Frances Fox Piven

Ms. Piven was born in Canada in 1932 and grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. Her parents both emigrated from Uzlyany, a shtetl near Minsk. In 1962, she started working at Mobilization for Youth, the New York antipoverty program that became a model for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Soon, she was observing rent riots and watching speeches by figures such as Malcolm X. Ms. Piven’s academic career flourished. Her books, particularly “Poor People’s Movements,” were assigned in college classes. Glenn Beck repeatedly identified Ms. Piven and her husband and collaborator, Richard Cloward, who died in 2001, as a secret, dark force dictating former President Barack Obama’s agenda.