ON CHALLENGING AUTHORITY: AN ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH FRANCES FOX PIVEN Benjamin Shepard, Ph.D., City University of New York In 2002, Reflections ran an oral history/narrative interview with Richard A. Cloward. In addition to Cloward's voice, the interview included a few observations from Frances Fox Piven, Cloward's long time partner and collabora- tor In the years which followed, those involved with Reflections discussed the idea that Piven s voice needed a more prominent place in this journal. So the author reached out to Piven, one of the preeminent social welfare scholars of her generation. On August 16, 2007, Piven sat for her own oral history interview with Reflections. It has now been over thirty years since movements. We started our interview talking Cloward and Piven's essay, "Notes Toward a about her years with Mobilization for Youth, a Radical Social Work" was published in highly influential radical social work project 1975. Throughout the interview which follows, which spawned a generation of social welfare we revisit the themes addressed in this essay, scholars, including the dean ofthe University as well as the tensions between social of Califomia, School of Social work, Harry movements, direct action, and service Sprecht. His influential work Unfaithful provision. Many of these themes have made Angels: How Social Work Abandoned Its their way into the collaborations between Piven Mission, was a direct response to those years. and Cloward as well as into the writings by Piven herself in the decades which followed. Mobilization for Youth The result is perhaps the most compelling BS (Benjamin Shepard): Tell me about Francis Fox Piven bodies of social welfare scholarship ofthe last bow you got involved with Mobilization for Smith College Archives half century. Youth? So many people have written about While the expression "empowerment and romanticized the period. based practice" has become part of the au FFP (Frances Fox Piven): Well, it is a courant of social work practice, few have convoluted story. I had set out to do social and bridged the concept's praxis divide between economic planning in the third world. That was theoretical implications and practical the language that we used when I was in applications as Piven has. From her years with school. My husband at the time put a lot of the highly influential Mobilization for Youth pressure on me to shift to city planning. He project in the Lower East Side of Manhattan made a not unreasonable argument. What was through her contribution to the formation of he going to do while I tramping through the the National Welfare Rights Organization in swamps and deserts ofthe global south? What the 1960s, work with trade unions and other kind of marriage was that going to be? And I social movements, her work theorizing and didn't think I was making a monumental strategizing about the constraints on voting decision. After all, I thought I could do the rights so more people could access the same kind of work in American cities. So I franchise in the 1990s, and current research got a master's degree in plaiming. Frances Fox Piven, 2008 on the role of regular citizens in the process of But then I came to New York and I got a Photo by Caroline Shepanj social change, few social welfare scholars job working on the new zoning proposal for have done as much to articulate a route New York City, with an architectural firm towards power for poor people as Piven has. which had a contract with the city. I was Currently a professor of political science surprised by almost everything that was going and sociology at the Graduate School and on, and asked a lot of aggressive questions. University Center of the City University of My colleagues were annoyed but also patient. New York, Piven still continues to publish After all, I was young and I was pretty, so the books, teach, advise students, and support much more senior people were inclined to REFLECTIONS - SPRING 2008 On Challenging Authority indulge me, treat me like a mascot, or a toy. annoyed and discouraged, saying to myself, And I kept asking questions. It seemed to me maybe you've made a big mistake, you're in that two parallel things were going on. One the wrong field. was that well meaning planners, some of the So, while I was doing this, I got a letter top professionals in the country, were going from Columbia University inviting me to apply through the steps of what they considered for a fellowship to do my dissertation. I got rational decision making about land use in the the fellowship, and the dissertation I decided city, which meant collecting a lot of information to do was on the uses of research in planning on existing land uses. On the other hand, there decisions. I knew something about that. I went were the real estate interests which had big back and I asked all these accomplished stakes in zoning regulations, usually tacit but planners, "How did you use this study of still recognized^this was after all an parking provisions" or "this study on industrial architectural firm—and always in the design which I just conducted?" and they gave background. me pat answers about how useful this research So I guess I became a pain in the neck. I was in their zoning decisions. Later I watched was given a series of assignments which took the legislative process at the Board of me out of their hair. One was to do a survey Estimates as the real estate troops moved in. of all new industrial construction in the city; All in all, I decided I wasn't going to be a city another was to do a survey of parking space planner. provisions in new residential buildings. They I got my Ph.D. degree from the University assigned staff to help me, and 1 did those of Chicago where I'd completed all my course surveys. I was 21 years old. And I had a little work. The degree was in social science, not squadron of people fanning out over the city planning. But I didn't want to be an academic. to collect the data. The Buildings Department I had originally wanted to do economic presumably provided us with the base data development in the third world, and I still I identifying new industrial construction, for wanted to do something that was related to example. We drove to each of the sites on the social action. While I was finishing my degree Buildings Department cards. Sometimes we I was invited by the Mobilization for Youth team actually found new factories, but never did they to write parts of their proposal. And that's how match the building characteristics on our cards. I hooked up with them. I finally concluded that the reason was that When Mobilization got their big flinding the fees for building department applications (they had first had a planning grant), I got a were determined by square footage. So all grant from NIMH to do a study of how the these applications reporting small 2500 square unusual collaborative project between federal feet structures were actually big industrial and city agencies, and a host of voluntary establishments. When I told the head of the agencies on the Lower East Side, had come Department of City Planning that the huge map about. I had been there long enough to have a that they had on one of their floors with colored sense that each of these actors had different flags for different types of industrial ideas about what they were doing. And that it construction were all wrong, that a lot of them was a collaboration sealed by money. I also were not there at all and those that were there got tied up with the housing and community were much bigger, and that probably this was organizing programs, the direct action side of because the application data was a scam, he the project. simply said, "You're wrong. That's not so." So I did my study, and formulated my BS: You got the bug. conclusions. And I waited for someone to ask me for it. No one asked me. One day, I was FFP: Yea. so pissed that I took all the original data home and I put it in my bedroom closet. And I waited BS: Tell us about the community organizing for somebody to ask me for it. No one ever that you did. asked me for it. I was getting more and more 4 REFLECTIONS - SPRING 2008 On Challenging Authority FFP: Well, we were doing tenant proclaiming that these two blocks in Harlem organizing. And later, welfare rights organizing. were not the World's Fair but the "World's This was during the height ofthe civil rights Worst Fair," and there were big crowds. As it movement, and Mobilization for Youth did got dark I realized there were lots of people, something that I thought extraordinary. They and that 1 was the only white person there. rented a train to take people from the Lower People were angry and for the first time that East Side to the March on Washington. can I remember, I became wary. It was a But lots ofthe local organizing was about pretty harsh period. the rent strikes. I also knew about rent strikes I also remember a big rally with Malcolm elsewhere in the city, and what I knew was X, which occurred shortly after a white that a lot ofthe announced rent strikes weren't minister had led resistance to an urban renewal really happening.