The flowering of public construction and employment during the New Deal that many people believe saved America during the Great Depression offers lessons for today far beyond architecture, says Gray Brechin, who has launched a treasure hunt to locate and share the riches of the New Deal.
Researcher Brechin, from UC Berkeley’s Geography Department, told delegates at the CFT Convention that lavishly funded right-wing think tanks have since the 1970s been trying to kill what remains of the New Deal. Nonetheless, he admires the message Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered during an era of economic collapse, especially “when the president we have now has nothing to peddle but fear itself.”