I've always been a cynic and have always known cynics. That's why this Netroots Nation thing was such a huge eye opener for me. It was my first exposure to people who had the will, experience, faith, and knowledge to push the world just a bit, just a bit, in the right direction.
The gigantic, larger than life mayor of Braddock Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, exemplified this will for me. Dare I say it? He was inspirational to this rust belt boy. That guy is DOING SOMETHING about his city.
Have you heard of Braddock? Holy crap.
The old buildings in Braddock Pennsylvania are very literally collapsing into the streets. When a heavy storm or a stiff wind comes along, another rotting two or three story brick building groans its last groan and falls in on itself, scattering rubble and steel. When I was there for a tour of this borough in Eastern Pittsburgh our bus had to make a small detour around a road obstructed by the remains of a building.
Once a steel town, this city lost 90% of its population in the space of a lifetime. When the steel mills moved out for a bit more profit, the city, settled before the foundation of America, lost 90% of its business, 90% of its building occupancy, and 90% of its population.
Collapse. From 20,000 citizens to 2,800. Poverty. People were killing each other for pizza money.
This is America in the rust belt region. This America is peppered with crumbling, devastated communities. Cities that grew to meet the workforce, transportation, and infrastructure needs of business, only to see the profitable businesses pull up roots and leave in pursuit of a little more profit. In Muskegon, citizens ponied up millions in additional taxes for an expanded and more expensive waste water treatment facility to meet the needs of the Paper Mill, then saw the paper mill owners shutter the plant, sticking the community with the vast maintenance of this large water treatment facility.
It happens all the time here, but more dramatically in Braddock with crumbling buildings, and a vast majority of empty houses. Don't imagine Braddock is a ghost town in the middle of nowhere. It's a borough on the Eastern side of Pittsburgh. While many rust belt cities like Detroit and Flint are experiencing population declines of 50% in a lifetime, Braddock experienced a population decline of 90%.
You know...
...say what you want about how stupid it is for people to stay in a community in distress. At Netroots Nation I had a brief conversation with a fellow who seemed to suggest that he was wiser than most to leave a community so obviously in decline. To that person I say, Good For You. I'm ambivalent about such an action. You do what you need to for yourself or your family. Hell...
Some might suggest a nomadic lifestyle is the default and a settled community is the historical exception.
I'd argue that the COMMUNITY is the critical component whether its mobile or stationary, and moving without community is unhealthy.
One of the things that impressed me most about the friggin huge mayor of Braddock is the tattoo on his right arm, inked in harsh, stylized form with the numbers 15104, the zip code of Braddock.
The numbers are there as if to say "I won't leave you." He has permanently marked his flesh with a Commitment to Place. A Commitment to a Community. Underscoring that, his home is in the center of town. A $2000, dark, gothic trimmed converted warehouse where a steel kitchen table holds a bowl of shiny, colorful gum balls and a green baby swing nestled in a gray cinder-block corner.
He has taken this town and has mobilized the citizens and surrounding communities to help clear the land of collapsed buildings. He is organizing kids to plant and create vegetable gardens on the empty lots to create what are now called the Braddock Farms; organic farms creating fresh produce in the middle of an urban borough of Pittsburgh.
Square foot by square foot, rubble from disintegrated buildings is cleared with pitch forks and shovels and replaced with raised beds for beets, tomatoes, peppers, kohlrabi, cabbage, green beans. A post industrial community, riddled with crime and despondence is slowly, slowly, reverting to a more agricultural society -- and the once drifting, directionless teens find a purpose and sense of of community in a town almost left for dead but for an amazing and brilliant man with a vast heart who chose to stick with this community.
An abandoned church undergoing renovation contains signs that say "What do you think when you see an empty building, empty lots, and people with nothing to do? We see untapped resources."
My impression is that revenues from the Braddock Farms, from vegetables sold to restaurants in Pittsburgh and sold at farmers markets, are used to pay youth to improve the city...creating more farmland, or renovating empty, stable houses which can be used to house young adults with no other housing options. Rooms in these homes are given to youth in perpetuity. The renovated space is their home. Forever if they choose.
This is the sort of thinking and action that heartens and inspires me.
It makes me feel like we're not DOOMED.
In Muskegon, small local efforts to transform abandoned lots to public vegetable gardens seems to also be taking root. Volunteers plant and maintain the gardens, but anybody in the neighborhood is welcome to harvest the food. In communities that don't have the transportation means to make it to a grocery store with fresh vegetables, these community farms provide purpose, community, and necessary nutritional value.