First Lady of the World: Eleanor Roosevelt's Impact on New Deal to U.N. Declaration of Human Rights

this is democracy now democracynow.org the war and peace report I'm Amy Goodman this year 2020 marks the hundredth anniversary of the 19th amendment which guaranteed women the right to vote we begin this new decade with an hour-long special about one of the most influential women in US politics Eleanor Roosevelt who served as the first lady of the United States from 1933 when her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office until his death during his fourth term in office in 1945 that wasn't the end of the story for Eleanor Roosevelt though she went on to serve as United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and spearheaded the UN Convention on Human Rights President Harry Truman later called her the first lady of the world I recently sat down with Blanche wiesen cook distinguished professor of history and women's studies at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York she's the author of the definitive three-part biography of the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt Volume one the early years 1884 to 1933 vol 2 the defining years 1933 to 1938 and Eleanor Roosevelt volume 3 the war years and after Blanche wiesen cook started out as a military historian I began by asking her how she came to write this trilogy on Eleanor Roosevelt well I always say my life is an accident because things just happened accidentally and I started out in life where I cared about nothing but sports and music and I had an accident I was a gymnast and a boy put a barbell at the end of the mat and I came out of a triple flip onto it and that was I felt that was the end of my life and I couldn't major in a phys ed and I couldn't go to the Olympics and I had to major and other things history anthropology political science and I majored in all of that and then I went off to Abilene Kansas to write about Eisenhower and friend sent me to review and Kate Stimson then editor of sign sent me a really stupid book on Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok it was the first book that used her papers but the author was horrified by the letters and wrote this book couldn't possibly mean what it seems to mean because Eleanor was a saint and a mermaid and I wrote a review of the book saying you know part a Freud a cigar may not always be a cigar but the northeast corner of your mouth upon my lips is always the northeast corner whereupon a lot of folks started to say why don't you write about Eleanor Roosevelt and I would answer don't be ridiculous I'm a military historian I do international relations and so on or I even said hard history and I was wrong but I called up my pal Joe lash and Joe had become a good friend because he blurbed my book on crystal Eastman which is going back into print it was published by Oxford and Joe said this is a book that should stay in print forever crystal Eastman was the founder of the ACLU and Anne explain to Joseph / Joseph flash was the biography of Eleanor Roosevelt really her chosen son they were very close and Joe was a good son so anything that Eleanor Roosevelt said Joe wrote and anything she said she didn't want dealt with he didn't deal with and then she said I don't care about power and he wrote she didn't care about power and then I knew I had a story but first I called him up and I said Joe what's up with you not having hick at all in any of the many books you've written about Eleanor Roosevelt and he said well I hated ha but let's have dinner and we had dinner and he suggested that I really needed to write about Eleanor Roosevelt and he took me up to Hyde Park and I saw the papers we walk through them together Hyde Park where there's weather as well and weather FDR library is and it's called the FDR library even to this day it's not called the FDR and Eleanor Library anyway and so I thought this was like 1981 and I thought I could finish it by her centennial 1984 but that's not what happened it just got bigger and bigger and one of the ways that it got bigger was a lot of things were classified and working on my Eisenhower book I always say never go anywhere without your gang when I was working in Abilene everything I wanted was secret and so I flew back to New York and I called a meeting with my pals in law and journalism the CCR and the ACLU and we founded foi a Inc the fund for open information and accountability and we got lots of things Declassified over the years and a lot of eleanor roosevelt's materials were Declassified the State Department files were classified and I got those Declassified and then folks gave me gifts of papers that had never been seen before so they're going to the FDR library and it just got it just got bigger and bigger and the stories got more and more intense and that's why it took so long where's Eleanor Roosevelt ever explicit about fighting for gay and lesbian rights for LGBTQ rights and what did FDR understand about her relationship with heck Lorena Hickok who is the AP reporter and can you describe what that relationship was all about more fully well one didn't use those words in the 1960s and you know people just didn't talk about it so everybody's in the closet all of Eleanor Roosevelt's friends are lesbians Esther Lape and Elizabeth Reed man he cook and