Talk

Frances Fox Piven, sociologist, activist, one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world” (Glenn Beck), and author of the definitive analyses of social movements and the barriers to voting in the United States, returns to the School of Visual Arts to analyze the situation of democracy today.

While touching on an assessment of the recent election results and what the election bodes for issues especially urgent for today's students—climate change, student debt, jobs and wages, racial justice, healthcare and more—Piven's talk will open onto big questions about the situation of democracy today.

What is the measure of a democracy? What is the interplay of movements and elections in social change? What are the forces arrayed for and against democracy and how do we accurately gauge their relative strengths? What are the sources of democratic decline and revival? What can ordinary people do to achieve a better world?

There are few better guides to interpret what the results of this latest contest mean in light of the larger shifts of history and the ideals of democratic living. Join BFA Visual & Critical Studies and the SVA Honors Program for this virtual talk. RSVP here to get the Zoom.

Frances Fox Piven, Professor Emerita of Politics at CUNY, has been among the most incisive, humane and engaged voices on the left for decades in the struggle for voter rights, welfare rights, working people’s rights and social reform. She is the co-founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization and the author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, Poor People’s Movements, Regulating the Poor, and Why Americans Don’t Vote.