How FDR used Thanksgiving to make bold political statements and demand 'social justice'

23 November 2023

Many articles have urged Americans to avoid discussing politics at the Thanksgiving dinner table. But The Nation's John Nichols, in an article published on Thanksgiving 2023, stresses that one person who didn't avoid political messages around that holiday was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Economist Robert Reich, Nichols notes, has written that Americans should talk politics on Thanksgiving — but should do it while remaining polite and respectful. And Nichols, who agrees with Reich, argues that FDR was a textbook example of how to do it effectively.

"It is easy to scoff that Reich is naive to imagine that we can still engage in a civil discourse that strives for not just common ground but justice," Nichols explains. "Yet, we've been divided before. And, at our best, we have found our ways back to one another."

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Nichols continues, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized that longing for higher-ground connections and conversations. And he spoke to it in times when Americans were at odds with one another about economic fundamentals, when Jim Crow segregation and anti-immigrant sentiment were widespread, when fascism was on the rise at home and abroad, and when people worried that exploding tensions abroad would lead to globe-spanning warfare."

FDR, according to Nichols, "did not avoid these tensions" on Thanksgiving but rather, "addressed them" via the dozen Thanksgiving Proclamations he issued during his presidency.

In his 1934 proclamation, Nichols notes, FDR said, "Our sense of social justice has deepened. We have been given vision to make new provisions for human welfare and happiness, and in a spirit of mutual helpfulness we have cooperated to translate vision into reality."

Read John Nichols' full article for The Nation at this link.

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