Marion Dickerman and and then comes hick but Eleanor Roosevelt I think of her as a serial romantic this Earl Miller and Oliver L Miller's papers have disappeared who is Earl Miller Earl Miller was her bodyguard and you know I have pictures of Earl Miller in his bathing suits her hand on his knee he was a hunk you know just an athlete he got her her horse dot they rode together he taught her to shoot and with pistols and rifles and you know they hiked together they traveled together so Earl Miller is in her life and and hick is in her life your buck my Ben was the first to really deal with their relationship in a very full way their letters are full of politics and love and longing and how long did their relationship go on for well I think it lasted until about nineteen for years until about 1936 by 1938 it's really you know the romance is gone the friendship lasts forever but the romance is gone and Eleanor Roosevelt becomes increasingly dismayed by her occasional bigotries she doesn't like Eleanor Roosevelt young Jewish friends she doesn't like her black friends and she's a bit of a racist and Eleanor Roosevelt gets increasingly impatient with with hick and moves on I mean she wrote about fighting segregation did she ever write about prejudice against gay men lesbians no not that I know of not that I know of but she does say at one point that love is a kind of insanity you do strange things when you fall in love and so there's this sense of the fluidity of love and romance blanch your first book deals with the early years talk about the early years of Eleanor Roosevelt but before you do especially for young people who have hardly heard of her why she captured your interest as a woman in terms of her life and then what happened and World War one and Beyond well the early years I mean Eleanor Roosevelt lived a really very difficult life one of the we know her as a great and generous philanthropist we know her as an activist and a lot of people have always asked me how did she get that way and one of the ways that she got that way has a lot to do with her family her father was an alcoholic who died at the age of 34 and we need to pause I mean how much do you have to drink to die at the age of 34 you know we're still here I like to tell my students anyway the bottom line is she loved her father and he died when she was 10 her mother essentially turned her face to the wall and died when she was 8 and she was brought up by her grandmother who was very rigid in a series of aunts and uncles who lived in these houses in Tivoli in New York she was a rose she was Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt was her uncle her father's brother and while she was a woman of wealth she came from a very troubled family so Teddy Roosevelt the President of the United States his brother died at the age of 34 of alcoholism yes and Eleanor Roosevelt's life was really quite miserable until she went off to a wonderful school and had a great headmistress and teacher and mentor Marie sue vest sou ve stre I'm spelling it because there's no biography of maurice vest and this was an incredibly wonderful school in which there was creativity there was it was really for the essentially affluent children of the affluent french german american class and maurice of s was a mentor of the you know of the Bloomsbury crowd she's a fascinating woman but she recognized Ellen is brilliance and Ellen is leadership and Ellen has great abilities as a writer and we don't give him enough credit for the fact that she was also primarily a writer I mean she wrote dozens of books plus a column every day after 1936 as first lady has first laid every single day the presidencies yes which went on for four terms right and then continued until the end of her life her last column is the month before she died so how does she meet FDR how does she meet her cousin at a debutante ball she well she met him earlier but they have an attraction in nineteen oh four or five and they get married and his mother Sara Delano Roosevelt's very unhappy about that but they get married and they have a romantic relationship until she until 1918 he comes back from Europe where and with the flu she unpacked his bags and sees the that is the love letters from Lucy Mercer who had been her friend and his secretary and they'd had this big affair and Eleanor Roosevelt's devastated and that's a big part of the story and it's after that they have a great partnership they she you know she wants to get divorced he wants to get divorced they decided not to get divorced his mother says she will cut him off without a penny if they get divorced and they agree to have a partnership when did he get sick two years later 1928 polio and she takes incredibly good care of him and there's a very wonderful mutual friend the bridge between them is this really interesting man louis howe h o w e and louis howe really recognizes Eleanor's Ellen is brilliance he wants her to become a politician he wants her to follow FDR you know at the end of the day in all of the political realms that and he really promotes women in public life and it's also in this period in the 20s where Eleanor becomes very involved not only helping FDR in the political world but helping because he led building Sarah rose about wanted her son just to become a country gentleman after he got