Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven (3)

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." - Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here? (1967).

"It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty." - Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward The Nation (1966).

In The Guardian today there is yet another story on Glenn Beck's ongoing campaign against Francis Fox Piven. I found it funny that Piven arranged to meet the correspondent from the paper at a NYC restaurant called "Havana Central."

One thing that strikes me about Beck is his ignorance about history. You can find a link to the 1966 essay by Piven (and her husband, the late Richard Cloward) that so exercises Beck here at The Nation. That is where I lifted the statement above - from the first paragraph of the essay. My point today is just to say that Piven and Cloward were advocating a strategy to implement a policy that, as I noted here a year ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. also endorsed. And since Beck has announced his aim to reinvigorate Dr. King's message, how is it that he objects to Piven and Cloward? What better way to end poverty does Beck envision than the one King came to embrace? Beck instead ought to be embracing Piven as an ally in that cause. Maybe that is why he has afforded her all the publicity that trails in the wake of his diatribes.
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P.S.: You might find this portrait of Piven and this more recent Op-Ed from The Los Angeles Times - both by Barabara Ehrenreich - interesting.

Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven (2)

As a follow up on my earlier post, it is important to note that Glenn Beck is not obsessed just with decades old essays by Francis Fox Piven. He takes exception too to her other writings, especially those in which she endorses collective action on the part of the disenfranchised, the poor, the unemployed.

You can find one of Piven's recent essays, one in which she calls for mass protests of the unemployed, here in The Nation. Beck claims he denounces violence left, right and center. Where in the essay does Piven call for violence? Where does she claim that the protests she proposes will overthrow what Beck calls "our system"? Indeed, she explicitly remains agnostic about the stability of American capitalism. And she proposes local protests as a strategy for mitigating the hardships of the unemployed regardless of what one thinks on that larger issue. Beck seems not to be able to read terribly well. He is simply worried terribly about political protests. Protesters can be "unruly" (Piven's word) and obstreperous and confrontational without being violent. Is that too difficult for Beck and his listeners to understand? Is it too difficult for Beck and his listeners to understand that when 'politics as usual' is not working for them, those who are enduring hardship have a right to collective action? Perhaps so.

Which of the following protest movements might Beck find objectionable? The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who have been protesting in Buenos Aries since the early 1980s? (After all the mothers initially made contact in various government offices as they tried to find their "disappeared" children. And they arguably contributed to the collapse of dictatorship in Argentina.) The delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party who raised a ruckus at the 1964 Democratic Convention? (You remember Fannie Lou Hamer talking back bluntly to the politicos?) The striking Sanitation Workers in Memphis in 1968? (After all these were public sector workers protesting against inhumane - indeed lethal - working conditions.) The Polish trade Unionists in Solidarity or the churchgoers who flowed from services in Leipzig to occupy public space and protest Communism? (After all these were peaceful mass protests aimed, yes, at undermining the legitimacy of a regime that was not addressing the needs of common people.) The activists from ACT-UP who in the 1980s (among other things) took over government offices to protest a regulatory regime that was literally killing people with AIDS? (After all they were aiming to make government regulation effective in the face of corporate profit-making and bureaucratic sclerosis.) The protesters at (among other similar events) the 2001 G8 Meetings in Genoa? (After all, these people have diverse views about how the world economy should operate that their elected (and unelected!) leaders systematically neglect.)

It would be easy enough to multiply examples. One final point to note. In each instance I have mentioned here, any violence came disproportionately, indeed almost exclusively, from the government not the governed. Glenn Beck claims to be attentive to history. Maybe not so much.

Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven

I have posted here a couple of times on the perverse pre-occupation that conservatives have fostered in the writings of political scientist Francis Fox Piven. Well, the inimitable Glenn Beck has kept the focus on Piven with the result that some of his wacko listeners are issuing threats against Piven's life. You can read about the situation here in The New York Times and find a report here on DemocracyNow!.

I disagree with Piven about many things. But this state of affairs is both intolerable and directly attributable to Beck's behavior. Is it a reach to draw a connection between Beck's repeated "remarks" about Piven and her putatively dangerous ideas and the threats she now is receiving? Well, the paper that gets Beck especially exercised is a decades old essay that appeared in The Nation. Before this recent set of events, I (a political scientist and subscriber to The Nation) had never heard of the paper. How would regular Americans have come across the essay? So, 2 + 2 = ... Beck speaks and wackos do his dirty work.

Beck is a blustering, ignorant, bully. It is that simple. And there is simply no "civil" way to put that.

Liars on the Right - Kyle Olson

This is a mug-shot of a liar. His name is Kyle Olson, a political extremist who runs this outfit. Among his recent escapades has been participating eagerly in a right wing campaign* to slander and intimidate Francis Fox Piven, a fellow political scientist. I disagree with Piven on many things but we agree on the importance of free and open inquiry. That is where we part company with liars like Olson who deceived Piven in order to enter her home and videotape an interview. You can read the details here at The American Prospect. Kyle has not got the courage of his convictions and that should be a cause for embarrassment on the right. Unfortunately, it is not. Just as they celebrate nepotism (while deploring the way affirmative action - always said with a sneer - allegedly offends against merit) they seem totally comfortable with duplicity. I guess the right has decided that the ends justify the means.
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PS: I mentioned this campaign in passing here. You can find Glenn Beck rants about the dangers of Piven and her late co-author Richard Cloward on YouTube by Googling 'Beck Cloward Piven.'

Graphical Nuttiness ...

Occasionally my Google alerts call my attention to the truly nutty. This morning a post on a right wing blog popped up. These two graphics accompanied a very, very long post about the Obama conspiracy against the sovereignty of the United States. The premise is that Obama must have read (or been influenced by) a 1966 article in The Nation by Richard Cloward and Francis Fox Piven. In that essay the "strategy" is to overload the federal bureaucracy with multiple time-consuming, attention-commanding tasks that would lead to breakdown and collapse of state capacity - or something like that. I've not read the essay. But the top graphic details the nefarious plotters and their connections to the president. Pretty scary, huh?

So, what is the problem? Well, coincidentally, Google alerts also generated a link to this essay by Matt Taibbi the politics writer at Rolling Stone detailing the ways that the allegedly "progressive" Obama administration has accommodated and incorporated the interests of the financial industry since virtually the day after the 2008 election. None of the people whom Taibbi discusses - various acolytes of Bob Rubin with direct ties to Wall Street banks and trading companies - appear in the flow chart above. And most of them hold government posts - in other words they are not a shadow government in waiting, they are an actual government in power. And, as Taibbi notes in the end, the right wingers are so busy looking out for socialist revolution that they do not (cannot?) grasp Obama's actual behavior. If you are going to peddle conspiracy theories, you should at least try to make them plausible! Here is the graphic accompanying the Rolling Stone essay.