View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword.

"The debate over welfare suffers from lack of historical perspective. Now come Mink and Solinger to transform our understanding with a clearly articulated, carefully organized, and judiciously selected collection of key sources and illustrative documents that illuminates the past and present of aid to poor women and their children. Essential for classroom use, this book also belongs on the desks of policy makers and activists alike."
--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

"A stirringly dramatic narrative of welfare policy history. Through the documents they select, Mink and Solinger bring to life an immensely important human drama, and they do so in a way that paves a path to a higher awareness of the deeply ingrained biases of gender, race, and class that operate in welfare policy."
--"Social Service Review"

Federal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States.

In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients'experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more.

They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers.

Welfare provides a picture of the government's evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square--welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.

In response to the riots of the mid-'60s, Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed, he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New York's dramatic decline and that continued to work against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area.

A clear-sighted, unflinching look at one ghetto community, How East New York Became a Ghetto provides insights and observations on the histories and fates of ghettos throughout the United States.

Examining the ways in which the war on terror has been utilized to promote regressive social and economic agendas, an analysis of the current domestic policy reveals taxation and strategic political practices in prior wars while revealing how democracy has been compromised, veteran benefits have bee

Francis Fox Piven, a celebrated political thinker and activist, offers a concise introduction to her award-winning writings on imperialism, voting and poverty as it relates to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Piven offers a clear historical context to the current struggles around economic disparity, poverty and imperialism and relates them to the labour, civil rights and anti-imperialist struggles of the Depression era. Through examining the past, Piven presents the immense future possibilities of the Occupy Movement.

"Pre-eminent among historians of labor history." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The textbook history of the 1920s is a story of Prohibition, flappers, and unbounded prosperity. For millions of industrial workers, however, the "roaring twenties" looked very different. Working-class communities were already in crisis in the years before the stock market crash of 1929. Strikes in the 1920s and attempts to organize the unemployed and fight evictions in the early 1930s often fell victim to police violence and repression.
Here, Irving Bernstein recaptures the social history of the decade leading up to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration, uncovers its widespread inequality, and sheds light on the long-forgotten struggles that form the prelude to the great labor victories of the 1930s.
"In other words, viewed from afar, most of the people who were suffering the hardships of the Depression were depressed and even ashamed, ready to blame themselves for their plight. But the train of developments that connects changes in social conditions to a changed consciousness is not simple. People, including ordinary people, harbor somewhere in their memories the building blocks of different and contradictory interpretations of what it is that is happening to them, of who should be blamed, and what can be done about it. Even the hangdog and ashamed unemployed worker who swings his lunch box and strides down the street so the neighbors will think he is going to a job can also have other ideas that only have to be evoked, and when they are make it possible for him on another day to rally with others and rise up in anger at his condition.
--From the new introduction by Frances Fox Piven

A groundbreaking moment in the discourse of the labour movement and a classic text which revolutionised social history. Bernstein uncovers a period when industrial trade unionism, working-class power and socialism became a rallying cry for millions of workers; from fields, mills, mines and factories. This is the second instalment of Bernstein's critically acclaimed trilogy on the American labour movement which charts how the New Deal and labour unions preserved democracy and capitalism at a time when the survival of both was unclear.

This report, the "Agenda for Social Justice: Solutions 2012," is designed to broadly inform our readers about some of the nation's most pressing social problems and to propose policy responses to those problems. Our audience includes social science scholars, teachers, and students; social activists; journalists, policymakers; elected officials; and of course the public-at-large. In short, this book is our attempt to inform and contribute to the ongoing public discourse about the nature and amelioration of some of our society's social problems. The Agenda for Social Justice: Solutions 2012 contains eleven chapters, each contributed by outstanding scholars in their respective areas, and each chapter addresses a specific social problem facing the U.S. today. The authors are professional researchers, activists, and/or policy professionals, and the goal of the text is to present cutting-edge academic knowledge in jargon-free language, both in defining a social problem and in suggesting policy responses that would work. Each piece can certainly stand on its own, and will certainly be informative in itself, and each chapter follows a definite format, and that the content is divided into three major sections: the first defining the social problem, the second providing evidence available to outline the state of affairs, and third offering concrete suggestions for the types of policies that would be effective in ameliorating these problems. The chapters in this book cover a wide range of concrete issues facing our society today, including issues of immigration, health, inequality, appropriation of public funds, income security, racial diversity, and social welfare. These are certainly among the pressing issues and discussions that one encounters in the news media and other areas of social discourse. The book is designed with short chapters, so that readers can devour the content, and then take these arguments to their academic work (whether teaching or scholarship) and the ideas into action in the world, ultimately creating a more just society. In all, it contains 11 chapters written by SSSP members, covering a variety of social problems covering a variety of pressing social problems, as follows: -Elizabeth J. Clifford, Susan C. Pearce, and Reena Tandon: Challenges Facing Foreign-Born women. -Amitai Etzioni: Regulatory Capture and Campaign Reform. -Robert Grantham: Inner-City Social Problems: -Cedric Herring: Diversity in America. -Tamara G.J. Leech and Devon Hensel: Reproductive Health of Black Women. -Jason Smith, Preston Rhea, and Sascha Meinrath: Promoting Equality in the Digital Sphere. -Cecilia Menjivar: U.S. Immigration Reform. -Carolyn Cummings Perrucci and Robert Perrucci: Jobs for America. -Frances Fox Piven: Inequality and Social Welfare. -John N. Robinson III and Katie Kerstetter: Affordable Housing. -Chris Wellin and Brooke Hollister: Economic Security for Older Americans.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Foreword.

