Diane

About Diane Pagen

Diane was born in Queens, New York and grew up in Woodside Houses and later in Bayside and Lefrak City. She is a social worker, a social policy researcher, analyst and writer. She has taught social welfare policy to first year graduate social work students. Diane is particularly passionate about implementing ideas to improve and repair 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 has been aggravating poverty nationally since the 1990s. She loves to read and to write, and watch Scandinavian police and crime series and political thrillers such as Wallender and Baron Noir. Diane is fluent in Spanish and pretty good in French thanks to having lived in Puerto Rico for five years. Diane has a special passion for México and Central America, and would like to help make better U.S./Latin America policy as these are our best neighbors. She enjoys gardening, and reading and writing, as well as discussing politics with her students, her friends, and with just about anyone who can talk. In 2021, Diane was illegally fired from her job as a public servant school social worker when she invoked her rights and refused to take a Covid vaccine in New York City. She has been protesting the Covid19 vaccine mandatesand its continued violation of the Civil Rights and Constitutional Rights of New York's workers since 2021, working hard to help NYC workers be reinstated to the jobs they were forced out of. Her favorite part of The Bible is Matthew. 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.