Frances Fox Piven is professor emeritus of political science and sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY), a renowned scholar on social movements, and a lifetime activist for welfare rights and other social justice issues. She was a professor at Columbia University in the 1960s. Her many books include Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, with Richard Cloward (Pantheon, 1977); Breaking the American Social Compact, with Richard Cloward (The New Press, 1997) and Challenging Authority (Rowan & Littlefield, 2006).