{"product_id":"what-can-we-learn-from-the-great-depression-isbn-9780807022115","title":"What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?","description":"\u003cb\u003e4 stories of resilience, mutual aid, and radical rebellion that will transform how we understand the Great Depression\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on little-known stories of working people, \u003ci\u003eWhat Can We Learn from the Great Depression? \u003c\/i\u003eamplifies voices that have been long omitted from standard histories of the Depression era.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn four tales, Professor Dana Frank explores how ordinary working people in the US turned to collective action to meet the crisis of the Great Depression and what we can learn from them today. Readers are introduced to\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ethe 7 daring Black women who worked as wet nurses and staged a sit-down strike to demand better pay and an end to racial discrimination\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ethe groups who used mutual aid, cooperatives, eviction protests, and demands for government relief to meet their basic needs\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ethe million Mexican and Mexican American \u003ci\u003erepatriados\u003c\/i\u003e who were erased from mainstream historical memory, while (often fictitious) white “Dust Bowl migrants” became enshrined\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ethe Black Legion, a white supremacist fascist organization that saw racism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, and fascism as the cure to the Depression\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile capitalism crashed during the Great Depression, racism did not and was, in fact, wielded by some to blame and oppress their neighbors. Patriarchy persisted, too, undermining the power of social movements and justifying women’s marginalization within them. For other ordinary people, collective action gave them the means to survive and fight against such hostilities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat resulted were powerful new forms of horizontal reciprocity and solidarity that allowed people to provide each other with the bread, beans, and comradeship of daily life. The New Deal, when it arrived, provided vital resources to many, but others were cut off from its full benefits, especially if they were women or people of color.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat Can We Learn from the Great Depression? \u003c\/i\u003eshows us how we might look to the past to think about how we can shape the future of our own failed economy. These lessons can also help us imagine and build movements to challenge such an economy—and to transform the state as a whole—in service to the common good without replicating racism and patriarchy.“A well-crafted work of social history that highlights little-known aspects of pre–World War II America.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eWhat Can We Learn from the Great Depression\u003c\/i\u003e paints] a picture that calls for more campfires of the resistance from San Francisco to New York, from blue states to red states, and everywhere that Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly and Billie Holiday sang to and for the American people and to and for folks around the world.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eCounterPunch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this urgent and illuminating book, Dana Frank shares stories revealing the collective power of marginalized workers, the real threat of fascism and the racism that fuels it, and the capacity of ordinary people to find and care for each other despite these deep structural divisions. She is that rare scholar able to mobilize the lessons of history against our present catastrophe.”\u003cbr\u003e—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of \u003ci\u003eHammer and Hoe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The US lurched between democratic renewal and outright fascism in the 1930s. . . . Frank skillfully shows how working-class people experimented with new forms of organizing. . . . Our understanding of the Great Depression and its contested legacies will never be the same thanks to this brilliant and timely book.”\u003cbr\u003e—Paul Ortiz, author of \u003ci\u003eAn African American and Latinx History of the United States\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Frank translates her rich archival discoveries of formidable historical episodes into lucid storytelling that offers inspiration and warnings for our own times. Do not sleep on the riveting chapter on wet nurses in Chicago who organized a novel strike to amplify the value of their domestic and reproductive labor in 1937. As Frank centers these Black women, she imagines a movement in which the most inconsequential can be lifted so that all work and all workers can be treated with dignity and respect.”\u003cbr\u003e—Tera W. Hunter, author of \u003ci\u003eBound in Wedlock\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this honest, often surprising book, Frank reframes the 1930s as a moment in which common individuals struggled to make sense of a world in collapse. She reminds us of the precarity and promise of democracy in a nation prone to racial logics and xenophobic outbursts. We need this reminder, now, more than ever.”\u003cbr\u003e—Matt Garcia, author of \u003ci\u003eEli and the Octopus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In four seemingly disparate accounts of grassroots collective action during the Great Depression, Frank reveals much about how politically nimble regular people have been, to both heroic and rancid ends. Enjoy this beautifully crafted book, then get to work democratizing the economy and society.”\u003cbr\u003e—Gwendolyn Mink, coauthor of \u003ci\u003eFierce and Fearless\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eDana Frank\u003c\/b\u003e is Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A well-regarded senior historian, she is the author of many books on labor, women, and social justice in the US and Honduras. Her writing has appeared in the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Washington Post, Guardian, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, \u003c\/i\u003eand many other publications, and she has testified before both the US Congress and Canadian Parliament.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233839067365,"sku":"NP9780807022115","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807022115.jpg?v=1767743805","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/what-can-we-learn-from-the-great-depression-isbn-9780807022115","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}