CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
It’s a weird thing growing up and living in the Rust Belt. Throughout my childhood, first living on the Southeast side of Chicago, then Northwest Indiana, I was keenly aware of violence, drugs, cops, guns, gangs and the underbelly of America. At six years old, I watched my neighbor smash the window out of an Oldsmobile coup with a crow-bar, assaulting both the driver and passenger. I don’t know why they were fighting but the experience was utterly frightening to witness as a child. Afterward, my neighbor told me, “That’s how you deal with beefs, kid.”
A couple years later, at eight years old, my brother and I were playing in the Annunciata Parish and School parking lot when a car abruptly stopped, shot off a couple rounds and sped off. Luckily, neither of us were struck by any rounds. Later that summer, at a communion party, my dad threatened to blow a guy’s head off because he physically assaulted my younger brother.
When I was nine years old, I watched a stream of cop cars, ambulances and firetrucks arrive at the New Year’s Eve party my parents, brother, and I were attending. We were at a neighbor’s house just across the alley, behind the detached garage of our family home. During the party, one of the guests inappropriately grabbed someone’s wife, made a rude comment, and wound up getting stabbed. I, along with the other children, was forced to go upstairs and watch cartoons while one of the teenage girls played the role of temporary babysitter. Of course the adults were completely drunk. Men and women were screaming and crying. Some of them were doing cocaine, which I didn’t find out until much later in life.
A few months later, my dad and I were walking our family dog through a local forest preserve when we came across a recently hot-wired and abandoned vehicle. The windows were smashed and the radio was still turned on. Upon returning home, my dad called his police buddies and they told him the car was just stolen a few hours prior by a local junkie. Eventually, as expected, my parents had enough: We moved to Indiana.
My childhood memories of Northwest Indiana are quite different from reflecting on my time in Chicago. First of all, the only violence I witnessed was largely on TV or contained within Hollywood action-films. Even though I was in my early teenage years, drugs were quite prevalent. My mom, at some stage, became addicted to pain-pills. I don’t remember much from that period, except the fact that my father was extremely pissed off and my mother profoundly upset, sad and depressed. On one level, it became clear to me that drugs were a part of my family’s life and the larger social topography.
During my time in middle school, I started to drink at weekend parties and bonfires. My friends and I thought it was normal to drink half a bottle of Jack Daniels and slam some anti-anxiety pills. As time unfolded, drugs took over as the dominant factor in my adolescence. Violence, while always present, took a backseat to narcotics. It wasn’t until years later that I would see the inherent connection between the two.
To be clear, childhood experiences in Northwest Indiana, as is the case in other regions, vary widely depending on social status, race, gender and economic class—that’s without question. For young African Americans, it’s a mixture of poverty, militarized-police and street gangs, among other factors. For young Latin Americans, it’s a combination of legal-status, economic-exploitation and drug cartels, with increased deportation adding to these day-to-day concerns. And for young whites, it’s a fusion of middle-class alienation, parental-prescription drug abuse and expanding poverty.
In the neighborhood where my parents reside, it’s largely white, working/middle-class and suburban. People water their lawns and walk their dogs. Yet, 15 miles to the West, in Gary, homes fall apart, schools are gutted for copper wiring and gas stations are overgrown with weeds, bushes and trees. The intersectionality of systemic racism/segregation, economic exploitation, state-violence and drug abuse is on full-display in what residents refer to as “The Region.”
THE HEROIN EPIDEMIC
In the white neighborhoods and schools, the epidemic is heroin. Porter County, which is located 30 miles east of Chicago, is the epicenter of Northwest Indiana’s heroin problem. In a county that’s 95% white, and one of the most affluent in the state, heroin dominates dinner table conversations—and for good reason, as Stephanie Schmitz-Bechteler and Kathleen Kane-Willis illustrate in their report, “A Multiple Indicator Analysis of Heroin Use in Northwest Indiana”:
To consider Porter County within a national context, mortality rates for opiates were calculated for Porter County and compared with other metropolitan areas around the nation. Porter County’s rate of 9.17 well surpasses that of Chicago, which has an opiate death rate of 5.88 deaths per 100,000, as well as most major metropolitan areas that have increasing rates of heroin use. The mortality rate from opiates in Porter County is 156 percent higher than that of the Chicago Metropolitan area. Drug-induced and drug-related mortality in Porter County increased 125 percent in just two years, from 2002 to 2004.
