[Peace-discuss] Howard Zinn for President!?

[Morton K. Brussel]

Published on Friday, March 21, 2008 by The Nation

Beyond the New Deal

by Howard Zinn

We might wonder why no Democratic Party contender for the presidency  
has invoked the memory of the New Deal and its unprecedented series  
of laws aimed at helping people in need. The New Deal was tentative,  
cautious, bold enough to shake the pillars of the system but not to  
replace them. It created many jobs but left 9 million unemployed. It  
built public housing but not nearly enough. It helped large  
commercial farmers but not tenant farmers. Excluded from its programs  
were the poorest of the poor, especially blacks. As farm laborers,  
migrants or domestic workers, they didn’t qualify for unemployment  
insurance, a minimum wage, Social Security or farm subsidies.

Still, in today’s climate of endless war and uncontrolled greed,  
drawing upon the heritage of the 1930s would be a huge step forward.  
Perhaps the momentum of such a project could carry the nation past  
the limits of FDR’s reforms, especially if there were a popular  
upsurge that demanded it. A candidate who points to the New Deal as a  
model for innovative legislation would be drawing on the huge  
reputation Franklin Roosevelt and his policies enjoy in this country,  
an admiration matched by no President since Lincoln. Imagine the  
response a Democratic candidate would get from the electorate if he  
or she spoke as follows:

“Our nation is in crisis, just as it was when Roosevelt took office.  
At that time, people desperately needed help, they needed jobs,  
decent housing, protection in old age. They needed to know that the  
government was for them and not just for the wealthy classes. This is  
what the American people need today.

“I will do what the New Deal did, to make up for the failure of the  
market system. It put millions of people to work through the Works  
Progress Administration, at all kinds of jobs, from building schools,  
hospitals, playgrounds, to repairing streets and bridges, to writing  
symphonies and painting murals and putting on plays. We can do that  
today for workers displaced by closed factories, for professionals  
downsized by a failed economy, for families needing two or three  
incomes to survive, for writers and musicians and other artists who  
struggle for security.

“The New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps at its peak employed  
500,000 young people. They lived in camps, planted millions of trees,  
reclaimed millions of acres of land, built 97,000 miles of fire  
roads, protected natural habitats, restocked fish and gave emergency  
help to people threatened by floods.

“We can do that today, by bringing our soldiers home from war and  
from the military bases we have in 130 countries. We will recruit  
young people not to fight but to clean up our lakes and rivers, build  
homes for people in need, make our cities beautiful, be ready to help  
with disasters like Katrina. The military is having a hard time  
recruiting young men and women for war, and with good reason. We will  
have no such problem enlisting the young to build rather than destroy.

“We can learn from the Social Security program and the GI Bill of  
Rights, which were efficient government programs, doing for older  
people and for veterans what private enterprise could not do. We can  
go beyond the New Deal, extending the principle of social security to  
health security with a totally free government-run health system. We  
can extend the GI Bill of Rights to a Civilian Bill of Rights,  
offering free higher education for all.

“We will have trillions of dollars to pay for these programs if we do  
two things: if we concentrate our taxes on the richest 1 percent of  
the population, not only their incomes but their accumulated wealth,  
and if we downsize our gigantic military machine, declaring ourselves  
a peaceful nation.

“We will not pay attention to those who complain that this is ‘big  
government.’ We have seen big government used for war and to give  
benefits to the wealthy. We will use big government for the people.”

How refreshing it would be if a presidential candidate reminded us of  
the experience of the New Deal and defied the corporate elite as  
Roosevelt did, on the eve of his 1936 re-election. Referring to the  
determination of the wealthy classes to defeat him, he told a huge  
crowd at Madison Square Garden: “They are unanimous in their hatred  
for me–and I welcome their hatred.” I believe that a candidate who  
showed such boldness would win a smashing victory at the polls.

The innovations of the New Deal were fueled by the militant demands  
for change that swept the country as FDR began his presidency: the  
tenants’ groups; the Unemployed Councils; the millions on strike on  
the West Coast, in the Midwest and the South; the disruptive actions  
of desperate people seeking food, housing, jobs–the turmoil  
threatening the foundations of American capitalism. We will need a  
similar mobilization of citizens today, to unmoor from corporate  
control whoever becomes President. To match the New Deal, to go  
beyond it, is an idea whose time has come.

Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United  
States,” “Voices of a People’s History” (with Anthony Arnove), and  
most recently, “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.”

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/21/7820/

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