New Deal

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• 7/31/2022
  

  Kathryn Olmsted's "Newspaper Axis" Shows Media Extremism Nothing New

  by Kathryn Smith

  FDR's success in promoting the New Deal and rallying Americans to the defense of Europe against fascism was a triumph over the nation's right-wing newspaper barons. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/19/2022
  

  Inside the New Deal Project to Preserve the Oral Histories of 300 Formerly Enslaved Virginians

  That initiative, led by Howard University’s Sterling Brown, included a plan to interview thousands of formerly enslaved people across the South before they died.

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• SOURCE: The Intercept
  6/13/2022
  

  Robert Kuttner: If Dems Don't Go Big, Country May Go Fascist

  If the United States was lucky to avoid a fascist takeover in the 1930s, the country made much of its own luck through the New Deal. 

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• SOURCE: The Grio
  2/2/2022
  

  The Hidden History of the New Deal's "Black Brain Trust"

  Writer Michael Harriot examines the influence of a group of African American advisors to Franklin Roosevelt, which began with the friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune.

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  1/25/2022
  

  Historian Harvey Kaye: Biden has Never Wanted to be FDR

  Entering office in 1933, Franklin Roosevelt was confident that mass social movements would build support for systemic political and economic change. Joe Biden does not seem to be drawing similar lessons from social protest today. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  1/11/2022
  

  Why Do We Know So Little about the 1930s Coup Attempt against FDR?

  by Sally Denton

  "In a climate of conspiracies and intrigues, and against the backdrop of charismatic dictators in the world such as Hitler and Mussolini, the sparks of anti-Rooseveltism ignited into full-fledged hatred."

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• SOURCE: Contingent
  12/13/2021
  

  The Government Pen

  by Nick Delehanty

  "The Skilcraft pen is indeed more than a pen. It’s the physical embodiment of New Deal social policies; it’s the product of disabled people’s labor, labor which has long been a site of contestation."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/9/2021
  

  Why does Biden's Term Register as a Disappointment? We've Misread the Political Regime Cycle

  by Corey Robin

  The author was among those who thought Joe Biden might seize a "reconstructive moment" to push aside the social austerity politics of the Reagan Revolution. The problem hasn't been Biden's will, but the disproportionate obstructive power conservatives still hold. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/29/2021
  

  Lizabeth Cohen: Why Americans Buy So Much Stuff

  As holiday shopping overlaps with historic supply chain disruptions, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Lizabeth Cohen on the economy's reliance on spending and the culture of consumerism in the U.S.

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  11/8/2021
  

  TNR Editor: Actually, Biden Was Elected to Be an FDR

  If Democratic moderates want their president and their party to succeed, they need to grapple with the political decisions that have destroyed public investment and transferred the nation's wealth upward to the rich, and think of the present as a crisis comparable to the Great Depression. 

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• SOURCE: New York Magazine
  10/10/2021
  

  Has Biden's FDR Dream Hit the Rocks?

  Joe Biden must have expected unified Republican opposition and betrayal by Democratic moderates, but probably not so quickly. 

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• 9/26/2021
  

  A House Still Divided (Part 1)

  by Walter G. Moss

  The core of our polarization is a disagreement about what kind of country we will be – one dominated by Christian white men or one, in Frederick Douglass's words, "of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds, and to men of no creeds." 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  9/6/2021
  

  When the United States Almost Adopted a 30 Hour Work Week

  Historian Benjamin Hunnicutt describes the political negotiations that took place during the Depression to shorten the work week to put more Americans to work. Could similar changes work today? 

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• SOURCE: The Nation
  7/26/2021
  

  What is Left of the New Deal?

  by Michael Kazin

  Eric Rauchway's book on the New Deal stresses that FDR believed democracy could survive only if people accepted, and government supported, their mutual dependence on one another. Preserving the New Deal political order means recognizing and celebrating its tangible achievements. 

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• SOURCE: Politico
  8/1/2021
  

  Is a Group of New Deal Descendants Influencing the Biden Administration?

  A group of "descendants" – relatives of New Deal officials – is working to keep discussion of FDR's social and economic policy alive in the hopes that it will shift the Biden administration in a more activist direction. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  7/6/2021
  

  A New Deal for Writers in America

  by Scott Borchert

  "The best reason to support a new F.W.P. is also the most obvious. Like its predecessor, the project would be an economic rescue plan for writers, broadly defined: workers who have been grappling with a slowly unfolding crisis in their industry for at least a decade."

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  6/15/2021
  

  When the Government Supported Writers

  by Max Holleran

  "With its reminder that creative labor was once seen—like a strategic reserve of fuel, weapons, or medical supplies—as worthy of federal protection, Republic of Detours mobilizes New Deal history to help us imagine what our society would be like if federal tax dollars supported a reserve army of muralists, poets, and oral historians."

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• SOURCE: Jacobin
  6/8/2021
  

  Lewis Hine, Photographer of the American Working Class

  Lewis Hine's photographs, including for WPA arts programs, "contributed to an aesthetic of worker empowerment through images of strife and solidarity."

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• SOURCE: Washingtonian
  6/3/2021
  

  This Map Shows How the New Deal Was a Big Deal for DC

  Historian Brent McKee presents a guide to sites around the greater Washington area that show how the New Deal transformed the region, from historic preservation to wastewater treatment. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/24/2021
  

  Are We Entering a New Political Era?

  A group of younger progressive activists is seeking to push the Democratic Party to see a new political alignment where active government and public programs are no longer considered impossible. Some members of the group of historians and scholars who met with President Biden in March also relayed that message.