Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. An expert in the development of the welfare state, political movements, urban politics, voting, and electoral politics, she has been politically engaged with improving the lives of America’s poor since the 1960s. She has taught at several universities in the United States and Europe and among her many books are the bestselling Poor People’s Movements (1977), one of four books she coauthored with Richard A. Cloward; Mean Season: The Attack on the Welfare State (1987); Why Americans Don’t Vote (1989); Why Americans Still Don’t Vote: And Why Politicians Want It That Way (2000); Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2008), with Joshua Cohen; and The Lean Years (2010) and The Turbulent Years (2010), both with Irving Bernstein.