On Thursday, Dec. 22, at 1 pm EST, Gray Brechin will be featured on Pat Thurston’s long-running show on KGO-FM. Tune in to hear Gray discuss The Living New Deal and the Bay Area’s New Deal legacy.
Gray Brechin on KGO-FM
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The Fate of the New Deal
Will the New Deal fare a Trump presidency? © 1996-2016 Scholastic Inc. All Rights Reserved. Source
One of the many unknowns of Donald Trump’s impending presidency is the fate of America’s New Deal legacy. Last Tuesday, Newt Gingrich spoke before the Heritage Foundation in a wide-ranging speech celebrating Trump’s victory and the social, economic, and cultural changes it seemed to auger.
Gingrich’s speech centered on his vision of an America gutted of New Deal programs, not to mention ideals. As Ian Millhiser writes for ThinkProgress, the former Speaker of the House exclaimed, “this is the third great effort to break out of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt model.” He pontificated that if a Trump presidency is followed by another Republican administration, the “FDR model” would be done for. Ambitious infrastructural projects promised by the president-elect may resemble New Deal efforts, but would likely have little in common with the mass job generating, civic minded public works of the New Deal. And, no doubt, the liberal social programs that went along with them will have little place in any new iteration of government stimulus projects.
Gingrich may be more of a spiritual advisor to Trump than anything else. Still, as Millhiser notes, “Early signs suggest that Gingrich’s predictions that Roosevelt’s legacy could be undone should be taken seriously. Republicans in the House hope to cut Social Security benefits by 20–50 percent. [House] Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan to voucherize Medicare would drive up out-of-pocket costs for seniors by about 40 percent. Then he’d cut Medicaid by between a third and a half.” And despite Trump’s campaign promises to protect the social safety net, his recent cabinet choices suggest that his agenda will align with that of Speaker Ryan.
America appears to be far, far away from the kind of new New Deal that those who remember President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy have envisioned for the country
Gene Fischer, 1952-2016
Gene Fischer, © 2016 BH Media Group, Inc.
On October 18, 2016, Gene Fischer passed away at the age of 64. While we knew him as our Nebraska-based Research Associate, the Iowa-born teacher and columnist was a beloved member of his adopted town of Fairmount. As a long-time special education teacher in the York County Public Schools, he won the Golden Apple Award for Teacher of the Year for 2012-13. Gene was a regular contributor to the York News-Times, where his thoughtful editorials on politics, the media, and social justice, all inflected with an understanding of historical context, infused a bit of liberal rabble-rousing into his conservative community. Take a look at his writing. Gene was compelled to explore how we still grapple with the legacy of the past and how we can learn from it. The York News-Times has a lengthy obituary. We’ll miss you, Gene.
The New Deal Lives On In Sonoma County
Polishing a plaque on a Santa Rosa Junior College building.
Gaye Lebaron of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat offered a timely meditation on the New Deal’s lasting importance for Sonoma County, following on a talk by the Living New Deal’s Gray Brechin. She wrote: “‘People think the Great Depression happened in black and white,’ Gray Brechin told us in a talk last month at the Sonoma County Library, adding that he often feels like his project is uncovering a lost civilization…. The Living New Deal’s Dr. Brechin would tell you that there are valuable lessons in these stories for those seeking to understand the past — and for those who worry about the nation’s present and future.” Read more.
Discover a Forgotten New Deal Photographer in SF
An unknown elder of American landscape photography, George Alexander Grant (pictured) was the first Chief Photographer of the National Park Service. Though his iconic images inspired millions of Americans to visit their national parks, Grant is largely unknown because his images were simply credited “National Park Service.”
Ren and Helen Davis’s award-winning Landscapes for the People: George Alexander Grant, First Chief Photographer of the National Park Service, has finally brought Grant the attention he deserves. Join the Davises on Thursday, November 3, from 6-8 pm, when they will be the featured guests at the Presidio of San Francisco Officer’s Club.
This event, brought to you by The Presidio Trust and The Living New Deal, is free and open to the public. Click here to register.
“It Can’t Happen Here” – Revival of a New Deal Play
Poster for Detroit Federal Theatre Project presentation of ”It Can’t Happen Here”–now adapted for 2016. Help tell this story.© 2016, Creative Commons
David Kelly plays Buzz Windrip, homegrown dictator, in It Can’t Happen Here. Source© 2016, Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, tells the story of a demagogic, racist politician who wins the presidency and transforms the US into a brutal dictatorship. Within a year of its publication, the New Deal Federal Theatre Project adapted Lewis’s work for the stage, with opening nights synchronized in theaters nationwide on the eve of the 1936 elections.
Though timely, the play was not a great artistic success; as Susan Medak, managing director of the Berkeley Repertory Theater, puts it, the original was “ghastly.” So Artistic Director Tony Taccone and collaborators set out to improve and update the play for the regional theater in Berkeley, California, noted for introducing such successful productions as “Angels in America” and “American Idiot”. In Taccone’s view, the story’s themes present parallels with today’s political climate that are too close to ignore.