Hospital Emergency Department data indicate that compared to other metropolitan areas tracked by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency, Porter County would rank higher than many other areas around the country for the rate per 100,000 for heroin admissions among those aged 18 to 25. At a rate of 219 per 100,000 people, Porter County also has a more than four times higher than the national average of 52 Emergency Room mentions per 100,000 for individuals aged 18 to 25. Reported monthly use of heroin by high school students increased over 700 percent in Indiana as a whole from 1993 to 2004.
Data from law enforcement also indicate a rising heroin problem, particularly in Porter County. Outside of Gary, there is little drug trafficking in Northwest Indiana. Users from Indiana often travel to the South side of Chicago to purchase their heroin. Over two years, from 2002 to 2004, the number of Porter County residents arrested for heroin in Cook County increased 1,100 percent. Nearly 60 percent of these arrests were among those age 26 or younger. Arrests in Porter County for heroin-related crimes increased over 700 percent from 2002 to 2004. The percentage of individuals testing positive for opiates in the Porter County Adult Probation population increased 561 percent from 1996 to 2003.
Recently, the feds and local cops rounded up a dozen or so small-time dealers and runners in Northwest Indiana—all of them under the age of 35, most in their 20s. A week prior, the cops busted various dealers in Hammond, a city just east of Chicago, nabbing more than $700,000 and several semi-automatic weapons. Unfortunately these stories dominate not only the mainstream media reports, but also, as mentioned above, holiday conversations, BBQs and family reunions. In short, it would be hard to find someone in Northwest Indiana who’s unwilling to discuss the heroin epidemic. All of this has a profoundly negative collective-effect on the local community.
To clarify, none of this is abstract. My partner’s brother just got out of jail for a heroin-related drug charge. He’s in his early 20s. One of my best friends, a former union president and school system employee, has a granddaughter who is also enduring the burdens of heroin addiction. My brother knows at least a half-dozen people who’ve died from overdoses. Another friend of mine, someone who’s been in and out of my life for over a decade, got hooked on heroin a couple years back. Right now he’s hoping to stay out of jail and the Porter County morgue.
SERIAL KILLERS & INDUSTRIAL DECAY
The city of Gary is a miniature Detroit. As CNN reports, “Gary was founded as a company town for US Steel Corp., and when the industry hit the skids, the city’s economy foundered and never recovered. More than 37% of residents live below the poverty level and the city’s homicide rate — at 69 per 100,000 residents — is one of the highest in the country.” In fact, the FBI ranks Gary 7th in the nation in murders, per capita. Accordingly, many of the city’s residents live in constant fear. Normally, the threat of gang-violence or police corruption is enough to send the city into a frenzy, but now there’s the added horror of a serial killer.
As I write this article, Hammond police, a department under major scrutiny for a video released showing an officer smashing the window out of a family SUV, while children scream and cry in the backseat, caught a suspected serial killer. The local Fox affiliate reports:
The investigation began Friday night, when a 19-year-old woman was found strangled at a Motel 6 off of I-80 in Hammond. Police said the victim—Afrikka Hardy—met her killer through backpage.com, perhaps as an escort. Authorities said Monday afternoon that a woman who helped set up the deal found something suspicious in text messages received from the victim’s phone. Investigators later traced a phone number to Vann and served a search warrant at his home.
Vann was arrested in Hardy’s death and then confessed to a string of other killings, police said. He helped police locate six other bodies over the weekend, including the remains of a Merrillville woman who’s been missing since Oct. 8.
