AUGUST 2020
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More Than Pretty Pictures
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 Gordon Parks’ work epitomized the black-and-white photography of the Depression era. He joined the Farm Security Administration in 1942—the agency’s only Black photographer. He chronicled African Americans' everyday lives, poverty, racial injustice, and the struggle for civil rights. Parks died in 2006 at age 93, but continues to inspire a new generation of photographers documenting the turbulence of our times. Reflecting on Gordon Parks, the Brooklyn-based photographer Andre D. Wagner recounts, “The camera in my life started to make sense when I thought about it the way Parks did: I could ‘use it as a weapon.’"
"Photography became more than just pretty pictures—it was a way to be defiant and to speak about society.”
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by Jonathan Shipley
“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the world, including racism, intolerance and poverty,” Parks told The New York Times in 2002. The same can be said for those photographing America’s current social unrest. READ MORE
Watch Wagner’s video essay "On Being a Black Photographer"
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J ust Scratching the Surface
by Gray Brechin
The work of the Living New Deal is a lot like an archaeological dig. We come upon exciting new finds about the New Deal digging through old journals, newspapers and archives. We believe we have just scratched the surface. READ MORE
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Suffrage Centennial Shines at Four Freedoms Park
A massive field of sunflowers has been installed at the monumental staircase at FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island. The park’s new exhibit, a collaboration of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy, the New York Historical Society and the League of Women Voters, honors the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote. It aims to symbolize the continued push for full equality today. The exhibit continues through Aug. 20.
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 FDR Four Freedoms Park Opens At Last
November 9, 2012
By Susan Ives
Forty years in the making, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park was finally dedicated on October 17, 2012. The new park takes its name from a speech President Roosevelt made on January 6, 1941 in which he said the way to justify the enormous sacrifice of war was to create a world centered on four essential human freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. READ MORE
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The Republican Narrative—No New Deal in Sight
If the end of the New Deal state is going to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, it should be now.
By Heather Cox Richardson
Moyers on Democracy, July 27, 2020
The Future of American Liberalism
We’re not going to have another Roosevelt. But in a time of crisis, in an ideological age, he showed it’s possible to get a lot done if you turn down the ideological temperature, if you evade the culture war, if you are willing to be positive and openly experimental.
By David Brooks
The New York Times, July 31, 2020
Joe Biden Is Campaigning on the Green New Deal, Minus the Crazy
In substance and spirit, the Democratic nominee has signed on to the concept’s most important pieces, while doing away with some of its more controversial, and less essential, trappings.
By Jordan Weissman
SALON, July 15, 2020
In the Face of Mass Unemployment, We Need a 21st Century WPA
The central reasons for a 21st century WPA are the material improvements it would bring to the lives of workers and their communities. But we should not undervalue the long-term importance of a project like this. As historian Eric Foner has argued, the New Deal brought about a new definition of social citizenship, whereby “freedom” was now understood to include economic security for every citizen.
By Max Page
Labor Notes, July 9, 2020
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"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who,
however, has never learned how to walk forward."
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
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