With approval from the Lewis estate, the Berkeley Rep is mounting a new stage version of It Can’t Happen Here, timed to coincide with this year’s election. As you can imagine, the 2016 version has generated lots of buzz, and Berkeley Rep hopes to bring that momentum to America at large through free public readings around the country.
Click here to find theaters already signed up to participate in the reading or to get your community theater involved.
Douglas Brinkley on FDR’s Environmentalism
We’re very excited about all the buzz surrounding Douglas Brinkley’s Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. (In fact, Gray Brechin is reviewing it for our Fall 2016 newsletter.) In a recent edition of the Saturday Evening Post, Brinkley provided a refresher on FDR’s conservationism and environmentalism, centering on the president’s ambitious—and realized—vision for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). It worth’s reading, even if you’re familiar with the CCC and with FDR’s environmentalist bent.
Without shying away from its various failings—including following local politics so as to not alienate Southern supporters, which led to segregated CCC camps in the Jim Crow South—Brinkley showcases Roosevelt as an architect of America’s landscapes, hearts, and minds: “Forests, like people, must be constantly productive,” FDR once asserted. “The problems of the future of both are interlocked. American forestry efforts must be consolidated, and advanced.” And, as Brinkley notes, this was more than idle talk: “Surrounded by maps of America, the president studied rivers and streams, deserts and forestlands. ‘I want,’ Roosevelt declared, ‘to personally check the location and scope of the camps.’ Roosevelt’s ‘tree army’ became a legend from the start, and he became a forester-in-chief hero to many conservation groups.”
We tend to think of the marriage of environmentalism and patriotism as something new. But as Brinkley asserts, “Roosevelt viewed his ‘boys’ not merely as temporary relief workers, but as makers of a permanent, greener new America.”
Help Commemorate–and Circulate–WPA Art
Heartening news from St. Helena, California: Rep. Mike Thompson (D) is leading the charge for a stamp memorializing Lew Keller’s “Grape Pickers,” a WPA mural installed at the St. Helena Post Office in 1942.
Thompson and four other Congressmembers recently drafted a letter to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (yes, there’s a CSAC) proposing stamps of WPA post office murals in St. Helena; Safford, Arizona; Long Prairie, Minnesota; Waurika, Oklahoma; and Greybull, Wyoming. As quoted in the St. Helena Star, the letter argued that “The WPA mural is a precious visual reminder to our citizens of all ages of our rich history…. This stamp would honor the time and dedication of the families and individuals who devoted their time and energy to develop the land and agriculture of Northern California. Without them, the Napa Valley’s legendary wine industry would not be what it is today.”
Letters of support can be sent to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, 475 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Room 3300, Washington, D.C. 20260-3501.
Revisiting The LND’s Origins
“Among the many WPA initiatives I discovered in my early research were archaeological digs and historical re-creations, and they gave me the idea for an analogous effort: to create an ever-expanding excavation to reveal a buried and lost civilization. This was not, however, a civilization engulfed by the jungles of Guatemala or the sands of Egypt. It was our own history and a monument to an era a mere eighty years old but almost entirely forgotten by what Gore Vidal called the ‘United States of Amnesia.’”… Gray Brechin’s “Uncovering the New Deal’s Hidden History,” detailing the origins and development of The Living New Deal, has been reprinted in the newsletter of the Blue Mountain Center, an Upstate New York-based, nonprofit community space for writers, artists, and activists. (It initially appeared as “A New Deal for California: Finding a Hidden History in Plain Sight” for BOOM: A Journal of California. ). Check it out and look back on our salad days!
When New Deal Art Doesn’t Age Well
The Living New Deal is dedicated to preserving public works of art under threat from the increasing privatization of our society. We value New Deal art for its public-spirited ambitions, celebrations of local scenes, and representations of the “common man.” But we cannot overlook the fact that artists are the product of their times and their artworks open windows on the past that are not always so pretty. (Consider just one example.) The country has come a long way in combatting racism, understanding the costs of continental conquest, and rethinking ideas of what constitutes “civilization” and “progress.”
The pitfalls of historical revision are readily apparent in a recent controversy over two murals at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, as reporteded in the online forum on art and culture, Hyperallergic. As Allison Meier writes, the murals in question, painted for the WPA in 1935 by Wisconite Cal Peters, have come under criticism for their depictions of “colonial views of Native Americans” and the “‘civilizing’ presence” of European settlers in the region where UW-Stout is located. Consequently, they were to be removed from public view and relocated to less accessible spots in a conference room and a library.
But that decision sparked a reaction of its own, including a protest by the National Coalition Against Censorship, whose director of programs argued, “If you can’t see them, you can’t even talk about them.” As noted in the group’s letter to the chancellor, the removal of paintings “of historically oppressed groups from view will not change the facts of history.” They proposed, instead, that the artworks remain where they are, only paired with other paintings that “could counter the message.”
The university subsequently announced that the murals would be made available for viewing in “controlled circumstances,” but will be placed in storage for the time being. Without weighing in on the content of the paintings, we believe that such artworks are historical documents that need to be preserved. Our immediate concern is that once they are relegated to storage, they may be degraded by poor handling, damaged by damp conditions, or simply forgotten and ultimately lost. This is no idle concern, because it has happened many times before (including at our home campus, the University of California, Berkeley).