When FDR first took office in 1933, nearly a quarter of the American workforce was unemployed. In one of his first acts as president, FDR issued an executive order establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps. Within three months, the CCC hired 300,000 young men. At its peak a few years later, the Corps had half a million men working on environmental conservation, wildfire prevention and disaster relief. Last year, President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act passed the House and Senate with the support of every Democrat and no Republicans. However, a jobs provision modeled on the CCC was left on the cutting room floor. Last month, by executive order, Biden authorized the creation of the American Climate Corps. The program aims to train 20,000 young people for green jobs in the first year. The federal funding to put them to work will have to wait.
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By Marjory Johnson Wood
Stuck at home during the pandemic, I began sorting through storage boxes, some not opened since my mother passed away in 1993. I came upon “Memories of the Civilian Conservation Corps,” my father’s 1937 yearbook from his time in the Corps, opening a window into the history and experiences of those who were part of the New Deal’s popular youth program. READ MORE |
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Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the New Deal !
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN
Saturday, November 11, 2023, 4pm-8pm, PST
San Francisco Maritime Museum
CHAMPAGNE RECEPTION, MUSIC, REFRESHMENTS AND MORE!
 Join the Living New Deal, San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and National Park Service at one of the city's Crown Jewels —the San Francisco Maritime Museum, built by the WPA. Featured guests include historian Heather Cox Richardson; San Francisco historian and journalist Gary Kamiya, Master of Ceremonies The Honorable Charles Breyer, Living New Deal founder Gray Brechin and more.
 Keynote speaker Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian, educator and author. Her nightly newsletter, "Letters From an American," reaches more than a million subscribers. Her new book is Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State of America. INFORMATION AND TICKETS
LOCATION: San Francisco Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street, San Francisco, CA
 A film by Deborah Kauffman and Alan Snitow
"Town Destroyer”
PBS/America Reframed, Thursday Nov 2, 8pm EST/5pm PST and San Francisco’s KQED 9, Friday, Nov 17, 8pm PST
“Town Destroyer" probes a passionate dispute over historic murals at a San Francisco high school depicting the life of George Washington, a man Seneca leaders called “town destroyer” after he ordered their villages destroyed during the Revolutionary War. The Living New Deal played a key role in the debate over whether to remove the WPA-era murals, which sparked a national debate over public art and historic memory. MORE
 The Met Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
"Art for the Millions, American Culture and Politics in the 1930s”
Through December 10, 2023
The 1930s was a decade of political and social upheaval in the US, and the art and visual culture of the time reflected the unsettled environment. Featuring more than a hundred works, including paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler and Stuart Davis; prints by Elizabeth Olds, Dox Thrash and Riva Helfond; photographs by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange and more, providing an unprecedented overview of the era’s sociopolitical landscape.
LOCATION: The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 5th Ave, New York, NY
 International Quilt Museum, Lincoln
"A New Deal for Quilts"
Through April 20, 2024
Using antique quilts from the IQM collection as well as historical photos and documentary sources, "A New Deal for Quilts" shares how quiltmakers from around the US coped with the hard times of the Great Depression and the federal government’s response to the downturn —the New Deal, including its Works Progress Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority and National Recovery Administration, using patchwork quilts and quiltmaking as emblems of American perseverance and frugality.
LOCATION: 1523 N. 33rd St., Lincoln, NE
 Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University, Chicago
"New Deal America: Photographs by Arthur Rothstein”
Through May 2024
New Deal Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer Arthur Rothstein traveled the nation capturing the adversities of rural life during the Great Depression.
LOCATION: Gage Gallery, Roosevelt University, 425 S. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL
 Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
Art/Work: Women Printmakers of the WPA
November 5, 2023 through June 30, 2024
In 1943, the US General Services Administration entrusted to the BMA’s care nearly one thousand prints made by artists employed by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, which offered employment to millions of workers affected by the Great Depression. This exhibition features fifty works by women printmakers who used their imagery to call out racial, gendered and class-based inequities of American society.
LOCATION: 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD
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During the New Deal, the government paid struggling artists to produce art. Many of those artworks have since been lost, stolen or scattered. The US General Services Administration (GSA) is charged with recovering them. The recovery of John Sloan’s 1934 painting, “Fourteenth Street at Sixth Avenue,” took a convoluted path.
READ MORE
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 Franklin County Courthouse, Preston, Idaho
By Richard Walker
My partner Joan and I were near the end of a long drive from Missoula to Salt Lake City when we decided to turn off Interstate 15 and take old US Highway 91 south for the last fifty miles. In Preston, Idaho, we were rewarded with a surprising New Deal discovery. READ MORE
Tell us about your favorite New Deal Site. Send us a first-person story of 100 (or so) words about your favorite New Deal site and why you chose it. Send your submissions to: [email protected]. Thanks!
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A New American Climate Corps. Will it do the Job?
The Biden-Harris Administration unveiled a new climate and jobs program that it claimed could put 20,000 mostly young people to work in its first year of existence. An American Climate Corps would emphasize ambitious projects like installing solar panels, building recreational and nature trails, planting trees, protecting forests from fires, fortifying communities from storm surges and restoring coastal wetlands.
By Paul J. Baicich
Medium, October 2023
We Need a Real Green Jobs Program to Fight Climate Change
We should welcome expanded government investment in greening the economy and more opportunities for young people to get well-paying public sector jobs. But we shouldn’t confuse the Biden administration’s meager steps here with a Green New Deal–style intervention.
By Daniel Goulden
Jacobin, October 10, 2023
Progressive Groups Unveil 'Rural New Deal' to 'Reverse Decades of Economic Decline’
"The Rural New Deal is both comprehensive and bottom-up in its approach, focusing on strategies that we know from experience will work.”
By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams, September 13, 2023
Biden’s New 'New Deal' Falls Short in Two Critical Areas
So far, Mr. Biden has largely been AWOL on the issue of financial regulation. The second element missing from the New Deal analogy is eloquent and persistent Democratic advocacy that links Mr. Biden’s accomplishments to what has gone before. Why Democrats are so reticent about claiming their political heritage is a mystery to me.
By Diana B. Henriques
The New York Times, September 12, 2023
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“It is my belief that what is being accomplished will conserve our natural resources, create future national wealth and prove of moral and spiritual value not only to those of you who are taking part, but to the rest of the country as well.”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Greetings to the CCC, July 1933
YOUR DONATIONS KEEP THE NEW DEAL SPIRIT ALIVE.
The Living New Deal thanks you for your generous support!
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