By Steve Ahlquist in
Rhode Island’s Future
EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to having studied her books Regulating the Poor and Poor Peoples’ Movements in college, I met Frances Fox Piven on several occasions as she was one of my late mentor Tim Sampson’s best friends. Her insights on the struggle for justice and equality are as true and vivid today as they were forty years ago. – W. Collette
Frances Fox Piven is
a legend. Her work was instrumental in the creation of the welfare rights
movement and the war on poverty.
On February 18, Piven gave a talk
entitled Strategic Voter Disenfranchisement: How Political Party
Competition Shrinks the Electorate at the RI Center for Justice (in collaboration with the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown.)
With Bernie Sanders and Hillary
Clinton neck and neck in the polls, said Piven, starting her
talk, “I thought, I’ll talk about voter disenfranchisement, but I want to talk
about that in the context of this election… I actually think this is an
important election.
For
instance, asked Piven, who has served on the board of the Democratic Socialists of America,
how can Bernie Sanders get away with calling himself a socialist? What has
changed?
For
Piven, the answer is that America today is a land of broken promises. “People
rise up when the promises that have been made… have been broken. Life is very
uncertain and insecure. You’re earning less money, your pension may be at risk.
There is soaring inequality. Some people are getting so rich.”
The
system is rigged and not in our favor. A very few are very rich and the rest of
us are doomed to live lives in poorer and meaner circumstances than our
parents. Yet there is a counter to this, said Piven, and that counter is
electoral democracy.
“Many
activists are skeptical of electoral democracy,” said Piven, yet, “political
institutions nevertheless create a realm of equality. At least in principle,
everyone has one vote. Those votes, when aggregated, can depose rulers. You can
kick the sons of bitches out!”
Since
it is well known that “when electoral rights expand people do better,” said
Piven, democracy becomes a threat to the status quo. Therefore, it behooves the
rich and powerful to fight back. “The threat of democracy is met by
manipulating electoral procedures.”
Some
of the manipulations of electoral procedures were built into the country’s
structure by the Founding Fathers, said Piven. The Senate, for instance,
guarantees two Senators from every state, even if no one lives in the state.
The Supreme Court is another example. The Court is only marginally influenced
by voters, being nominated by the President to lifelong positions. “Walling off
certain parts of the government and saying this part of the government is not
exposed to the electorate” circumvents the power of democracy said Piven.
And
of course the final way of challenging the power of electoral democracy is by
“suppressing votes and voters.”
“In
Political Science we have a ‘faith’ and one of the axioms is that competing
parties expand voter engagement,” said Piven, but, “Competing parties exert
themselves to make it hard for voters that may vote for their opponents. That’s
just as logical, but you won’t find that in any textbooks, but it has happened
in American history.
“At
the turn of the 20th Century, immigrants became the constituency of the machine
bosses. These machines traded voter allegiance and voter loyalty for favors.
Businessmen had a problem with that arrangement because they wanted efficient
services. [Political] machines are not good at providing the kinds of services
that lead to business expansion. Municipal reform organizations were business
organizations,” said Piven.
The machines used voter registration, literacy
tests, poll taxes and other methods of voter suppression to drive down
immigrant voter turnout significantly.
And
this is happening today, with voter suppression laws being enacted across the
country.
“Every
presidential election turns out to be the most expensive in history because of
the concentration of wealth spilling over” into the political arena, said
Piven. “There is no wall” between money and politics.
“Inequalities outside the
electoral arena spillover.” Today we conduct polls to see how voters are
thinking but we also track political contributions. Dollars and votes seem to
be equally important.
This
money, and the voter suppression we are seeing in politics, is aimed squarely
at the “new electorate.”
This rising block of voters tend to be more
progressive. Black voter turnout has increased, immigrant groups continue to
expand, the youth vote jumped in 2008 and 2012 and there’s been a “shift in the
women’s vote since 1980 and the Reagan elections,” said Piven.
Given
the shift in voters, “Conservatives shouldn’t be able to get elected,” said
Piven. But through the manipulation of voter eligibility, they do.
And
it isn’t ending, said Piven. Right now there’s an effort underway to change the
formula for representation from the number of members in the population to the
number of active voters. This is a vicious circle, and it’s by design.
Taking
away “our ability to influence government” is another broken promise.
“Broken
Promises in the economy and politics probably accounts for the surge in
movements over the last few years,” said Piven. “This was the beginning of a
new movement era.”
She
noted three in particular:
“First
there was Occupy, the press mocked them at
the beginning. Then everyone started using Occupy’s slogans and language. Then
there was the Fight for $15. SEIU had a significant role in promoting $15 as
the goal. They wanted to build the union. That didn’t happen. What happened
instead was that a movement took off that has been affecting local politics,”
and then of course there’s Black Lives Matter.
There
are also movements on the right, but these are “not among low wage workers or
immigrants. [These movements] are occurring among middle class people, a little
older, above the median income. Donald Trump is
speaking to those people and their imaginary past…” There are “strong currents
of religious fundamentalism and macho culture, gun culture, imaginary pioneers…
We’ve got to live with that.”
“Movements
are not majorities,” said Piven, “movements are spearheads…
“Movements
have played a key role in shaping the United States since the revolutionary
period.” Piven mentioned three movements in particular that had gigantic
political implications.
The
abolitionists freed the slaves, FDR became a
radical due to the rise of the labor movement, which brought social security,
labor rights, welfare policy, and public housing policy, and the civil rights
movement which finally did emancipate blacks, shattered Jim Crow in the South.
“The
troubles caused by movements become troubles for politicians and governments,”
said Piven, “Movements communicate issues politicians wanted to avoid – showing
people they could become defiant and shut things down.”
Too
often “activists dismiss elections but there’s an interplay,” said Piven, but,
“movements nourish electoral politics. Sanders couldn’t have run without
Occupy.”
“Movements
made Sanders possible,” said Piven, wrapping up her talk, “I think Sanders
could win the nomination. But I don’t know what will happen in a general
election. It’s amazing. There’s no precedent…
“What
really worries me is Sanders as President. He would be in the White House
surrounded by politicians determined to block him at every move. Movements at
that juncture will become very essential to a Sanders presidency because
movements can shut things down. That is the kind of popular weapon that could
be equal to the gridlock Sanders could be facing.”
Steve Ahlquist is an award-winning journalist, writer, artist
and founding member of the Humanists of Rhode Island, a non-profit group
dedicated to reason, compassion, optimism, courage and action. The views
expressed are his own and not necessarily those of any organization of which he
is a member. atomicsteve@gmail.com
and Twitter: @SteveAhlquist