NEWS and ISSUES - Cloward-Piven Strategy

What is a "Cloward - Piven Strategy"

STRATEGY FOR FORCING POLITICAL CHANGE
THROUGH ORCHESTRATED CRISIS

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints.

Activists were abuzz over the so-called
"crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy,"
as it came to be called.
Many were eager to put it into effect.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times "Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands."

Cloward-Piven's early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration.

They predicted as a result "a profound financial and political crisis" that would unleash "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level."

Read article at "Discoverthenetworks"

Never let a crisis go to waste - Videos

Hillary Clinton


Rahm Emanuel

Josh Earnst (January 12, 2015 Whitehouse Briefing)

Karl Marx as described by Hal Linsdey
- Marx's "Management by crisis" (at Min. 1:0)

How to create aSocial State according to Saul Alinsky

Take a look at even closer in history ... President Obama and Hillary Clinton are literally both students of Saul Alinsky's teachings ...

Hillary Clinton's 1969 Political Science Thesis ("There is Only the Fight") refers to an earlier version of Alinsky’s training manual. "In 1946,” she wrote, "Alinsky's first book, Reveille for Radicals, was published."

The president's ability to exploit crises is reminiscent of the controversial teachings of Columbia University political scientists, Frances Fox Cloward and Richard Andrew Piven. Inspired by the Obama mentor -- radical community organizer Saul Alinsky -- these two sixties social revolutionaries taught that upheaval is something that should "never be wasted"and that political change can be fostered through "...orchestrated crisis." Two skills our current president, Barack Obama, proficiently exercises every chance he gets.

 

"Barack Obama's training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.."

L. DAVID ALINSKY

Son of Saul Alinsky in letter to the Boston Globe

 

Cloward-Piven instructed activists that if a crisis did not exist, promote or manufacture one by exaggerating a benign or unthreatening predicament. In doing so, contrived commotion would serve as a tool to convince the masses of their urgent need for rescue. In order to achieve the ultimate goal, students were encouraged to stress the social system to the breaking point, which would quash capitalism and institute socialism through a massive infusion of government intervention

Cloward-Piven repeatedly cited Alinsky's, Rules for Radicals, in all their work. Marxism advocates were taught by Cloward-Piven to,

 

"Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." Never failing to remind their apprentices that, "...when pressed...human agencies inevitably fall short...the system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then is used to discredit it altogether." The definitive goal: "... replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one."

In order to emphasize the urgency of calamity, Obama too has been fostering fear and fueling crisis since day one.

Read entire article...

Our country's being transformed into something totally different than what our forefathers had built under the Declaration of Independence, US constitution, and Bill of Rights.  Look closely at the issues and news in this light.  Is it going to be a Socialist country?  Maybe a Marxist, Communist, ... what?  It for sure, isn't going down the road to freedom!  When the present administration is finished with what they're doing ... we will NOT be free ...  I believe we can stop them, though. It will take enough people to open their eyes, research, learn, and reach out to others.

Cloward and Piven - Violence ok " ... as long as it is a BIG part of your strategy'

Francis Piven

Cloward and Piven - Violence ok

 

It's okay to use violence if it's part of a strategy.

Obama Alinsky Connection

By Vincent Gioia | Published  10/19/2008         The importance of this election to all Americans and the future of our country cannot be overstated. The United States has never had the possibility of a virtual Marxist in the oval office before. 

 

        The Democrat Party has been taken over by the extreme left wing to the extent that earlier Democrats like Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey would not recognize it. 

(... ...artic le continues ...)

        It is fair to ask how we have gotten to the point where a charismatic Marxist is within walking distance to the White House.  The answer is that a perfect storm of socialism has been developed by shrewd people behind the scene, a leftist news media, and careful long-term planning.  All major players are acolytes of communist Saul Alinsky who taught his students the ''Rules for Radicals'' to take over the country by working from within.

        Saul Alinsky wrote two books where he described his organizational principles and strategies: ''Reveille for Radicals'' (1946) and ''Rules for Radicals'' (1971).  ''Rules for Radicals'' begins with a quote about Lucifer, written by Saul Alinsky: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins--or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom--Lucifer.”

