Occupy 4 Jobs Fact Sheet About The WPA (Works Progress Administration)

http://www.occupy4jobs.org/

• The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest jobs initiative in U.S. history.
• The WPA was created during the Great Depression by order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and funded by Congress with passage on April 8, 1935 of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935.
• Over its eight-year lifetime, the WPA spent about $11 billion and employed 8.5 million workers and youth to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, records indexing and literacy projects.
• The WPA also fed children and redistributed food, clothing, and housing. Almost every community in the United States — including the five boroughs of New York City — had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency.
• The WPA was a national program that operated its own projects in cooperation with state and local governments, which provided 10%-30% of the costs. Hourly wages were typically set to the prevailing wages in each area.

• The WPA employed workers to work on highway, road, and street projects; public buildings, and publicly owned or operated utilities; it also funded welfare projects, including sewing projects for women, the distribution of surplus commodities and school lunch projects.
• In its early years, the WPA focused on infrastructure improvement; roads, bringing electricity to rural areas, water conservation, sanitation, reforestation and flood control. Later, public facilities became a focus; parks, buildings, utilities, schools, airports, transportation projects and even municipal golf courses were funded. The WPA also funded state-level library service demonstration projects, which aimed to create new areas of library service to underserved populations.
• WPA workers built and renovated firehouses, installed some 20,000 miles of water mains, paved more than 600,000 miles of roadways, built 78,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 800 airports (including LaGuardia in NYC). WPA workers were also called upon in flood, hurricane and forest fire emergencies.

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NYC Jan. 16, 2011 ‘Make MLK Day An Occupy 4 Jobs Day” flyer;

http://www.occupy4jobs.org/o4jmlknyc.shtml