This is Rumblestrip by Erica Heilman, and this is episode three of What Class Are You,

a periodic series that I make for Vermont public about the American class system and living in it.

Today's episode features my friend Dan Seedon. He's been on this show a bunch of times over the years.

Dan grew up in Barnaget, New Jersey, in a house with a lot of

books and not a lot of money. As a little kid, he and his friends hustled for jobs around

the neighborhood. They mowed lawns and washed cars. They sold clams down on the commercial dock.

Eventually, Dan put himself through college and law school.

And since 1993, Dan has been working as a criminal defense attorney in Vermont, where he

works with poor people and rich people and all the people in between.

In this conversation, we talk about what this line of work has taught him about the American

class system.

Welcome.

Class, it's a psychological state, and it's a psychological state that's formed in your childhood.

You are the class that you grew up in. I've known working class folks who really made it with big plumbing and electrical contractors and they owned

airplanes and camps and had tons of cash, you know, but they were working class through and through.

Like they were never not going to be. The flip side of that is I've had encounters with people

professionally as a lawyer who had grown up in very privileged

circumstances.

Wealth and security and power and access and education and people to guide them.

And yet, you know, a series of unfortunate events had landed them talking to me about some misfortune and they could be

penniless and often were at this point and yet they had a bearing right they just had a confidence

that endured from that privilege.

...