center for Cooperative Development

  • "Crossing the lines of race, class, age and lived experience to build The Beloved Community is scary work. But it is the work required to build a more just and loving future. I'm grateful for Lathram's ability: to explore and confront her own class privilege, to connect and support those seeking to chart a similar path, and her ability to learn, document, weave and remember the interconnectedness of our shared historic and present struggles. We need more people willing to do this work. I hope you'll join her.

    —M. Simone Boyd, Artist, Novelist, Neighborhood Organizer