Tonight: Democracy In America – How 20th Century Business Came To Define It

Kim Phillips-Fein is an Associate Professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, where she teaches twentieth-century American history. She has a B.A. in History from the University of Chicago, 1997, and a Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University, 2005. She is the author of Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal (W.W. Norton).

Sunday February 10, 1 PM
Community Church Assembly Hall
40 East 35th St. btwn Park & Madison Aves.

Professor Kim Phillips-Fein will discuss the premise of her book “Invisible Hands” which looks at the historical factors that led up to the present powerful corporate influence in politics, the law, education, and even many grass roots movements within the US. Although always wielding power in the political arena throughout US history, the wealthy business community did not come to terms with their cultural marginalization until the mass mobilizations of the left stimulated by the Great Depression and in the wake of the Second World War. Subsequently they awoke to an idea that had eluded many liberal thinkers: in order to secure the hearts and minds of a society, you had to embrace the importance of ideas and the need to shape (frame) the terms of the debate within the culture. The iconic right wing document, the Powell Memo, written by Lewis Powell in 1971 to the Director of the US Chamber of Commerce, highlights the strategems for doing this. Join us for a fascinating journey back through the 20th century to the inception and meteoric rise of this corporate activism as seen by Professor Phillips-Fein.

For further info: Russell Branca 718-843-0515 russellbranca@yahoo.com

Feb201310

ernesto

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