New Deal Today: Policy & Politics

News items that speak to the resurgence of interest in the New Deal as a touchstone for public policy and political action today.

• Recently Published Monograph: New York Recentered

  • May 10, 2019
  • Living New Deal

  Kara Murphy Schlichting's new book, New York Recentered, examines the development of modern New York, including its New Deal history. New York Recentered offers a new model for understanding the invention of metropolitan New York during the city’s unprecedented expansion between 1840 and 1940. By broadening the definition of planning and playing close read more
• Act Now to Defend the National Register of Historic Places - Deadline Today 4/30!

  • April 30, 2019
  • Living New Deal

  Proposed Federal Rule Changes Endanger National Register of Historic Places Listings: Voice Your Opposition by the April 30 Deadline! The National Park Service (NPS) is currently proposing rule changes which seek to significantly weaken the implementation of the National Historic Preservation Act  (NHPA) of 1966.  These changes seek to diminish the NHPA in several ways, including read more
• Join our Campaign to Save the George Washington High School Murals

  • April 8, 2019
  • Living New Deal

  We are mounting a campaign to save the historic WPA murals at the George Washington High School in San Francisco. Some parents and students at the school believe that two of Arnautoff’s 13 murals “glorify” racism. One controversial panel depicts slaves and the other shows Washington pointing westward over a read more
• New Deal Murals Spur Controversy

  • February 20, 2019
  • Gray Brechin

  Hot on the heels of widespread demands to remove Confederate monuments come calls to remove or destroy New Deal works of art believed by some to be racist. WPA murals in the lobby of San Francisco’s George Washington High School have recently come under fire. Painted by renowned Russian-born artist Victor read more
• Our Spirit of the New Deal Conference Now Online

  • September 12, 2018
  • Living New Deal

    Videos of our "Women and the Spirit of the New Deal Conference" now online. More than 150 people attended our conference, held at UC Berkeley, October 5-6. Videos, photos, and the conference program are now online. Women played prominent roles during the crisis of the Great Depression, but their contributions to read more
• Janus Ruling: Supreme Court Dismantles New Deal Labor Act

  • July 26, 2018
  • Living New Deal

  The Supreme Court decision on the Janus labor case is poised to have a devastating effect on public-sector unions. The decision states that public sector employees cannot be required to pay fees to labor unions, and effectively dismantles one of the pillars of the New Deal—the National Labor Relations Act read more
• Historic New Deal Mural at Bronx High School Painted over during Renovations

  • June 18, 2018
  • Living New Deal

  Our contributors brought to our attention that the historic New Deal mural at the DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx was recently defaced and possibly damaged. A spokesperson from the New York City Department of Education said that the incident happened during roof repairs, when construction crews covered the read more
• New Deal-Era Public Cannery in Virginia

  • January 6, 2018
  • Erin Hansen Reding

  NPR's All Things Considered featured a story about a public cannery in Prince Edward County, Virginia. A relic of the New Deal era, the public cannery allows members of the pubic to "walk in with bags of produce from their garden and walk out with preserved food." During the New Deal and read more
• Fort Lee, NJ Murals to Be Restored

  • January 6, 2018
  • Erin Hansen Reding

  Four murals documenting Fort Lee's history will be restored and exhibited in Fort Lee, New Jersey.  The murals were painted by Henry Schnakenberg and displayed in the city's post office, shortly after its 1938 construction.  The post office, however, will soon be demolished and replaced with a new post office.  The read more
• On My Way to Somewhere Else: A WPA-Built Community Center in Little York, Indiana

  • August 8, 2017
  • Glory-June Greiff

  Recently I was in the middle of documenting CCC structures in southern Indiana state forests (more on that in future posts), when I found myself on the old state highway that runs through Little York, a hamlet of fewer than 200 people. The population was about the same in 1935 read more