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2019 Four Freedoms
Awards
This past weekend, Roosevelt hosted
its biennial Four
Freedoms Awards
ceremony at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park,
New York. Celebrating the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor, the Four
Freedoms Awards honor those who exemplify our democracy’s foundational
freedoms—which FDR famously memorialized in
a 1941 speech.
This year’s award recipients included:
-
Lonnie
Bunch, Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution and founding director of the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
- Freedom Medal
-
The
Boston Globe
- Freedom of Speech and Expression
-
Krista
Tippett, Founder
and CEO, The On Being Project - Freedom of Worship
-
Franklin
Thomas,
former Ford Foundation president - Freedom from Want
-
Sandy
Hook Promise -
Freedom from Fear
As Bunch
tweeted, “By
honoring me with the @RooseveltInst
Freedom Medal, you honor the truth that there is
nothing more powerful than a people, than a nation, steeped in its
history. And there is nothing more noble than honoring
our ancestors by remembering.” Watch
the ceremony here.
 Happy
Birthday, Eleanor
“The legacy of the Roosevelts is
talked about a lot—whether in the language of the Green New Deal or
grappling with the horrific reality of Japanese internment camps—but
Eleanor’s advocacy and legacy are often overlooked or left out of
conversations, especially about radical women who changed our country.
(She actually disagreed with internment and spoke publicly against
it.) She was a powerful, tireless advocate, and played a smart inside
game to push forward an uncompromising vision of human rights, civil
rights, and gender equality.” Read
more from Roosevelt Network National Director Katie Kirchner in
Teen Vogue.
 A Global Green New
Deal
Just as FDR’s New Deal met an
existential challenge with the full force of government investment and
power, so too can a Green New Deal combat today’s climate crisis. “As
I explain in a forthcoming paper in the European Economic Review, carbon pricing is necessary but
insufficient: We will need large amounts of public and
private investment and regulations to guide the economy and stimulate
innovation,” Roosevelt Chief
Economist Joseph Stiglitz writes for Project Syndicate.
Read
more.
-
In other news: At the
Cities & Business Forum in Copenhagen this week, mayors of the
world’s largest cities announced the launch of the City-Business
Climate Alliance (CBCA). As their press release
noted, “The CBCA will ensure city mayors and business CEOs can
translate their global climate commitments into practical actions that
work in cities, to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C and deliver
on the highest ambitions of the Paris Agreement.”
- On the trail: A
new environmental
justice plan from 2020 candidate Sen. Elizabeth
Warren seeks a green transition that would “prioritize communities
that have experienced historic disinvestment, across their range of
needs: affordable housing, better infrastructure, good schools, access
to health care, and good jobs.”
 A Health Care System for All
Most of the Americans who were
uninsured before the passage of the Affordable Care Act remain
uninsured today. In a new
working paper,
Roosevelt Fellow Naomi Zewde explains why: For a quarter of uninsured
adults, it would be cheaper to file for bankruptcy than to meet the
lofty deductibles of the law’s private insurance policies. The
beneficiaries of those high deductibles: for-profit hospital
consortiums. Read
on.
-
Why this matters: In
a Twitter thread about her final radiation treatment for breast
cancer, Roosevelt Fellow Andrea Flynn explores how
privilege shapes health outcomes in this unequal system. “Lots of women
across the US will have the very same type of cancer I had—many of
them much more serious. But because our health system is broken and
unjust, many of them will not have the same experience I did.”
 Tackling Corporate Tax
Avoidance
“The world is facing multiple
crises—including climate change, inequality, slowing growth, and
decaying infrastructure—none of which can be addressed without
well-resourced governments. Unfortunately, the current proposals for
reforming global taxation simply don’t go far enough. Multinationals
must be compelled to do their part,” Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph
Stiglitz writes for The Guardian.
Read
more.
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