Diane

About Diane Pagen

Diane was born in Queens, New York, and has lived in all the boroughs of NYC except for Staten Island. She is a social worker, a social policy researcher and writer, and has taught social welfare policy to first year graduate social work students. Diane is working on analysis of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grants and educating people on the diversion of these block grants by state welfare bureaucracies, a phenomenon that is aggravating poverty nationally.She loves to read and to write, to go to Scandinavia House, and watch crime series and political thrillers such as Wallender and Baron Noir. She enjoys gardening, and reading and writing, as well as discussing politics with her students, her friends, her dates and just about anyone who can talk. Of late she does not get to do much of these fun things because she is busy protesting the Covid19 vaccine mandates and its violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but hopes to go back to them once the mandates are defeated. She is an activist for a Universal Basic Income and part of Basic Income NYC, a bunch of people who get together to spread Basic Income to others. She supports Andrew Yang for the U.S. Presidency in 2020. Diane is a graduate of the Universidad de Puerto Rico, where she studied for five years and graduated with honors, and has a Master of Social Work from Fordham University (2004). Thanks to the UPR, she has learned to speak Spanish. She has also lived in Spain and in France, and wants to retire to Colombia if the US continues to fall into the toilet. She is working on a bunch of things including a book chapter for a book about UBI coming out in 2020. Diane lives in Brooklyn.