A Call to Action:
From the New Deal to the Real Deal

A Call to Action: Marking the 75th anniversary of the New Deal,
Supervisor Chris Daly yesterday called for a return to government policy
consisting of public works programs to help stimulate the the US economy out of recession.
Photo by Luke Thomas

By Luke Thomas

April 1, 2008

With the US economy falling deeper into recession, Supervisor Chris Daly yesterday called for a return to public works projects to help stimulate employment.

Daly made the remarks during a speech he gave during a community forum at the San Francisco Public Library commemorating the 75th anniversary of the New Deal – a series of public works programs implemented by then President Franklin D. Roosevelt following the Great Depression in 1929.

Daly’s speech is reproduced here in its entirety:

Seventy-five years ago, the United States experienced the depths of the Great Depression. At least 13 million Americans had lost their jobs – one in four workers were unemployed. Another one in four workers had only part-time work. Meanwhile, many of those who were working earned as little as 12 cents per hour. Up to one-quarter of American children worked for sixty or more hours per week, with a median wage of $4 per week. Simply put, people were not only poverty-stricken, many had lost hope in our nation’s ability to right ourselves economically and promote the well-being of our people.

But on this day, 75 years ago, the Civilian Conservation Corps was launched, and with it Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. Along with the Works Progress Administration and several other “Alphabet Soup” agencies, millions of people were put to work. Of course we can’t forget that millions more were left unemployed. “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,” were only words for many blacks, Latinos, and poor whites — sharecroppers, itinerant and domestic workers.

Even so, because of the New Deal, we have Social Security, the federal minimum wage, a significant end to child labor, bank and stock regulations, unemployment relief programs, and a panoply of public works projects that range from small town post offices to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

So on this the 75th Anniversary of the New Deal, here in San Francisco, California, where do we go from here?

In the past decade, San Francisco Progressives have led the way toward universal health care. We built record numbers of affordable housing units, and we delivered the highest minimum wage in the country – now at $9.36 per hour.

Rightfully, San Franciscans trust progressive leadership to deliver on the social issues they care about. But, for some reason, this doesn’t translate into matters of the economy and job creation.

Take a look at any David Binder poll that asks who is trusted with matters of the economy or job creation, and San Franciscans name politicians aligned with big business, not progressives – even though we have a strong labor and community coalitions, even though we work on economic issues and have made significant gains in labor and promoting jobs for everyday San Franciscans. They believe that economic decisions are best left to our political opponents – those who are closely linked to downtown.

Let’s dissect what this means for a moment. Downtown’s politicians are represented well by the current administration in City Hall. Its economic policies are almost indistinguishable from the economic policies put forward by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. The similarities extend from an emphasis on creating “Incentives” for corporations to site jobs here in San Francisco – what we would call Tax Loopholes – all the way down to the logos used on the websites of San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

The City’s “Economic Strategy Report” reads like a corporate primer – which shouldn’t be too surprising since it is drafted by a corporate consulting service – an economic analyst agency with both corporate and government clients, it works to merge the two.

With this corporate economic model, locally, we are completely reliant on the “race to the bottom” of tax loopholes in order to attract jobs in whatever emerging sector is popular at the time. In just the last few years, with dissenting votes from me a couple of other progressives, we’ve extended tax loopholes for the film industry, the “green” industry, and the biotech industry. It seems that this is the economic policy coming from downtown’s politicians – this is their plan for job creation in San Francisco. Meanwhile every other City and town in the region is told that they also have to extend these tax loopholes in order to remain competitive.

In other words, in order to attract business and create jobs, we need to give up the business taxes that our local government needs to maintain important social programming – our public hospitals and public health clinics, public schools, public housing programs, and other basic human services including senior services and kids programs.

This is totally backward.

The New Deal has enormous lessons for our nation today, especially in how we grapple with the housing and health care crises, continued unemployment and epic environmental challenges, and hopefully we’ll see more of this language in the national political discourse.

And there are enormous implications for how the City of San Francisco may use its resources to extend universal access to meaningful employment for people and families struggling to remain here.

For reference, I think of the struggle in San Francisco over the last few years for universal health care is relevant. Labor and progressives launched a strong campaign that spoke to the realities of San Franciscans without health coverage. We directly challenged the corporate thinking on health care and fought to make corporations pay so that government here in San Francisco could provide quality health care for every San Franciscan.

And we won. Healthy San Francisco is now being implemented. Every San Franciscan will have access to quality health care.

The time has come to do the same on the issue of jobs. That’s not to say that much work hasn’t already been done on the frontlines, especially on the issue of youth jobs. But the time has come to use the power of government, here in San Francisco, to ensure that every San Franciscan has access to meaningful, dignified employment. The time has come for a Real Deal and that means a real job for every San Franciscan. And that means for those who the private sector has forsaken, the government must step up to provide that meaningful employment.

This is an endeavor that will not be easy and we cannot rely only on elected leaders to do the right thing without significant education, organizing, and direct action from you. The great historian Howard Zinn may have said it best in his call to action earlier this month…

“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.”

For those of you on the frontlines and for those families who are struggling to make it here, there’s probably no need to emphasize the urgency of now. We know that working class families are being pushed out of San Francisco in record numbers. Our African American population decline, from the height to the current population, is greater than that of New Orleans and Katrina. We are the only major American city with a Latino population that is not increasing. For those young people out on our City’s streets, we see record violence related to a lack of opportunity, a lack of jobs and hopelessness.

This is our call to action. With some progressive leadership in City Hall, there is an opportunity for everyday San Franciscans to organize and unite to demand universal access to meaningful employment, and in doing so, to take on the other serious issues that confront us – including environmental challenges, our decaying infrastructure, and crisis in our communities.

Luke Thomas

Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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