polio and she said no you can stay in politics right you'd be much happier talk about the New Deal how it came about what were the tenets of it that are still some of those accomplishments or those goals are being fought for today absolutely first this Social Security well first there's the reemployment act then there's the youth act the National Youth administration the goal is to get people back to work that's one goal another goal is to get young people educated and so there is the National Youth administration to get students into school but also the CCC to get students out on the farms and into the woods and the CCC stands for the Civilian Conservation Corps and this is after the depression and this is wall in response to the depression people are desperate they're out of work they're homeless and it's a really bitter moment but the New Deal begins to get people not only back to work but into programs that will really build community and build a future of educated working creative people there was a very another very important woman Frances Perkins Frances Perkins Secretary of Labor the first woman in a political cabinet and Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins are allies and it's Frances Perkins who in many ways is responsible for some of the best features of the New Deal including including the eight-hour day including minimum standards Eleanor Roosevelt has other friends in addition to Frances Perkins but very close to Frances Perkins a wonderful woman named Mary Harriman Rumsey who is the head of a consumers group and consumers have to be protected and I bring up Mary Harriman Rumsey here because she was one of the closest friends of Ellie I mean there were the five of hearts at one point and Mary Harriman Rumsey Frances Perkins and other people two other people were very close those were the two most prominent lady Lindsay is is one and they are very close and Mary Harriman Rumsey and Frances Perkins live together in Washington and I'm always waiting for more on that story are you going to be the one to reveal it to them no no other people need to do that but there's a lot of interest now Mary Harriman Rumsey has it is she's a wonderful horse woman and club woman and she has a terrible accident during the fox hunt where her horse trips and and rolls over her and ultimately she dies very young in 1934 but she's so important to some of the best features of frances perkins contributions some of the things that Eleanor Roosevelt that Frances Perkins fought for one of the issues was universal health care what happened to single-payer health care okay let me bring in yet another woman Esther Lape la PE she is Eleanor Roosevelt's closest friend and mentor along with her partner Elizabeth Reed who is an international lawyer and who becomes Eleanor Roosevelt not only her attorney but her financial adviser and it's Esther Lape who begins to fight through the American Foundation let me just back up a little bit because Eleanor Roosevelt Nestor leap through the American Foundation worked to get the United States after World War one into what the FBI John edgar Hoover called that on American body the World Court so their first works together in the 1920s is activity to get the u.s. into the World Court which of course they fail to do and have the US honor the League of Nations which they also failed to do secondly during the New Deal it's Esther Lape who calls together a great community of physicians from all over the country and they campaign for what we call today single-payer and the AMA lobbied it to death at first was supposed to be the 1935 Social Security Act and it as I said the AMA lobbied it to death Eisenhower in the 1950s tries to get what Esther Lape has been fighting for with Eleanor Roosevelt into the 1957 health reinsurance act and all we get out of that is the health reinsurance act but he calls Esther Lape and Eleanor Roosevelt and asks them to support him on this and they do and again it's lobbied to death and here we are as if it's the first time there's been a community of people saying we need health care for everybody single-payer everything covered you know no questions asked and that's what they were fighting for in the 1930s and from the 1930s until al Esther Lape fought for it until the day she died in the 1980s at the age of a hundred we're talking to Blanche wiesen cook who is really the definitive scholar on Eleanor Roosevelt has written three volumes on the first lady before and after now you mentioned columns from 1936 to 1962 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a syndicated newspaper column six days a week called my day in 1939 she wrote about her decision to resign from the Daughters of the American Revolution this is from her February 27th column she writes I've been debating in my mind for some time a question which I've had to debate with myself once or twice before in my life usually I've decided differently from the way in which I'm deciding now the question is if you belong to an organization and disapprove of an action which is typical of a policy should you resign or is it better to work for a change point of view within the organization in the past when I was able to work actively in any organization to which I belonged I've usually stayed until I had at least made a fight and had been defeated