        In ''Rules for Radicals,'' Alinsky wrote: “Here I propose to present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution”; building on the tactical principles of Machiavelli: “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals are written for the Have-nots on how to take it away.”

        Alinsky’s Rules are concerned with the acquisition of power: “my aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it.”  This is not to be done with assistance to the poor, or even by organizing the poor to demand assistance: “Even if all the low-income parts of our population were organized ... it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic, needed changes.”

        Alinsky advises the organizer to target the middle class, rather than the poor: “Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America’s white middle class.  That is where the power is.”

        Clearly Alinsky is interested in the middle class only because it is useful: “Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and the way of life of the middle class.  They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized, and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change and the power and the people are in the middle class majority.”

        Does this sound familiar? Obama is calling for “change” but the change Obama seeks is right out of the Alinsky Rule book.

        In his Rules for Radicals Alinsky defends belief that the end justifies the means: “to say that corrupt the ends, is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles ... the practical revolutionary will understand ... [that] in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.”

        Altogether, Alinsky provides eleven rules of the ethics of means and ends.  They are morally relativistic; the main one is that the Rules for Radicals “are therefore concerned with how to win.  In such a conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except victory. … “The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the ends justifies almost any means.”

        “There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father.”

        Rules for Radicals teach the organizer that he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): “All effective action requires the passport of morality.”

        The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends states “that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments ... Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”

        ''Rules for Radicals'' provide the organizer with a strategy for community organization that assumes an adversarial relationship between groups of people in which one either dominates or is dominated.

        “The first rule of power tactics is: power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.”

        “Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.  Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”

        “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

        “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.  It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule.  Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

        “The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself.”

        “In a fight almost anything goes.  It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt.”

        “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.  One of the criteria for picking the target is the target’s vulnerability ... the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.  The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

        ''Rules for Radicals'' stresses organizational power-collecting: “The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader.  The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which a man can reach--to create, to be a ‘great creator,’ to play God.”

        Alinsky thought Hillary Clinton was a terrific “organizer” and wanted her to become his protégé.  She and Bill Clinton have employed Alinsky’s tactics probably better than anyone else, until Barack Obama came along.

        Obama has followed Alinsky’s Rules perfectly.  Although Alinsky was an atheist, Alinsky recognized the importance of church communities as springboards for agitation and for demanding goods and services. Obama undertook his agitating work in Chicago's South Side poor neighborhoods but he was not yet a church goer although he did have an office in a church.  The people he intended to organize were church people who were serious church-goers.  Many people asked where he went to church.  He evaded the question for a while but then decided to join a church.

        Of course, the selection of a church to join was important.  He decided to join a huge Black nationalist church with a pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who openly preached “black" gospel.  Rolling Stone Magazine had a story on Obama and his church, entitled, "Destiny's Child," which included this excerpt from one of Rev. Wright's sermons (from an article by Kyle-Anne Schiver in American Thinker):

        "Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones.  Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!"

        "We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns, and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!  And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS S**T!"

        Obama has called Reverend Wright his spiritual mentor and still claims he is his sounding board.

        Among some of the Black Nationalist signs hanging in this church are a list of admonishments to black solidarity, called the "Black Value System," and a sort of moral code calling for the "Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclass ness."

        This doesn't sound like the Ten Commandments to me nor does this seem like any church I am familiar with.

        Let’s see how Obama follows Alinsky’s Rules to defeat John McCain and win the election.

        Barack Obama mocks John McCain, while urging his followers to "get in their face," these are tactics right out of Saul Alinsky's playbook: ridicule and agitation.

        During a Las Vegas rally Obama joked about McCain for what he described as lauding about "how as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he had oversight of every part of the economy."

        "Well, all I can say to Sen. McCain is, 'Nice job. Nice job,'" Obama said sarcastically; "Where is he getting these lines?  It's like a 'Saturday Night Live' routine."

