In this 75th anniversary year of the WPA, it’s time! by Dave
Welsh But the WPA didn’t just happen because of the kindness and
concern of President Roosevelt. It was a response to a
tremendous mass movement in the streets and workplaces all over
the U.S. – from the World War I soldiers’ Bonus March and the
Ford Hunger March of 1932, to the San Francisco general strike
and large industrial actions in Toledo and Minneapolis in 1934,
to later sit-downs in the auto plants of Michigan, to militant
actions by Unemployed Councils in hundreds of cities. It was
this pressure from below that got us the WPA, which put millions
of people back to work. It’s also what got us New Deal programs
like Social Security, which many of us depend on for daily
survival to this very day. Today’s economic crisis is much worse
than the media lets on. Unemployment in manufacturing is almost
at Great Depression levels. What we have now is an economy based
on permanent high unemployment and low wages … a political and
economic system that