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In May of 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the WPA, the largest public works program in U.S. history. The WPA created 8.5 million jobs during the depression of the 1930s.
75 years later, do the lessons of the WPA offer a fightback strategy to counter the deepening poverty and unemployment facing the US working class? What can be done to spark a resurgence to push back against corporate lay-offs and plant closing, right-wing Tea Party racism and bigotry and government tax breaks and bail-outs of banks and big business? We need a real WPA-type program that is big enough to ensure that those who need work get work — work that is socially useful, that pays union wages and benefits. This wide-ranging discussion will bring together the experience of youth organizers in Detroit, Baltimore and Raleigh, trade unionists from San Francisco, historians and Bail Out the People Movement organizers –