        Alinsky advised community organizers like Obama to "laugh at the enemy" to provoke "irrational anger." "Ridicule," he said, "is man's most potent weapon.  It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

        Obama speaks in a quiet voice and almost always wears a business suit.  Both are also borrowed from Alinsky's Rules. "Don't scare" the middle class.  Instead, look like them, talk like them, act like them.”

        Alinsky taught his followers to work for radical change from the inside. Obama said in his first memoir "like a spy behind enemy lines."  He wrote it before entering politics, while still working with Alinsky groups and training street agitators known as "community organizers" for ACORN.  In 1983 Obama wrote that he became a community organizer in ACORN because of "The need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds."

        Here are some other examples of how well Obama follows the Alinsky Rules (from a Yahoo News article).

        Rule: "Rub raw the resentments of the people; search out controversy and issues." In the mortgage meltdown, for instance, Obama vows to prosecute "predatory lenders" for "abusing" minority borrowers.  He's also stoking class resentment by painting Wall Street and other executives as villains.

        Rule: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."  In an ad to woo Hispanic voters, Obama demonized Rush Limbaugh by falsely claiming he made racist statements against immigrants.

        Rule: "A mass impression can be lasting and intimidating." This explains why Obama moved his acceptance speech to a football stadium and bussed in 85,000 supporters.  Alinsky's son was so impressed, he praised Obama for learning his father's "lesson well."

        Rule: "Multiple issues mean constant action and life" for the cause.  This is why Obama never harps on one issue, as Hillary did with health care.  His platform is packed with grievances from "economic justice" to "reproductive justice" to "environmental justice."

        Obama is following almost perfectly the outline for socialist revolution written by the founder of community organizing, Saul Alinsky.

        Not that Obama is altogether home free, but he uses his war room effectively.

        After Sarah Palin ridiculed Obama’s community organizing in one speech, Obama surrogates quickly claimed Palin was bringing up the phrase as a racist code for "black."

        Mention of “Community Organizing” is not racism, but racism is a code word used by communists. McCain should make that point instead of legitimizing such radicalism, as he did recently when he said, "I respect community organizers; and Senator Obama's record there is outstanding"--which contradicted Sarah Palin in another example of the incompetent McCain campaign.

        Alinsky could never have dreamed a disciple would be in a battle for the most powerful job in the world, let along have a good chance of winning.  Nor would I have believed so many Americans would fall for the socialist claptrap of Barack Obama.

Vincent Gioia

Vincent Gioia is a retired patent attorney living in Palm Desert, California.  He blogs at www.vincentgioia.com and receives e-mail at [email protected].  

View all blogs by Vincent Gioia...

Obama, Alinsky, and the Marxist Left

Francis Fox Piven

Frances Fox Piven

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Frances Fox Piven, born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1932, is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

 

She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1962. In 2006-2007 she served as the President of the American Sociological Association. She was married to her long-time collaborator Richard Cloward until his death in 2001. Together with Cloward, she designed the "Cloward-Piven Strategy," outlined in an article written in the may 1966 issue of The Nation entitled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty."

Cloward - Piven Strategy

Cloward-Piven Strategy

By Jim Simpson 

Part I: Manufactured Crisis

Liberals self-righteously wrap themselves in the mantle of public spirit. They ardently promote policies promising to deliver the poor and oppressed from their latest misery — policies which can only find solution in the halls of government. But no matter what issue one examines, over the last fifty plus years, the liberal prescription has almost always been a failure.

Why is this so? Why does virtually every liberal scheme result in ever-increasing public spending while conditions seem to get continually worse? There are a number of reasons:

1. The programs usually create adverse incentives.  ...  This in turn creates a dependent culture with its attendant toxic behaviors which demand still more government “remedies.”
2. The programs create their own industry, complete with scads of “think tanks” and “experts” who survive on government research grants. These are the aptly named “Beltway Bandits.”
3. They create their own bureaucracies, whose managers conspire with interested members of Congress to continually increase program funding, regardless of merit.
4. Members of Congress secure votes and campaign donations by extorting them from beneficiaries of such programs, either through veiled threats — “vote for me or those mean Republicans will wipe out your benefits” — or promises of still more bennies.

