AN INTRODUCTORY MESSAGE FROM DAVID KIPEN | LEGISLATION | TELL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO SUPPORT HR3054 | PRESS | CONTACT

Hello, booklovers -- and get a load of this, hot off the presses:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/opinion/federal-writers-project.html.

Never mind that I'm quoted in this NYT op-ed about the 21st-Century Federal Writers' Project Act -- just please read it and consider forwarding it to your member of Congress and senator. (Not sure who that is? Find out here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative.) And thanks!

Are you still on the fence about supporting the Writers' Project Act? Just think of all the books on our shelves at Libros Schmibros that, but for the original New Deal project, might never have been written. There'd be a gap on the Fiction Wall where Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God used to go. The B's and the E's there would look a lot thinner without Ralph Ellison and his friend Saul Bellow shelved where they belong. And what happened to John Cheever and Richard Wright?

The Crime Shelf? Kiss Jim Thompson goodbye. Environmental? Loren Eiseley would have gone extinct, too. And think how impoverished the Poetry Shelf would feel without Kenneth Rexroth, Claude McKay or Weldon Kees.

During the Depression, all these writers cut their teeth on the Writers' Project. And don't forget the Project's own greatest monument: the WPA Guides that all these writers helped create. In just eight years, the FWP created cheap, informative, often funny, still delightful booklength Guides to all 48 states, and 40 American cities besides. Many of them appear on our shelves too… Read more

LEGISLATION - excerpted from House Bill 3054, see full text of HR3054 here

117th CONGRESS
1st Session

H. R. 3054

To establish a grant program in the Department of Labor to assist unemployed and under employed workers following the COVID–19 pandemic.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

May 7, 2021

Mr. Lieu (for himself and Ms. Leger Fernandez) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor, and in addition to the Committee on House Administration, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To establish a grant program in the Department of Labor to assist unemployed and under employed workers following the COVID–19 pandemic.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. Short title.

This Act may be cited as the “21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act”.

SEC. 2. Findings.

Congress finds the following:

(1) In 1935, during the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established The Federal Writers’ Project of the New Deal Era. This program was organized to employ writers, editors, historians, researchers, journalists, librarians, broadcasters, photographers, and others to document American society.

(2) The Federal Writers Project employed up to 10,000 people between its founding in 1935 during the Great Depression and the publication of its first guides in 1943.

(3) The original Federal Writers’ Project had many successes, such as—

(A) the American Guide Series, which covered 48 States, 40 cities, 18 regions and territories and countless counties, with John Steinbeck calling the Series, “the most comprehensive account of the United States ever got together, and nothing since has even approached it. It was compiled during the depression by the best writers in America’’;

(B) creating opportunities for writers who went on to become some of America’s greatest authors, including Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, and Zora Neale Hurston;

(C) developing the Slave Narrative Project, the largest project to document the experience of formerly enslaved people, which included oral histories and photography telling the story of 10,000 Americans in 17 States;

(D) creating over 1,000 books and pamphlets covering local and regional histories, folklore collections, humor, ethnic studies, and nature studies.

(4) The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decline of local newspapers and other local news outlets, with more than 60 local newsrooms closing over the course of 2020 and other newsrooms enduring cutbacks. More than 200 counties have no daily or weekly newspaper and 68 percent of these counties are nonmetro areas, home to small towns and rural communities.

(5) Following the death of more than 550,000 people due to COVID-19 and more than a year of physical restrictions, the United States has experienced a historic period with a profound and lasting impact on society.

(6) The original Federal Writers' Project provided the opportunity to observe and document the Great Depression. Further, the impact of COVID-19, including the lives lost, should be documented by a renewed Federal Writers' Project… READ MORE

TELL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO SUPPORT HR3054

Our elected representatives have one job, and that job is to do what their constituents tell them to do. If we as the electorate don’t engage and tell them what we want them to do or which bills to support, chances are things we want to succeed will not. succeed. Tell them what you want, they work for you.

This bill, House Resolution 3054 (HR3054), will support all writers at all stages of their careers and from all backgrounds. Everybody has a story to tell, and everyone’s story is worth telling. Please tell your friends, help spread the word.

There is still time to act, the bill was introduced by Rep. Lieu, but has not yet come to the floor for a vote. Tell your Representative that you support HR3054, now!

PRESS

While the Covid-19 pandemic was still a growing specter, as Libros Schmibros Lending Library was forced to close and move to curbside pickup of requested books and as UCLA went to remote instruction, David Kipen was working. He had an aha moment, and much as I’d like to tell you about it, he does a fine job of that himself here, in his May 6, 2020 piece for the L. A. Times, 85 years ago, FDR saved American writers. Could it ever happen again? Since that day in May 2020, there has been a lot of press so much so that we’ve created a Press Archive for HR3054, the 21st Century Federal Writers Project (21FWP).

CONTACT

We at Libros are always happy to receive emails from you. If you need further information, need to get in touch with David Kipen or have something to add to the conversation, contact us.

21FWP - a 21st-century Federal Writers Program is a project of David Kipen and Libros Schmibros Lending Library, born in the time of Covid-19. We are eternally grateful to Representative Ted Lieu for his support, leading to the introduction of HR3054, to the US House of Representatives. Contact your representative(s), let them know you care.