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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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The Last Angry Man
Jeff Kisseloff: Eliot Asinof, blacklisted author of Eight Men Out, created a lifetime of work celebrating rebels and victims of injustice.
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City of Fear
Jon Wiener: A new book explores the historical ties between African-American and Japanese-American communities in Los Angeles.
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Remembering RFK: 40 Years Later
Progressives, Liberals, & The American Left
The Glaser Progress Foundation : A tribute to a true progressive, tragically silenced forty years ago this week.
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The Reminder-General
Stefan Collini: Tony Judt fears the twenty-first century has spawned a culture hell- bent on forgetting the past.
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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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The Nation Sues the Government
The Nation joins the ACLU and several other organizations and attorneys in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FISA act.
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Noted.
Ari Melber tracks the continuing fight over FISA; Stuart Klawans remembers Thomas Disch.
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Obama and Iraq
His plan to exit Iraq falls far short of the complete withdrawal most Americans want. But it's a place to start.
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Noted.
Civil liberties, at home and abroad; saving Jeff Wood from Texas's death row.
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Supreme Politics
The Supreme Court's final rulings remind us that civil rights and a sane vision of the Constitution rest with the next President's judicial appointments.
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Fizzling on FISA
Obama and other Senate Democrats should not let a lame-duck Administration compromise our liberties in the name of pursuing terrorists.
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Noted.
George Carlin knew words could never be as obscene as wars; Barack Obama goes for the money, but at what cost?
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
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