Frances Fox Piven is an infamous hard-left academic who coauthored (along with her late husband Richard Cloward) perhaps the most malignant essay in modern sociology-- "The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty". The essay, in the May 1966 issue of Nation magazine, advocated overloading the welfare system with essentially frivolous applications for benefits so as to cause the economic and administrative collapse of the government. The ensuing chaos would then be used by the Left to force a socialist reorganization of the American government.
The Cloward-Piven strategy was pursued quite actively by a number of leftist organizations, including A.C.O.R.N., which was founded in large part to implement it. Many municipalities experienced a massive increase in welfare dependency in the decade after Cloward and Piven's paper, and some commentators have attributed New York's insolvency crisis in 1975 in part to the Cloward-Piven strategy.
Cloward and Piven's strategy consigned millions of people to unnecessary welfare dependency and family disintegration, and did massive fiscal and social damage to cities that persists to this day. Piven is responsible, in a very direct and personal way, for the degradation of the lives of millions of people.
Piven is still very active, and she recently gave a speech to a private Christian College in Pennsylvania. Her boilerplate race-bating, this time about the Tea Parties, elicited a more contentious response than that to which she has been accustomed.
Hot Air has the video of her speech, and of the reaction of her well-informed audience.
What Orwellian / Goebbels-esque nonsense!
ReplyDeleteThe burgeoning third party is opposed to muti-party systems?
That talk radio and new media outlets are victimizing the MSM?
The Tea Party is motivated by RACE?
This woman is blatantly repeating untruths in hopes the repetition will make them true.
I can just about hear the loudspeakers bellowing
'Ignorance is strength! Freedom is Slavery'
“The essay, in the May 1966 issue of Nation magazine, advocated overloading the welfare system with essentially frivolous applications for benefits so as to cause the economic and administrative collapse of the government.”
ReplyDeleteBullshit. Piven advocated having poor people who qualified for welfare actually apply for the benefits granted to them by law in order overload the system and force Democrats to truly deal with the issue of poverty by guaranteeing some sort of minimum income. While I can certainly see why conservatives would be alarmed by this, it’s a long way from trying to cause “collapse of the government”.
-KW
"... force Democrats to truly deal..." is bullshit. "Democrats" don't run poverty programs. The government does. And "force" means to overwhelm the government with demands for handouts that leads to fiscal collapse-- this is what happened to New York City in 1975.
DeleteIt is a malicious tactic, using poor people as pawns to wreck government and bring a chaos in which leftists can force their policies.
It has a long history in leftist politics. Piven has destroyed countless families and lives.
Do you really think that the explosion in welfare dependency that resulted from this tactic was a good thing for the poor?
So, this horrible plot by Piven that you are decrying was to encourage people who are eligible to do so to actually apply for public assistance?
DeleteAnd you wonder why no one takes you seriously.
@anon:
DeleteI'l type slowly so you can understand.
The purpose of the Cloward-Piven strategy is to bankrupt the government, cause social collapse, and use the chaos to gain power and force policy. The pawns in this are poor people who are managing without being on welfare, and who are enticed to abandon work and go on the dole to advance C-P's political agenda.
You think that's a good idea?
"You think that's a good idea?"
ReplyDeleteGiven that actual census data shows that people whoa re classified as "poor" are better off now than they were thirty years ago by pretty much every metric you can put forth, I don't see that any harm has done (and a great deal of good was done), regardless of your wild-eyed hysteria. As usual, your bald assertions founder once actual facts come into play.