Frances Fox Piven

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Overview

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Frances Fox Piven born Calgary, Alberta, Canada October 10, 1932. Sociology professor, social activist, and antiwar leader. Democratic Socialist; influential theorist of social change.

Quotations

“I have considerable respect for non-violence, but I don’t treat it as inevitably a necessary rule. The reason I have respect for non-violence, is I think it helps to protect the protesters. . . Unless you have good reason for breaking the window, probably you shouldn’t do that. Unless it’s you know, a big part of your strategy.” (www.liveleak.com/view?i=ad1_1284522561#0DB9QCT6jB3BF0km.99)

“I think that we're at an alarming moment in American political development and maybe in world political development, because the United States is so influential. If the trends of the last thirty or forty years are not halted and reversed—and those trends include increasingly inequality, a crumbling public life, a disintegrating public infrastructure, an exhausted ecology, and a huge war arsenal, and more and more war making—then I'm rather gloomy about the prospects for the American future and the harm that the United States could do to the world.” (Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven, p. 255, 2011; photo gc.cuny.edu)