even then I have as a rule accepted my defeat and decided I was wrong or perhaps a little too far ahead of thinking for the majority of that time I have often found that the thing in which I was interested was done some years later but in this case I belong to an organization in which I can do no act of work they have taken an action which has been widely talked of in the press to remain as a member implies approval of that action and therefore I am resigning wrote Eleanor Roosevelt explained where she resigned from well she resigned from as you said the DAR because they refused to allow the great singer Marian Anderson to sing at was it congressional honk you know which they owned in Washington and Eleanor Roosevelt was astonished and bewildered and knew it was wrong but we're really looking at the bigotry of racism and segregation in the United States that this is 1939 but it was vicious all through the New Deal and to the end and I'll talk I'd like to go back and talk a little bit about it before you do talk about the significance of Daughters of the American Revolution and also what Eleanor Roosevelt ended up doing with Marian Anderson well the the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Colonial Dames I think Eleanor is oh it was a member of both if you had an ancestor if you had ancestors who fought in the revolution you could be a member of the DAR and it was a full philanthropic group that supported all kinds of causes it still is and so you know this was just wrong so since she couldn't go into Constitution Hall right oh there was a great concert in at the Lincoln Memorial so let's go to that moment at the Lincoln Memorial where the world renowned singer Marian Anderson spoke sang before what 75 thousand people it was Easter Sunday April 9th 1939 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the great Marion Anderson singing before the Lincoln Memorial before 75,000 people Easter 1939 she also invited Marion Anderson when the Queen of England had and they came to the United States to be the entertainment she had integrated entertainment for royalty and Marion Anderson and also Mary McLeod Bethune constantly in the White House the great educator the great educator and activist and also the head of you know the African American cabinet politician got a lot of things done but it was really Eleanor Roosevelt was insisting on integrating at least areas that she could integrate in a time when it was virtually impossible Eleanor Roosevelt's very first most important speech on the end of segregation to the educators of the United States was 11 May 1934 and I wonder if I could read just a little from that speech and feel free to do it as you channel Eleanor Roosevelt to deny any part of a population the opportunities for more enjoyment in life for higher aspirations is a menace to the nation as a whole there has been too much concentrating well and even if it means that some of us have got to learn to be a little more unselfish about sharing what we have we must realize that it will profit us all in the long run I think the day of selfishness is over the day of really working together has come all of us regardless of race or creed or color we must wipe out any feeling of intolerance of belief that any one group can go ahead alone we will all go ahead together or we will all go down together 11 May 1934 and this was to a mostly white collection of educators who stood and cheered those words and after she said that it was the very first time the educators of America teachers in elementary school high school colleges and universities all agreed and they passed a resolution segregation was wrong and must be ended 1934 racial justice was an issue that she championed her entire life wasn't her last column a month before she died in 1962 also around racial justice yes why was this issue so close to her heart I think that as she went around the country it was the most urgent issue people were starving to death and living in hovels or living homeless because of racial injustice and she really did believe that it could be ended one of the first things she does in Washington when she becomes first lady she joins a committee to end the back alley slums of Washington and build model housing and this is really protested by various people in Washington certainly by the plutocrats and the real estate people but Eleanor Roosevelt creates a committee to do that and she is absolutely dedicated to ending housing injustice and to ending all of them justices about race who explain what Arthurdale was okay Arthurdale is this wonderful community that Eleanor creates and and let me just go a little slowly it's in West Virginia and hick is on tour for the New Deal and she writes to Eleanor Roosevelt if you want to see the worst place in the United States where miners who are out of work coal miners who are out of work are living in hovels or the living next to the mines they're living in the most dreadful conditions come join me in this area Loudoun County West Virginia and Eleanor Roosevelt goes there and immediately she determines to build a community for these out-of-work miners and their families and at this point she's making rather a significant amount of money and she gives most of her money to the American Friends Service Committee to do the kind of good work she wants done but she puts together a team Doris Duke is part of that team Bernard Baruch is part of that team a team of folks who will help her build a community and she has a really important vision for it the houses will have indoor plumbing hot and cold running water at a time when 80% of rural America didn't have those things and their people will be self-sufficient they will have garden space they will have a half an acre at least maybe an acre and a half to plant and so on and they'll have electricity and she builds these incredible homes she builds Arthur down she also pushers for the creation of the she she she camps for unemployed women right that there are CCC camps and then but there are no young girls in the CCC camps and Eleanor Roosevelt says that's not fair and so there's the camp Jane Addams and upstate New York and Eleanor Roosevelt goes there and then she's very angry because it's all white and she writes to the head of the camp why are there no young women of color in these camps and she gets women of color in these camps including a young woman who becomes very close to her the firebrand Pauli Murray and there are lots of books about Pauli Murray poet writer priest Episcopalian priest and writes many many books and poems memoirs and we all know Pauli Murray and didn't Pauli Murray have a great influence on Ruth Bader Ginsberg she did as we continue our conversation with historian Blanche wiesen cook author of the definitive three-part biography of the former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt what about in World War two the internment camps of the Japanese Eleanor Roosevelt had a great effect on her husband in all different ways what happened with secluding segregating jailing imprisoning Japanese Americans and Japanese well they're the really horrible removal the Japanese removal in two camps was horrifying to Eleanor Roosevelt and she opposes them she visits them and one of the things that she does is that when she visits them she makes sure that the young people if they want to go to school they will be admitted to school if they want to go to college she makes all kinds of arrangements for them to get scholarships to college and admitted to college and if they want to join the military they can join the military which many of them do so Eleanor Roosevelt really has an incredible influence on the camps in in terms of but I mean it's just one of the shocking things that FDR did and I I want to go back to Arthurdale just for one other harold ickes who was the secretary of the interior you would think that he shared a lot of activities and visions that Eleanor Roosevelt had but he didn't like her because he didn't like bossy women because his wife was a bossy woman and he resented bossy women and he wrote to FDR saying do you know what your wife is doing down there she's spending money like a drunken sailor if she has her way how we and she's building you know indoor plumbing and all of these things 80% of rural America didn't have and he says she has her way how're we going to tell the rich from the poor and Eleanor Roosevelt answers well in matters of such simple dignity and decency we should not have to tell the rich from the poor and that is a piece of her ongoing legacy I wanted to go to the same period in World War two a year before the United States denied the SS st. Louis permission to dock with 937 refugees from Nazi Germany on board 250 of whom later be killed and the Holocaust this is known as the voyage of the Damned Eleanor Roosevelt helped rescue another ship that arrived with hundreds of refugees the SS Kwanza this is a clip from a documentary produced by Laura Seltzer Dooney called nobody wants us when we hear a passage from the Diary of a 13 year old girl named Malvina who's on the ship in 1940 I'm so relieved to be on this ship but I hope they will allow us into the United States I heard that another ship was turned away and sent back to Europe what if America doesn't want this what if America doesn't want us Blanche wiesen cook talked about Eleanor Roosevelt during the war the issue of Jewish refugees being denied and trent's into the United States but the Kwanza that wasn't the case because of mrs. Roosevelt after the SS st. Louis which appalled Eleanor Roosevelt she said this is not never going to happen again and would you describe FDR as an anti-semite I wouldn't say he was an anti-semite but I would say he did nothing just just as I wouldn't say he was a racist but he did nothing about race and he did nothing about refugees and on the question of refugees and vol.2 I have a whole section called a silence beyond repair and this is the only time that Eleanor Roosevelt is actually silent about the great tragedies that are going on in Hitler's Europe the great removal of people which she knows all about because she has a very close friend lady Stella Redding and Lady Stella Redding is a member of Eleanor Rathbones parliamentary committee to save the perishing so in England there is a committee and Eleanor Roosevelt knows all about that committee because there's a car despondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and ladies Stella reading so she knows every detail they know she was the House of Lords yes they know exactly what's going on and and Eleanor ass bone is a member of the House of Commons