aThabit emphasizes the central role of local institutions in contributing to urban disinvestment and decline.a
-- "Journal of Urban History"

"Walter Thabit has written a highly personal and compelling piece of retrospective analysis."--"Journal of the American Planning Association"

"Thabit's writing is lucid and heartfelt."
--"Urban Studies"

"An excellent source of data and intelligence on the formation of ghettos and the life and struggle within them."
--"Science & Society"

""How East New York Became a Ghetto" describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican one, and shows how a series of racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once-flourishing area."
--"Arab-American Affairs

"An interesting and worthwhile read, especially for its descriptions."--"Supplement"

"Walter Thabit's book works as a slice of urban sociology, history, and political science. It should whet the appetites of students and scholars to inquire into the "longue duree" of the subject more extensively."
--"New York History"

aThe book powerfully coveys the forces behind the ghettoization of one urban community and illustrates the difficulties of community development.a
-- Urban History Review.

"A comprehensive account of the decline of East New York in Brooklyn into a typical urban slum and of the efforts since the 1960s to redevelop the neighborhood. Anyone interested in urban social problems and improving the quality of life for urban poor should read this astounding analysis of urban decay and rebirth."
--"Multicultural Review"

"Thabit does a Herculean task of documenting the various factors that led to the ghettoization of East New York."
--"Progressive Planning"

"Thabit is in a unique position to document the destruction of the once working class Brooklyn neighborhood. . . Toward the book's conclusion, Thabit sounds a faint note of hope to the emerging community groups."
-- "New York"

"This thoughtful, important analysis is recommended for academics, professionals, and a concerned public library audience."
--"Library Journal"

"Walter Thabit eloquently tells the story of East New York, a neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, complementing his close observation of events in the neighborhood with astute analyses of the bearing of larger forces on this big city slum. Events in East New York reveal in microcosm the turbulent national forces that have determined the fate of inner city ghettos across the country over the past 40 years."
--from the Foreword by Frances Fox Piven

"The grim descriptions of civil neglect, community disorganization and institutional racism make this a difficult read, particularly when one realizes that this is the story that can be told about thousands of other neighborhoods in scores of citiies by hundreds of people. Perhaps if more planners like Thabit had told their stories, we might not have found oruselves in this predicament."
--"ADPSR NY"

In response to the riots of the mid-'60s, Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed, he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New York's dramatic decline and that continued towork against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area.

A clear-sighted, unflinching look at one ghetto community, How East New York Became a Ghetto provides insights and observations on the histories and fates of ghettos throughout the United States.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword.

"The debate over welfare suffers from lack of historical perspective. Now come Mink and Solinger to transform our understanding with a clearly articulated, carefully organized, and judiciously selected collection of key sources and illustrative documents that illuminates the past and present of aid to poor women and their children. Essential for classroom use, this book also belongs on the desks of policy makers and activists alike."
--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

"A stirringly dramatic narrative of welfare policy history. Through the documents they select, Mink and Solinger bring to life an immensely important human drama, and they do so in a way that paves a path to a higher awareness of the deeply ingrained biases of gender, race, and class that operate in welfare policy."
--"Social Service Review"

Federal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States.

In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients'experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more.

They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers.

Welfare provides a picture of the government's evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square--welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.

Americans take for granted that ours is the very model of a democracy. At the core of this belief is the assumption that the right to vote is firmly established. But in fact, the United States is the only major democratic nation in which the less well-off, the young, and minorities are substantially underrepresented in the electorate.
Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward were key players in the long battle to reform voter registration laws that finally resulted in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (also known as the Motor Voter law). When Why Americans Don't Vote was first published in 1988, this battle was still raging, and their book was a fiery salvo. It demonstrated that the twentieth century had witnessed a concerted effort to restrict voting by immigrants and blacks through a combination of poll taxes, literacy tests, and unwieldy voter registration requirements.
"Why Americans Still Don't Vote" brings the story up to the present. Analyzing the results of voter registration reform, and drawing compelling historical parallels, Piven and Cloward reveal why neither of the major parties has tried to appeal to the interests of the newly registered-and thus why Americans still don't vote.

A critical and democratic perspective on American politics, letters, and higher education. Drawing from public and personal experiences, the author invites readers to think about their own level of social consciousness. Topics include: capitalism and class inequality; and teaching and parenting.