Frances Fox Piven Responds to Death Threats: 'I Love It

Progressive academic Frances Fox Piven is responding to various threats she has received since "Glenn Beck began obsessively attacking [her] in early 2011."

Piven has reportedly received emails stating, among other things, "may cancer find you soon," and "DIE YOU C***."  While in January she said of it, “I don’t want to give anybody the satisfaction of thinking they’ve got me trembling,” she is now remarking, "I love it."

According to Truthout:

For most of her life, Frances Fox Piven has worked as a professor of social sciences and activist far away from public notoriety. Though fairly well-known in academic and progressive circles, having played a key role in major social movements like the National Welfare Rights Organization...

She rocketed to a national platform in early 2011.  Truthout continues:

Rather than flee from the public spotlight, however, Piven seized it.

She repeatedly appeared on news shows to discuss the threats; she led a national teach-in with Princeton professor and activist Cornel West on pushing back against austerity; she continued writing for a variety of publications about the need for a movement to fight against massive inequality. In October, she visited Zuccotti Park, where she made no attempts to hide her near-giddiness at the scene before her as she praised Occupy Wall Street (OWS). When asked about the attention she has received after the death threats, she laughs.

Back in the 1960's, Piven helped formulate the idea of using the American welfare state to implement revolution.  Her simplified proposal was to make people dependent on the government, overload the government's rolls, and then collapse and overthrow the system.  Capitalism would be replaced with a much "fairer" form of government that provided for income equality.

Watch Frances Fox Piven and Russel Simmons at Occupy Wall Street, below: