Jerry's Ideas

IAs disproportionately working-class and disproportionately beneficiaries of welfare

Italian Harlem closed community, which invested in its own social capital, to which “socialism made sense”

New Deal coalition of ethnics

Social policies (material help) and cultural pluralism (recognition)

New Deal = Reform + Relief

The First and especially the Second New Deal (WPA, Home Relief, Social Security, NYCHA etc.) gave Italians concrete reasons for political participation

Results: unionization, mobilization, activation of community-oriented, rather than family oriented, involvement

Importance of voting behavior to assess the response of Italian Americans to New Deal programs

How the New Deal affected the outlook and meaning of public and private spaces: working-class life in old law tenements (no privacy) and New Deal model working-class houses (projects), masculine spaces of "civil society" (cafes, bars, etc.), ritualization and the home as a feminized place, "upgrade" of peddlers into modern merchants (closed municipal markets), etc.