Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West teach-in tomorrow

[marmar]

The pro-public union protests in Wisconsin over the past month have marked a major turning point in the American political debate over an elite-backed austerity agenda, declares Frances Fox Piven, perhaps America's foremost authority on social protest movements.

Piven is a longtime activist for welfare mothers and the poor (earning her an unending stream of diatribes from Glenn Beck, resulting in a rash of death threats) and the author of several classic books on social protest, including Poor People's Movements and Challenging Authority.

"We are on the cusp of a great movement to resist and roll back that corporate domination by banks, energy companies and war profiteers," Piven and fellow activist/academic Professor Cornell West write in The Nation. They believe that the Wisconsin model of resistance against the elite agenda of endless cutbacks for working people, undertaken in the name of balancing the budget, must be spread across the nation. To help that happen, Piven and West are promoting a national teach-in April 5 on fighting the austerity agenda that will be conducted on dozens of campuses.

The teach-in will begin with live-streaming of a session with a panel of experts dissecting the sweeping assault on union wages, benefits and rights along with massive cutbacks in social programs benefitting working families, students, and the poor, and outlining strategies for resistance. That segment will be followed by localized discussions analyzing specific threats by elite groups across the nation. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/7097/april_5_teach-ins_aim_to_spread_wisconsins_anti-austerity_fight/

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[gratuitous]

2. Whoa, "Fight Back USA"

I'm guessing that the popular media will pivot on a dime, and suddenly decide that this kind of rhetoric is too inflammatory to receive even-handed coverage. It will be almost amusing to watch the verbal and rhetorical gymnastics as they justify Tea Bagger "Take back our country" verbiage complete with sidearms while claiming that "Fight Back" is beyond the pale.