The Founding Mother and Location of the New Deal Progressive Movement in NYC are Endangered of Disappearing
By Gary Tilzer
Today’s elected progressives have converted the progressive movement into identity politics away from the original values and mission of its founding woman Frances Perkins. The
progressive movement started during in the 1890’s under Theodore
Roosevelt and hit its full effects during the reign of Franklin D.
Roosevelt and his labor secretary Francis Perkins. Perkins
was the first woman cabinet member, who helped to develop and shape’s
FDR’s New Deal, including social security, minimum wage, 40-hour work
week and an end to child labor.
In
the early 1900s, Frances Perkins, who was a social worker at Hartley
House Settlement House, met the local democratic district leader Thomas
J. McManus of Hell’s Kitchen. This
meeting started Perkins’ career of lobbying Tammany Hall politicians
such as Governor Al Smith and his successor Franklin D Roosevelt to
embrace her progressive solution to problems including lifting Americans
out of poverty and restoring economic security and safety to working
families and their children.
The progressive’s New Deal began on March 25, 1911, the day of the Triangle Shirt Factory Fire in New York City. Perkins exposed dangerous working conditions in factories after the fire. She
became instrumental in working with Governor Roosevelt, Mayor Wagner
and the political bosses in turning this tragedy into progressive
legislation that broke control of political bosses and their real estate
and business clients in blocking fire and worker safety laws.
Now
in what is called by many a progressive city, developers are going
after the Hartley Settlement House, the place where Perkin stated her
career that changed America. “The
loss of Hartley House would not only be a loss to the local community,
served by the settlement house, but also a significant loss to the
political history of the progressive movement in a city that claims to
be the most progressive city in the world”, said Jim Kaplan, the
President of the National Democratic Club. Kaplan,
a published historian of New York City, is deeply concerned that the
settlement house building located in trendy Hell’s Kitchen could be
destroyed for another condo apartment building. He
is currently working with the local community board to change the
street name in front of the Hartley House to honor Perkins. If
these progressives understood their own movement and history, they
would be marching on City Hall and demanding that the building be land
marked.
New
York’s government, crippled by corruption and incompetence, needs
changes that are as effective as the reforms that Francis Perkins
implemented with the progressive movement of the early 1900s’. Modern progressives have done nothing to stop lobbyists at the center of the pay to play corruption in City Hall and Albany. Today’s
progressives are organized around important social issues such as gay,
transgender and immigrant rights, building bike lanes and calling for
more transparency in a city where there is none. However,
in a city where most elected officials call themselves progressives, a
growing number of homeless live on the city’s streets, lack of
affordable housing and rising rents force thousands out of their homes
and public housing tenants freeze in the winter time. Perkins’ progressive mission was to get the job done. The
public is better served when the special interests’ control of
government is kept in check and blocked if necessary, just like Francis
Perkins did in her day. Modern
progressives create an illusion of tackling problems such as lack of
affordable housing by tweeting and issuing press releases. They
deliberately fail to solve problems for fear of harming the clients of
political bosses and lobbyists that got them elected.
Government corruption is at a crisis level because the norms that prevented lobbyists from running campaigns have been broken. In
an apparent conflict of interest, many recent progressive’s campaigns
are run by lobbyists and funded by the developers and other city
contractors who are clients of these lobbyists. DUMBO
developer Two Trees employs lobbyist campaign consultant Berlin Rosen,
who has run over a dozen Working Families council campaigns and is one
of de Blasio “secret agent” campaign managers. Berlin worked for de Blasio’s PAC, Campaign for One NY, which was shut down after the start of the FBI investigation. It
appears that today’s lobbyist campaign managers are akin to the
landlords and their political bosses back in early 1900s, who blocked
fire safety laws before the Triangular Shirt Factory tragedy, prior to
Hartley House’s Francis Perkins.
As the late journalist Wayne Barrett said, “lobbyists make kings, so they can make deals with the kings they made.” Modern progressives do not push to resolve problems like Francis Perkins strived to do in her day. On the contrary, these new so-called progressives rely on the city’s lobbyists and party bosses, the kings, to stay in office.
(Person note: this article was rejected by a couple of NYC's leading media organizations)
