Thomas J. Adams: Which Democratic Party? Bernie Sanders and FDR's Second Bill of Rights

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/05/which-democratic-party-bernie-sanders-and-fdrs-second-bill-rights

Published on Thursday, May 05, 2016
at Common Dreams by Thomas J. Adams

"It’s a moment that comes like clockwork every time I teach a course on 20th Century American history. I have seen it happen in the Midwest, the South, the Northeast, as well as in Australia. Placing the text of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union address on the board, I turn on audio of Roosevelt delivering it to the wartime nation. As students listen to Roosevelt enumerate his “Second Bill of Rights,” deep surprise is registered on their faces. Hearing an American president—one whom they can listen to speak no less—suggest that the meaning of not just the war, but the American project as a whole was the creation of essential rights to housing, a good education, an adequate living, recreation, health care, old age security, a job, and basic welfare registers, from the perspective of the 21st Century, as a complete shock."

"Perhaps even more important than the battle for the Democratic nomination between Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has been a broad historical and analytic argument lurking beneath the surface on the part of their supporters."

"To become relevant to my students, to the millions of Americans who are swimming in debt and decimated by low wages, unaffordable health care, and rising housing costs the Democratic Party must unequivocally reclaim the mantle of the Second Bill of Rights."