The New Deal treated exercise and nature access as public rights, not privileges

Evidence

Many more people who are knowledgeable about alternative health and preventive medicine could, like Marya and Patel, have used their expertise to advocate for collective and structural responses to our collective health crises during the pandemic. That is what happened during the Great Depression in the United States, when New Deal programs created millions of jobs building public swimming pools as well as hundreds of state and national parks. The guiding philosophy of these ambitious public works projects was that exercise and access to nature were rights that should not be reserved for the rich. Similar programs could be launched today, with an emphasis on the Black and Brown neighborhoods that never received their share of New Deal infrastructure, or that lost it afterward when whites revolted against integration. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 590

Categorization

• SEED: An essay contrasting New Deal public-health infrastructure with today’s privatized wellness economy — pool construction as democratic health provision vs. gym memberships.
• XREF: connects to: The New Deal did not alter the structure of the American economy