Won’t Somebody Please Help Frances Fox Piven?

By William Tucker on 1.26.11 @ 6:08AM

Big news! Glenn Beck has discovered the 1960s writings of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the husband-and-wife team that gave birth to the Welfare Rights Movement and plotted the bankruptcy of the federal government. Cloward died in 2001 but Piven, now 78, is still teaching at the City University of New York Graduate Center and writing manifestos for The Nation.
Cloward and Piven — ah, those names. To me they have always been an abstraction, some mysterious academics closeted away somewhere on the West Side of Manhattan, directing the armies of the poor to the next barricade from their cloistered hideaway. And oh my, were they effective. I wrote a book about crime in the 1980s and a considerable number of articles about the welfare system in the 1990s and Cloward and Piven were all over the place. To me it’s almost startling to find they are real people — just as Piven, who is now receiving death threats for her writings, must be astonished to find there are actually people out there paying attention to what she has to say.
Snip
Now I know Piven really doesn’t mean what she’s saying here. She doesn’t want to see the kind of civil disobedience riots where a 34-year-old pregnant mother was burned to death when Greek rioters set fire to a bank — at least not in her neighborhood. Riots don’t involve real people, any more than juvenile delinquency involves real juveniles or welfare rights involves real mothers being urged to spurn wedlock and marry the state. These are just Marxist abstractions — “the masses” — waiting to be moved around the chessboard by academic strategists intent on creating a perfect world.
Still it’s nice to know that Piven finally realizes there are actual flesh-and-blood people out there reading what she has to say.
Welcome to the real world, Frances.

Letter to the Editor

Frances Fox Piven Rings in The New Year By Calling for Violent … Dec 31, 2010 … That’s the simplified version of Frances Fox Piven’s philosophy …. they will be nutjobs and people that will be paid to riot. God help America! … Well Frances I guess it is up to you now……. Please use an American Standard … Napolitano = Won’t do a damn thing either, orders from up high (can …
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/f…

» Frances Fox Piven: Glenn Beck Seeks ‘Foreign, Dark-Skinned … Feb 8, 2010 … In the article, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, … American society to somebody who’s foreign or dark skinned or an intellectual. … Hey Piven .. please come to my home town and see what a dark ….. It’s telling the heroes of the left won’t stand up for ther real views in the light of day. …
http://biggovernment.com/kolson/2…