and the committee is a very powerful committee but there's there's a terrific amount of silence in the case of the Kwanza however Eleanor Roosevelt really works with members of the ACLU and attorneys and says these people will not be sent back there are 86 people who were about to be sent back on the Kwanza and Eleanor Roosevelt said they can be here as my guests and that really upset Breckinridge long and for me your question was he an anti-semite I can't answer that I mean I you know but the question why did he not fire Breckinridge long who was the man in charge of delay and denial the man who sent people back you know there's a variant Frey Rescue Committee the emergency rescue committee which Eleanor Roosevelt has again something to do with creating but very and Frey is prevented from carrying out his work by the state department by Breckinridge long and it's you know Eleanor Roosevelt says to FDR he's a fascist why don't you fire him and FDR said don't use that word and she says well he is you know like that so after World War two after FDR dies and they let her Roosevelt what is her famous quote to a reporter as she's the story is over the story is over but it wasn't no talk about Truman's choice to bring her into the UN delegation and what this led to perhaps what she considered her greatest accomplishment in her life Harry Truman appoints her to the United Nations to its first meeting in London in 1946 and her children are there when she gets the phone call and she is tempted to say she can't possibly do it she knows nothing about international relations and her children say mother you know everything you you've been there and everybody knows you and off she goes and it's an amazing journey because the press the world press I mean she sent off with people like John Foster Dulles who are also part of the US delegation they don't care what Dulles thinks they only care about what Eleanor Roosevelt things they follow her everywhere and Eleanor Roosevelt makes really great friends and a great impact and at some point she is made chair of what becomes the committee for human rights and when they make her head of the humanitarian Committee she asks her assistant what exactly this means he's her Leia's on she says what is my agenda my portfolio nieces actually nothing and she's a hot because I'm a woman and they want to have me this prominent person involved with the UN they give me nothing and he said well maybe you can turn this into something without an agenda you can determine the agenda of the United Nations right and so they she thinks there should perhaps be a bill or a resolution or a declaration a declaration it could be a fantasy but there could be a Declaration of Human Rights the UN Declaration of Human Rights let me just say that this is an incredible moment because she's unanimously elected chair to committee that founded the Human Rights Commission and she was part of an extraordinary team and they're going to write an International bill of Human Rights there is John Humphrey the Canadian international lawyer a wonderful Chinese scholar musician diplomat named peg Chang Chang PC Chang and Lebanon's learner dr. Charles Habib Malik and then Frances rené Cassin who had spent the war years in London as Charles de Gaulle's legal adviser and he had lost his sister and about 25 other relatives in Nazi concentration camps by 1947 Rene Kisan and Eleanor Roosevelt supported a Jewish homeland while Habib Malik emerged as a leader of the Arab League but the three of them were in absolute shoulder-to-shoulder unity on the possibility of creating a universal declaration of human rights and also on that team was India's hansa Mehta who is the she's president of the All India Women's Conference and she's the only other woman on the team and its handsome mate who makes some very stirring contributions to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights she says excuse me mrs. Roosevelt I must tell you if you say all men are created with certain inalienable rights around the world it will be limited to all men and so we get all human beings are endowed by their creator and that is how it reads and her friend in London the woman in the House of Lords begins to introduce her to refugees the massive number of refugees who come to London who have no place to go nothing are completely bereft right and she goes and she visits camps as well she spends the summer visiting many of the refugee camps and really becomes part of a great movement to resettle refugees not only in the United States where there's a great effort to do that but in around the world so john foster dulles senator Vandenberg these men who were part of this UN delegation are fighting every step of the way to undermine her john foster dulles would later become his Secretary of State his brother Allen Dallas head of the CIA they would lead secretly the overthrows of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 in 1954 the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala but this is years before they're trying to undermine her but she has to get the consensus of the world to pass this Declaration of Human Rights how did it altom utley happen okay she agrees again it's handsome mehta who suggests there be two covenants and Elinor Rosa will the United States ever address the Universal Declaration