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RedditSeventy-five years ago, facing the catastrophic, worldwide failure of the free market, Franklin Roosevelt launched what is perhaps the greatest democratic experiment of the twentieth century. Touching nearly every aspect of American life, the New Deal transformed banking, business, labor, agriculture, arts and literature, urban and rural landscapes and, of course, the relationship of citizens to government itself. Today, decades of conservative rule have jeopardized much of the New Deal's legacy. Many of its reforms and regulations have been gutted, and much of the infrastructure it built crumbles from neglect. Yet the New Deal endures, not just in institutions like the FDIC and Social Security but in the very idea that where and when there is crisis government should rise to the challenge for the good of the common people. How can a look back help us confront the challenges of the present--from the tangled housing, credit and financial market crises to global warming to the small-mindedness of public policy and debate today? What is the unfinished business of the New Deal? And what can we learn from its failures and limitations? On this historic occasion we asked an esteemed collection of activists, writers, scholars and artists to reflect on the "usable past" of the New Deal. Their answers follow.
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Sweet Martin's Badass Song
Scott Saul: Several new books on Martin Luther King take a closer look at the rhetoric and economic politics of the civil rights icon.
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Dreaming Obama in North Carolina
Tom Hayden: Conversations with historian John Hope Franklin and civil rights heroes about race, memory and the possibility of change.
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Back Talk: Nicholson Baker
Christine Smallwood: In the debut of a new biweekly series, the author of Human Smoke discusses pacifism and World War II.
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Iraq's Ruined Library Soldiers On
R.H. Lossin: Five years ago this week, US troops stood by as mobs sacked Iraq's revered National Library and Archives. Despite little outside help, a cultural treasure soldiers on.
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Suffragist City
Mary Beth Norton: Two new books examine the history of the first women's rights campaign.
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A Neo-Deal
William Alexander Organek: The new positive rights of the twenty-first century.
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A Modern Government
Max Rose: We must embrace the universal benefits of a government dedicated to preparing citizens for acompetitive and unpredictable world.
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Noted.
Longshoremen protest the war, Ken Livingstone loses London, Zephyr Teachout blogs The Nation.
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Trust the Voters
Finally, the Democratic campaign can begin to focus on what really matters--healthcare, the economy and leaving Iraq.
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Noted.
Nasty political advertising in Mississippi and your bloated grocery bill.
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Our Lapdog Media
What should we do when Big Media fails democracy? First, don't let it get any bigger.
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Noted.
A fractured death penalty ruling, the Pentagon's pimping pundits, campus antisweatshop campaigns and Guggenheims for Nation poets.
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Bitter Politics
Voters and superdelegates now must ask at what cost Clinton is willing to continue this fight.
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'Nation' Note
Bill McKibben: A Green Corps
Michael J. Copps: Not Your Father's FCC
Andrea Batista Schlesinger: A Chaos of Experimentation
Eric Schlosser: The Bare Minimum
Frances Moore Lappé: The Only Fitting Tribute
Adolph Reed Jr.: Race and the New Deal Coalition
The Rev. Jesse Jackson: For the 'FDR'
Andy Stern: Labor's New Deal
Anna Deavere Smith: Potent Publics
Sherle R. Schwenninger: Democratizing Capita
Stephen Duncombe: FDR's Democratic Propaganda
Howard Zinn: Beyond the New Deal