In short, all develop a vested interest in the program’s survival. But if the result is always more and more government, of government, by government, and for government, with no solution in sight, then why do liberals always see government as the solution rather than the problem?

Part II: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

"America waits with bated breath while Washington struggles to bring the U.S. economy back from the brink of disaster. But many of those same politicians caused the crisis, and if left to their own devices will do so again."

(con't)

"One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit."

Part III: Conspiracy of the Lemmings

"this is exactly the endgame of the American radical Left — increasingly indistinguishable from today’s Democrat Party — and offers the only internally consistent explanation for their historic obsession with divisive policy. From their early support of Hitler to their central role in the current financial crisis, the Left’s contribution to domestic and foreign policy at federal, state and local levels can only be described as wantonly destructive. Their takeover of schools and popular culture has been equally toxic. Their environmental radicalism has spawned the energy crisis, while offering no viable alternatives. It defies logic.

But there is logic, a deadly logic, and in the 1960s, two radicals gave it a name — the Cloward-Piven Strategy. As explained in my prior article, the goal was to create a groundswell of demands for public services to overwhelm government, create crisis and usher in a widespread call for fundamental economic reform at the federal level, with socialism the ultimate goal."

 

Richard A Cloward (1926 - 2005)

NASW Foundation National Programs NASW Social Work Pioneers

Richard Cloward

Richard A. Cloward (1926 - 2005)

Professor Cloward is an internationally known scholar and activist. He is a most widely read social work scholar in the profession.

He held a Masters degree in social work and a PhD in sociology, both from Columbia University. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Adelphi University. Professor Cloward was a member of the faculty of the Columbia University School of Social Work since 1954.

Read entire article.

Back door Censorship

Back door Censorship

Hate Crimes Legislation — Back Door Censorship

An extension of the Hate Crimes law recently passed the House of Representatives which will essentially codify into national law the speech codes that are smothering academic freedom on college campuses today. This law is the back door method Obama and his fellow socialists will use to stifle free speech in this country, as explained in an informative article by Jerry Kane.

To heck with the Fairness Doctrine. Who needs to limit censorship to the airwaves? This legislation will silence anyone who disagrees with them.

(Article continues...)

…organise the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilisation stink [sic]. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.

According to an article by Timothy Matthews in Catholic Insight, key strategies to achieve this goal were:

1. The creation of racism offences.
2. Continual change to create confusion.
3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children.
4. The undermining of schools’ and teachers’ authority.
5. Huge immigration to destroy identity.
6. The promotion of excessive drinking.
7. Emptying of churches.
8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime.
9. Dependency on the state or state benefits.
10. Control and dumbing down of media.
11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family.

Munzenberg stated flatly, “We will make the West so corrupt it stinks.”

Today, his mission appears to have been largely accomplished.

Cloward - Piven Strategy (Washington Times)

Cloward - Piven Strategy

Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress - with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

Why?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

Read about it here.

(The Washington Times)

What caused the financial crash?

"There is plenty blame to go around for the financial crash. Yet, there is a distinct odor of the shadowy Cloward-Piven strategy as the taproot of abusive practices that triggered the crisis. The strategy's goal is to bring about the fall of capitalism by overloading and undermining government bureaucracy."

Read more here.

"The Cloward - Piven Strategy"

"Using the poor to tear down capitalism"

By Robert Chandler | Wednesday, October 15, 2008
New York Times

The 2008 financial crisis has all of the earmarks of a Cloward-Piven strategy assault
against the capitalist system.
Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center
recently explained that "community organizers"
(1) "intimidate banks into making high risk loans to customers with poor credit,"
(2) "occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies,
and confront executives at their homes," and, through these thuggish tactics,
(3) compel "financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions dollars
in mortgages to low-credit customers."
"In other words," Mr. Kurtz explained during a presentation
at the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal,
"community organizers help to undermine America's economy
by pushing the banking system into a sink-hole of bad loans."

Read entire article.