of Human Rights if there is only one covenant that all of the rights are connected meaning everybody has the right to not only speak religion press but also to a job also to healthcare also to housing the US won't vote for that so she compromises and agrees to two covenants the economic and social covenant and the civil and political covenant and I want to say what happens is the it's passed she gets a standing ovation 10 December 1948 so the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passes but it is not ratified by the United States until much later because under Eisenhower the Dulles brothers they want nothing binding they absolutely insist we don't want any part from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights they walk away from it it doesn't come up again until finally in 1966 the covenants are printed they are ratified around the world but not until Jimmy Carter signs them in 1977 are they even signed and then finally in 1992 after the Soviet Union collapses of all people it's George Herbert Walker Bush who says well maybe now that the Soviet Union has collapsed we can ratify the Civil and Political covenant of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights any and he does but we still haven't had a conversation about the economic and social rights covenant so this is all you know if we are fortunate enough to have a decent visionary and human rights activist elected to the presidency this is the unfinished business and the legacy of Eleanor Rosa I wanted to turn to Eleanor Roosevelt speaking in 1951 on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which of course she helped to write about the link between human rights and peace if we observe these rights for ourselves and for others I think we will find that it is easier in the to build peace because war destroys all human rights and freedoms so in fighting for those we fight for peace compare her to other leading politicians today I don't want to just leave it at first ladies but talk about her role as a first lady and do you see anyone walking in her footsteps after Eleanor Roosevelt well I think that Eleanor Roosevelt would be delighted by the young women who are running for office the people around a Oh see the young women in Congress today Eleanor Roosevelt would be delighted a lot of people wanted her to run for office and at some point she said I would rather be chlorophyll then run for office and that was she said she didn't want to run for office because she wanted to be free she wanted to be free to say what she really thought and to write what she really thought but also she felt that women weren't organized sufficiently to promote and back women running for office and she felt women people needed really to be organized for change they need to be movements for change and her own activism included going door to door block by block community by community and building movements so that was a big part of what she really believed she also really believed that we won't have domestic peace or international peace until everybody had free public excellent education health care housing creativity opportunity these were things that governments exist for and I think now we have some people the young people and the people around Bernie and the people around Elizabeth Warren and maybe even Oh judge you know who have that vision we've got to have a movement we've got to have Eleanor Roosevelt didn't use the word Democratic Socialist but she was a Democratic Socialist you know you really need a big vision and you really have to have activism and that was her contribution and I think she would be pleased now that there are movements of foot and campaigners a foot and a new level of Hope let me end with the question in this era of Trump of what would Eleanor say well I think she would be totally horrified at the abdication of power by people with power like why isn't this man accused of what raping thirty women why isn't he in prison how is he being protected I think she would be entirely horrified by well first of all we've never had a fascist in the White House before and Eleanor Roosevelt really believed that the way to prevent fascism and she always said fascism and communism the way to prevent that kind of control is to have movements and responsibilities and we're looking at a moment where folks who are in the Senate don't have responsibility and we're looking at a moment where a creature has been allowed to get away with absolutely maligned things Eleanor Roosevelt would not be silent your silence will not protect you historian Blanche wiesen cook author of the definitive three-part biography of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt that does it for our show democracy now is produced by Mike Burke Dina Guster Renee felts nermeen Shaikh Carla Will's Tammy Warner Libby Rainey Sam al-kahf John Hamilton Robby Karen honey Massoud Tarina new Dorota Maria studio Adriana Contreras and Maria teresina I'm Amy Goodman so much for joining us happy new year you

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Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News, Blanche Wiesen Cook, eleanor roosevelt, the new deal

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Length: 53min 56sec (3236 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 01 2020