Progressivism In Recent History

In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, proposed what he called a Second Bill of Rights.  Roosevelt suggested a need to guarantee, as a matter of politics and law akin to the Constitution and the original Bill of Rights, provision for:

• adequate employment that offered a living wage
• safe and sustainable housing
• medical care that would help ensure not only longevity but also quality of life
• some means of income for the elderly and disabled
• education that could contribute to upward social and economic mobility

Now, fast-forward to an event seminal to the Civil Rights movement, and to our democracy - the march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol, Montgomery.   As the march crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, demonstrators were attacked with horses, billy clubs, and tear gas.  That assault, in which activists like Rep. John Lewis (D - GA) were beaten and seriously wounded, came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

Whatever the details of their individual policy positions, it's hard to imagine any of today's Democratic presidential candidates - folks like Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala Harris - having significant differences with the Second Bill, or the March to Montgomery.  It's much more likely they'd see those events as antecedents of today's progressive politics, and their own.

So, for the next several months if not longer, 15104 will track and cross-reference the similarities between the Second Bill, the Civil Rights movement, and policy proposals of Democratic presidential candidates.