Peter Dreier says right-wingers remain convinced that ACORN is part of a nefarious plot to destroy America, and they'll use any means they can to prove it. Sociologist Frances Fox Piven often gets requests from students who want to interview her about her political theories and activism. So when Kyle Olson phoned her in January and told her he was a college student in Michigan who wanted to videotape an interview with her about her recent book Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, Piven agreed. Temporarily housebound and recovering from a car accident, the 77-year-old Piven invited Olson to her New York apartment. On Feb. 1, Olson and a friend arrived from Michigan with a video camera. She offered them something to drink. Then, for about an hour, Piven and Olson sat around her dining room table and talked about everything from the Founding Fathers to Fox News while the friend taped them. Two weeks later, Piven, a professor at the City University of New York and former president of the American Sociological Association, learned that about eight minutes of the taped interview had appeared in three segments on Big Government, Andrew Breitbart's conservative news Web site. The outlet achieved national prominence when it published James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles' highly edited but hugely destructive hidden-camera recordings of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) employees. And the same Web site became infamous when O'Keefe was arrested for allegedly trying to tamper with Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone system as part of another "investigation," while on Breitbart's payroll. Now, Olson has employed these same "gotcha" tactics on Piven, all while advancing a damaging mythology of Barack Obama that depends on a strained interpretation of an article Piven co-authored decades ago. Olson is not a college student. He is a 31-year-old Republican Party operative and commentator. He runs a Michigan-based conservative advocacy organization, the Education Action Group, which primarily attacks teachers' unions. Olson has also paid for billboards in Michigan that attack pro-choice candidates, developed an anti-ACORN Web site, and written articles blasting liberal leaders like Obama and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern. The real reason for Olson's interview with Piven was a 1966 Nation article she co-authored with Richard Cloward. "A Strategy to End Poverty" has become the centerpiece of a right-wing conspiracy theory -- the blueprint for a radical takeover of American society. The 6,327-word piece proposed organizing the poor to demand the welfare benefits for which they were eligible in order to pressure the federal government to expand the nation's social safety net and establish a guaranteed national income. To that end, Cloward and Piven helped create the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), which had some success in increasing participation in the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program through organized protests and political advocacy. KEEP READING. . .
