 Congress funded the Federal Theatre Project primarily to provide jobs for unemployed theatre people during the Great Depression. But WPA administrator Harry Hopkins and the FTP’s dynamic director Hallie Flanagan had a much broader mission: to create a publicly funded national theater, accessible to all, that would both entertain and strengthen public dialogue and democracy. Documentary photographers working under Roy Stryker at the Farm Securities Administration were similarly driven, capturing on film the great inequality between the rich and the poor. Stirring the conscience of Americans then and still. |
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By Susan Quinn
Compared to the New Deal’s overall expenditures, the budget of the WPA arts projects was laughably small, and the Federal Theater Project’s was even smaller—a mere tenth of one percent. But the Federal Theater, begun in 1935 under the bold leadership of the 5-foot dynamo Hallie Flanagan, still managed to introduce this country to an astonishing range of new ideas that still resonate nearly a century later. READ MORE
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 The New Deal Through the Lens of Arthur Rothstein
By Ann Rothstein Segan and Brodie Hefner
President Franklin Roosevelt had a remarkable ability to rally the nation using the mass-communication media of his time. He crafted intimate “Fireside Chats” to reach Americans in their homes by radio, but in this pre-television era FDR also needed compelling visual imagery to advance his New Deal agenda. Photography was central to the administration’s wide-ranging media strategies. READ MORE
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 Tuesday, May 3, 2022, 11am-12pm PST
Economic Policy Institute Webinar
Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal and the Struggle to Save Democracy
President Biden faces challenges not seen since the 1930s. With author Robert Kuttner and Valerie Wilson, Director of Economic Policy Institute’s program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy.
REGISTER
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 Thursday, May 19, 5pm PDT
Living New Deal Webinar
“New Deal Photography Through the Lens of Arthur Rothstein”
At age 20, New York photographer Arthur Rothstein (1915-1985) began documenting the Great Depression. His many images for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) depict struggles that persist today.
Presenter Dr. Annie Rothstein Segan is director of the Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project, New York. Free. REGISTER
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 Saturday, June 18, 2022
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY
The Living New Deal Book Award
The Living New Deal has named Scott Borchert, author of Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)—the winner of the Living New Deal 2021 New Deal Book Award. Republic of Detours weaves together biography and geography to compose a vivid picture of the Federal Writers’ Project.
Mary Jane Appel, author of Russell Lee: A Photographer’s Life and Legacy (W.W. Norton & Company), is the runner up for her biography of one of the most prolific—and overlooked—photographers of Federal Security Agency/Office of War Information. The award ceremony will take place at Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum at the 18th Annual Roosevelt Reading Festival. The day-long program is free and open to the public. Guidelines for submissions.
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 Through July 3, 2022
Stanford University, Cantor Arts Center, Palo Alto, CA
A Loaded Camera: Gordon Parks
From his work as a New Deal photographer in the 1940s, through the tumult of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and into the 70s, 80s and beyond, Parks’s images made visible the country’s racist legacy and the struggles to overcome it. He famously wrote that early on he had understood his camera to be a “weapon against all the things I dislike about America—poverty, racism, discrimination.” LEARN MORE
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Some links may limit access for nonsubscribers. Please support local journalism, if you can.
If Biden’s Plan Is Like a ‘New Deal,’ Why Don’t Voters Care?
The $1.9 trillion pandemic-relief law unleashed a massive wave of spending on local construction projects and programs. Democratic candidates aren’t getting much credit.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan,” Mr. Biden said to House members, “and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”
By Alexander Burns
The New York Times, April 21, 2022
Democrats Used to Be Able to Get Things Done. What Happened?
But Democrats have a problem that has bedeviled their leaders on and off ever since shrewd political bosses from Albany and stalwart Jeffersonians from Virginia founded what would become the party roughly 200 years ago. They lack a social movement of working people that could turn passive support for universal social programs into a force large and vocal enough to enact lasting change.
By Michael Kazin
The New York Times, February 25, 2022
Environmental organizations unveil ‘Green New Deal pledge’ for 2022 candidates
Signers of the pledge commit to rejecting any donations of more than $200 from fossil fuel interests and commit to co-sponsoring 10 pieces of Green New Deal-related legislation within six months of taking office. These include the original Green New Deal resolution, the Green New Deal for Cities, the Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act, and the Keep it in the Ground Act, which would ban new fossil fuel projects on federal lands and waters.
By Zack Budryk
THE HILL, March, 28, 2022
7 Incredible Feats of Engineering Funded During the New Deal
Several projects funded during the New Deal were incredible feats of engineering that remain as permanent reminders of what a government can accomplish when it puts people to work.
By Barry Silverstein
History of Yesterday, April 5, 2022
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“But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life...I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937.
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