Safety Net Forum — April 8th

THE SAFETY NET, SEQUESTRATION AND AUSTERITY POLITICS:

WHERE WE ARE HEADED. WHAT WE CAN DO.

2011 demo to defend Medicare.

The PSC Social Safety Net working group is pleased to invite you to our second conference which will take place on April 8, 2013 at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. As the title above indicates, the focus of this event is the impact that sequestration may have on social safety net programs – Social Security, Medicare, pensions and the full range of programs that we have fought for and earned and that many retirees, children and low-income people depend upon. Featured speakers include Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute, Frances Fox Piven of the CUNY Graduate Center and Michael Zweig of SUNY Stony Brook and US Labor Against the War. They will analyze and speak to the current climate of austerity and what we can do to combat it.

In addition, Labor Arts has organized a special visual presentation about the history of the safety net.

1936 Social Security poster from Labor Arts www.laborarts.org

Joining us as co-sponsors (list in formation) are the No Bad Grand Bargain Coalition, Caring Across Generations, the New York City Alliance for Retired Americans, Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations and The New York City Managerial Employees Association. We begin at 5:30 with light refreshments; the program starts immediately at 6:00 with a wrap up by 9:00.

Washington politicos can only deny us what we have a right to, if we let them.

April 8, 2013, 6:00-9:00
Borough of Manhattan Community College
Richard Harris Terrace
199 Chambers Street, Manhattan

Subway directions: 1,2,3, A & C to Chambers St.; E to WTC; R to City Hall; 6 to Brooklyn Bridge.

Click here for a flier.

SPEAKER BIOs:

Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Dean Baker

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, and National Public Radio. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), the Huffington Post, TruthOut, and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting. His analyses have appeared in many major publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the London Financial Times, and the New York Daily News. He received his Ph.D in economics from the University of Michigan.

Baker has written several books, his latest being The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. His other books include Taking Economics Seriously (MIT Press), which thinks through what we might gain if we took the ideological blinders off of basic economic principles, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (PoliPoint Press, 2010) about what caused – and how to fix – the current economic crisis. In 2009, he wrote Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (PoliPoint Press), which chronicled the growth and collapse of the stock and housing bubbles and explained how policy blunders and greed led to the catastrophic – but completely predictable – market meltdowns.

James Parrot, Fiscal Policy Institute

Prior to joining the Fiscal Policy Institute in 1999, James Parrott was Chief Economist and Director of the Bureau of Fiscal and Economic Analysis for the Office of the State Deputy Comptroller for New York City (OSDC). Parrott has also served as Chief Economist for the City of New York’s economic policy office under Mayor David N. Dinkins and Executive Assistant to the President of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (now UNITE). He received his B.A. in American Studies from Illinois Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Frances Fox-Piven, CUNY Graduate Center

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her scholarship and activism have centered on social movements, electoral politics, and welfare policy. She received her B.A. in City Planning from the University of Chicago, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has taught in the Columbia University School of Social Work and at Boston University, and has been on the faculty of the Graduate Center since 1982.

Professor Piven has served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democratic Socialists of America. She is currently the Editorial Board Chair of the New Press, is a Left Forum board member, and is outgoing President of the American Sociological Association. Under her leadership, the ASA conference’s theme was “Another World Is Possible,” echoing the slogan of the World Social Forum. She used her tenure to challenge fellow sociologists to respond to current neo-liberal policies by searching for political strategies that might affect “reform and transformation.”

Michael Zweig, SUNY/ Stony Brook

Michael Zweig is Professor of Economics at Stony Brook University in New York, where is the founder and director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life. His most recent books are What’s Class Got to Do with It: American Society in the Twenty-first Century (Cornell University Press, 2004), and The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret (Cornell University Press, 2000 – 2nd edition due December, 2011). In 2005-2006, he served as executive producer of Meeting Face to Face: the Iraq – U.S. Labor Solidarity Tour. He wrote, produced, and directed the DVD Why Are We in Afghanistan? in 2009.

Recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Professor Zweig received his PhD in economics in 1967 from the University of Michigan where, as an undergraduate, he was a founding member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and as a graduate student helped found the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE). He has a long history of social activism combined with scholarly work and has published widely in professional and general circulation journals.