More at link.
Posted on 05/06/2009 3:38:14 PM PDT by Leisler
One factor was steel prices — when JFK jawboned the steel companies to prevent a price increase.
Another factor was the longstanding tradition of political corruption, payoffs, one-ghost-one-vote.
The author makes a good point - the folks in MI, for instance, have been standing on their heads in a bucket of stuff for so long, they no longer recognise that it stinks.
And the problem is, if you wanted to put a factory or bring industry to Gary, the local government would welcome you with open arms. However, because of the eventuality that a union would come into your business why would you even bother to look at Gary.
And the buildings will decay even more and in 20 years, another post human show will use it to tell us what is going to happen when we are no longer here.
We Hoosiers have long said that Gary Indiana is the armpit of America. In fact we view it as part of the cesspool that is Chicago.
After the riots, in the late 60’s, each city that had experienced destruction in certain neighborhoods, took different approaches to the ruins.
In some cities, the neighborhoods were rebuilt, so that today, if you travel through those neighborhoods, you would never know.
In other cities, like Toledo, some of the burned out neighborhoods were bulldozed and turned into green space. If you drive through those neighborhoods today, they just look like parks.
In Gary, the political machine was majority black. Their decision was to leave the burned-out buildings in place, as a testament to “black power”. The power of destruction.
For over thirty years, the other cities moved on from the 60’s riots, but Gary was like a burned-out set from an apocalyptic movie, frozen in time. A few years ago, enough residents of Gary got fed up and elected some people with a different vision. They even elected a white mayor!
Gary has made a few baby steps of progress, but how much change can you expect overnight? The biggest problem, of course, is the mindset of many of the residents. I personally know people who have invested their own money and sweat equity in rehabbing properties in Gary, to improve the neighborhoods and hopefully to earn a living; only to have everything stolen from the property in the middle of the night - plumbing, wiring, furnace, water heater, the windows, and even the siding.
Yeah, blame the steel mills for Gary's problems. That's a good story. While you're at, blame Detroit's problems on the auto industry. It certainly couldn't have anything to do with the residents, and the people they elect to run the place.
Quite right. More specfically Gary is part of what is locally known as “Da Region”, as in the Calumet Region, named after the Calumet River that runs through the area.
And please Freepers, don’t think that Gary is really what Indiana is like. We’re really a lot closer to Texans when it comes to rugged individualism and personal responsibility.
Gary is like a Chicago suburb. What ails Gary is Democrats.
Quite right as well. In fact you hit the nail on the head. Didn’t want to come across as too non-PC in my earlier post but the facts are what they are.
Even though no one lives there, and no one works there it’s very reassuring to see that the city updated the streets/sidewalks to make them handicapped accessable.
Union labor.
I don’t know which story is the right story, but the original column didn’t blame the steel mills, it blamed the unions.
That makes sense to anyone who knows anything about unions.
Excellent article, although the author could use a copyeditor. More than a dozen misprints or errors or misspellings.
She is absolutely right. As it happened, I spent a summer working at Youngstown Sheet & Tube when I was in college, back in the 50s, and I saw it first hand. It was obvious to me even then, as a lad in college, that the steel industry was doomed. And when the great steel strike happened a few years later, it put the seal on that doom.
Eisenhower intervened to send the unions back to work, but it was hopeless.
I know the first part is true owning a real estate business in Chicago.
I hope the second part is true because I am looking at the Dallas area to relocate to in 2 yrs when my son starts college.
I went to the site and looked at all of the pictures. I see by Wikipedia that Gary has 99,000+ people. Where do the residents shop? Where do they hang out? Is there neighborhood shopping, but no downtown?
Man, this is as depressed-looking as Detroit. http://www.forgottendetroit.com/
Good job, unions!
Never been in Gary—the place gives me the creeps when looking at the pix. The place looks like the world ended right there.
A place to bury bodies rather than in Chicago. That’s why the grass grows so fast around the concrete slabs.
Yes, you are correct. And the unions are certainly to blame (along with the environazis) for the demise of the steel mills (and refineries) in places like Gary and Cleveland.
However, other cities have been able to reinvent themselves, at least somewhat, because they tried to do so. Gary wallowed in its own misery for decades, as though burned out buildings were a badge of honor.
I think it's clear that Gary would be a lot closer to a first-world city today, if they had put the ruins of the 60's riots behind them decades ago, and tried to move forward.
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