Empty homes in Gary, once the refuge of junkies, drug dealers and the homeless, now provide a human-dumping-ground for America’s most psychotic and deranged killers. Again, the collective psychological impact cannot be understated. Gary, like many Rust Belt cities and towns, is a deindustrialized wasteland filled with strip clubs, truck stops, bars and liquor stores. It is, as many in The Region call it, “the wasteland of capitalism.” In Gary, as expected, the victims of violent crimes are primarily black and female. It’s not enough to simply examine the contours of Gary’s economic and political past, we must also challenge the culture of patriarchy and the almost non-stop brutality imposed on women living in the wasteland of industrialization.
Really, it’s all here: systemic racism, patriarchy, poverty, mass incarceration (while only comprising 9% of Indiana’s population, blacks represent 34% of prisoners in the state), poverty, segregation, militarism and the list goes on, and on. In short, it’s a depressing situation. Since the “Great Recession” of 2008, many of my friends and family have moved from middle-class status to working-poor, or from working-class status to absolute poverty. Those who were living in absolute poverty are barely scraping by, living in trailers, tents and abandon buildings. This is the daily reality for those living in Northwest Indiana.
There’s plenty of political and cultural work to be done in the Rust Belt. Indeed, we’re going to need committed activists, community organizers, faith-based groups, businesses, politicians, intellectuals and journalists to devote their professional and leisure time toward the goal of transforming The Region. Sometimes, people leave The Region due to career opportunities, what many call, “The brain drain.” Yes, many of the “best and brightest” have left us. That much is clear. In the meantime, this political, social and cultural vacuum opens a space for new forms of organization, new groups and ideas.
CHALLENGING CAPITALISM IN THE RUST BELT
Lately, the Moral Monday movement has been organizing in Gary and throughout the state of Indiana. At least once a month, the group has been meeting at the Progressive Church of Gary. It’s not a big place, or fancy for that matter, but it allows a space for community members to organize. And, really, that’s all people need. I’m not trying to posit that the Indiana Moral Mondaymovement is the end-all-be-all of political organizing in Northwest Indiana. However, it’s a start. Their political platform and overall ideology can be generally described as democratic socialist. They are fighting for living wages, universal healthcare, a stop to massive deportations, universal education, an end to the War on Drugs, environmental justice, etc.
Yet our critique must be expanded. To me, it is unacceptable to discuss any of the above information without explicitly rejecting capitalism, empire and ecological suicide. The various phenomena mentioned above are the manifestations of capitalism and empire, not the driving forces. The driving forces are profit and power—profits for the corporate sector, and power for the state. Very few benefit from the current system. Consequently, there is room to sincerely and significantly transform the system. For those of us living in “capitalism’s wasteland,” it’s beyond clear: the system is failing. It’s broken and cannot be “fixed” with piecemeal reforms. People in The Region understand this point.
It’s easy for liberals and leftists to downplay the significance of the Rust Belt. Sure, the coasts are attractive, scenic and “progressive.” But the Rust Belt is the heart of America. And if one has a sick heart, it’s time for surgery. If one has a failing heart, it’s time for a transplant. Surely, America’s Rust Belt is due for a transplant. Moreover, if the Rust Belt (Gary, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland) is allowed to plunge into absolute depravity, the rest of the nation will surely follow. What today is referred to as the tech-region, or silicon valley, might very well be the Rust Belt of tomorrow.
Capitalism destroys even when it builds. At one time, The Region provided some of the best paying jobs in the country, with benefits, retirement and the whole nine-yards. Today, it provides some of the most horrific scenes in post-industrial America. There’s plenty of lessons to be learned from our collective experiences. The least of which is the power of love, compassion and solidarity. Our only option is to organize. And organize we will, until every-single-child in Northwest Indiana can dream of a better future, a future void of gross-violence, drug addiction, economic exploitation, environmental devastation and systems of concentrated power.
Vince Emanuele is a community organizer, writer and radio journalist. He lives in Michigan City, Indiana. He can be reached at[email protected]