For most of her life, Frances Fox Piven has worked as a professor of social sciences and activist far away from public notoriety. Though fairly well-known in academic and progressive circles, having played a key role in major social movements like the National Welfare Rights Organization …
having helped lead the fight in the 1980s and 1990s to expand the vote to marginalized populations that eventually led to the “motor voter” law in 1993 and receiving numerous awards and accolades throughout her career, Piven was well into her seventies before she began to attract significant public attention.
That changed, of course, when Glenn Beck began obsessively attacking Dr. Piven in early 2011, charging her and her late husband Richard Cloward with everything from treason to causing the financial crisis themselves in an attempt to “intentionally collapse our economic system.” The attacks quickly led to threats on Piven’s life.
Rather than flee from the public spotlight, however, Piven seized it.
“I thought that [my response to Glenn Beck] was really honorable,” she says.
She repeatedly appeared on news shows to discuss the threats; she led a national teach-in with Princeton professor and activist Cornel West on pushing back against austerity; she continued writing for a variety of publications about the need for a movement to fight against massive inequality. In October, she visited Zuccotti Park, where she made no attempts to hide her near-giddiness at the scene before her as she praised Occupy Wall Street (OWS). When asked about the attention she has received after the death threats, she laughs.
“I love it,” she says.
Many of the young activists who make up OWS were likely introduced to Piven through either her visits to Zuccotti or Beck’s vitriol – which is unfortunate, because her body of work for nearly half a century has dealt with questions of how people’s movements can wrest power and resources out of the vice grip of elites. Her book “Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail,” co-authored with Cloward in 1978, remains a must-read study for both students and members of social movements in the US. In it, Piven and Cloward argue that when coupled with political shifts in society, movements’ willingness to disrupt business as usual is what leads to tangible gains. She recently released the edited collection “Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven? The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate.”
In a noisy classroom at the University of Chicago, where she had just given a lecture on the future of the labor movement, Piven sat down to discuss the future of Occupy, the use of disruptive tactics in today’s movements and the effect of right-wing attacks on progressive activists like her.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy