Insurgency from Below and the Future of American Democracy Conference in Celebration of the Work of Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward
Graduate School and University Center
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016
October 11, 2017, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.
The election of Donald J. Trump, an inexperienced and unpredictable billionaire real estate mogul endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, stunned the world. Within hours of Hillary Clinton conceding the election to Trump, thousands took to the streets in protest against the victory of a candidate who lost the popular vote by the largest margin of an Electoral College winner in the nation’s history – nearly three million votes. Trump is a rightwing populist whose message against trade deals that have hurt American workers strongly resonated in white communities where the declining power of trade unions has left people vulnerable to his bigoted and xenophobic appeals. The complex dynamics of our social movement and populist era, the intricate (and poorly understood) connections between movements and electoral politics, and what the Trump presidency means for American democracy are the themes of our conference.
Conference 8:45am to 5pm: Elebash Recital Hall
8:45 – 9:10 Continental Breakfast
Welcome from Professor Don Robotham, Director of the Advanced Research Collaborative
9:30 – 10:45 Disruptive Power in an Age of Precarity
The power of workers in their age-old struggles with employers has always ultimately depended on their ability to disrupt economic activity or, in other words, on their ability to strike. But the effective exercise of the strike power in turn depends on the need for work and workers, on worker (and community) solidarities, on legal protections which limit state interference, on the reverberations of disruptions through chains of production and exchange, and so on. It follows that worker power, the structural leverage that workers can exert, is closely influenced by the organization of work itself. How, then, have new conditions of more precarious employment, from part-time work to “independent” contracting, to mass unemployment, affected the strike power and other forms of disruptive dissent?
Moderator: Jeff Maskovsky, Associate Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Presenters:
Jamie McCallum, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Middlebury College
James Gray Pope, Professor of Law and Sidney Reitman Scholar, Rutgers Law School
Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center
Stephen K. Lerner, Fellow, Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, Georgetown University
10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 12:45 Regulating the Poor and Regulating Society
Much of our attention to poverty policies focuses on the impact of policy on poverty, however defined. Piven and Cloward suggested that the main drivers of these policies were not the relief of the condition of the poor, but the dual and sometimes conflicting imperatives of maintaining social order and enforcing low wage work. To accomplish these ends, relief policies were expanded to deal with riotous collective behavior by the poor, but were then contracted to meet the dictum of “less eligibility” when order was more or less restored. An important instrument of the “less eligibility” regime has always been the theatrical degradation of those who remain on the dole. Have globalization and automation altered the imperatives that drove poverty policy in the past? And even if they have, how will the translation of these new conditions into policy be shaped by the right-wing populist appeals of a Make America Great Again regime?
Moderator: Sanford Schram, Professor of Political Science, Hunter College/CUNY
Presenters:
Bryan Palmer, Professor of Canadian Studies and Canada Research Chair, Trent University
Alice Kessler-Harris, Professor Emerita of History, Columbia University
Donna Murch, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University
Fred Block, Research Professor in Sociology, University of California at Davis
12:45-1:45 Lunch Break
Welcome from Provost Joy Connolly
1:45 – 3:00 The Fraught Struggle for Electoral Democracy in the Trump Era
The confidence we have in electoral-representative democracy has rested on faith in more or less unimpeded competition by politicians for the support of widely enfranchised voters. If voter majorities deliver state power, then politicians ambitious for state power will pay heed to voter preferences, and also work to enlist more voters in the electoral process. Piven and Cloward argued that this rosy view ignores the ability of politicians, even competing politicians, to win elections not by mobilizing voter majorities but by demobilizing voter blocs that are “discordant” or unreliable. This strategy has only recently attracted the attention it deserves from pundits and academics, and in combination with the racist and xenophobic appeals of the populist Right, it is undermining our already flawed electoral democracy. What can be done?
Moderator: Dan Cantor, Executive Director, Working Families Party
Presenters:
Lorraine C. Minnite, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Rutgers University-Camden
Hon. Gustavo Rivera, New York State Senator
Joel Rogers, Sewell-Bascom Professor of Law, Political Science, Public Affairs and
Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
3:00 – 3:15 Break
3:15 – 5:00 Rightwing Populism in the U.S. and Europe.
Until very recently, the study of social movements in the United States has leaned heavily toward the movements we love, from the abolitionists, to labor, to the black freedom movement, to the women’s movements and the struggles for LGBT rights. The rise of an insurgent right, drawing on the discontents of the petit-bourgeoisie and some sectors of the white working class, argues for more attention to the dynamics of the right wing proto-fascist movements that have figured importantly in modern European history, and are alive and kicking today. Are there lessons from our study of movements on the Left to help us understand the rise of the movement on the Right?
Moderator: Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University
Presenters:
Linda Gordon, Professor of History, New York University
Marco D’Eramo, Journalist
Leo Panitch, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy, York University, Emeritus
Evening Plenary 6:30 to 8:00: Proshansky Auditorium
Welcomes from: President Chase Robinson, Professor Alyson Cole, Executive Officer of Political Science, and Rutgers University Professor Lorraine C. Minnite (GC Ph.D., 2000)
Activism in the Trump Era: Prospects for Social Justice Movements
The election of Donald J. Trump to the U.S. presidency in 2016, calls for a new analysis of American politics. Trump, a billionaire, used bigoted and xenophobic appeals to build his rightwing populist base. His ‘Make America Great’ message resonated with conservative whites and elements of the white working class where the shrinking influence of organized labor left people hurting and vulnerable. At the same time, we have also witnessed far-reaching resistance to Trump and his roll-back initiatives. What are the prospects for social justice movements in the new Trump era?
Moderator: Laura Flanders, Journalist
Presenters:
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School and UCLA School of Law
Barbara Ehrenreich, Writer and Activist
Ai-jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance
Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, CUNY Graduate Center, Emerita
Closing Remarks: Frances Fox Piven
Organized by the MA/PhD Program in Political Science, with support from the MA/Phd Program in Sociology, The Advanced Research Collaborative, The Rosa Luxemburg Stifung – New York Office, The Provost’s Office, The Murphy Institute, and the JCF/Helenia Fund. Special thanks to Greg Zucker and Mr. Earl Fleary, APO in Political Science, for all of his assistance.
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