In The Words of Jim Traficant
In a 60 Minutes interview with the now passed former Congressman of Youngstown, Ohio, Jim Traficant was asked a question that nearly everybody who grew up in an industrial town was asked, “Do you think the country cares? Gives a damn about the Youngstown’s?” To which Traficant, the crooked, crass, and often controversial representative replied “If we don’t start caring, what happened to Youngstown will happen everywhere else.” Behind the brashness, the corruption, and the antics of the former sheriff, that reality has now come to pass, not just for Northeast Ohio but for a world filled with burnt out steel mills, empty car plants, and homes that used to be the promise of the American Dream and are now only the cold avoided realization of the American nightmare.
Youngstown, Ohio in the 20th century was a Steeltown, dominated by multiple steel mills and the business surrounding their workers. These jobs were unforgiving, but in a town dominated by first generation immigrants, people were able to earn a middle class living that rewarded their work and loyalty with good pay and a pension. Downtown was busy and families were able to afford a good car, to eat at their favorite restaurant, as well as affording them the general comfort that is foundational to the modern middle class. Their politics were socially conservative, due to Youngstown being majority Catholic, but heavily Democratic overall in support of union workers. Over time after World War II and the 1950s, steel manufacturing required less and less workers to produce similar product and as such mills started laying people off and companies began moving overseas in search of cheap labor. Youngstown, however, remained resilient.
But on September 19, 1977, it all came crashing down. “Black Monday” as it’s known in Youngstown, led to 5,000 union steel jobs evaporating overnight. Workers lost their homes, and as such needed to leave town to find work to feed their families. Youngstown lost nearly 40% of its once 180,000 residents over the following decades and today there remains only 60,000 residents in the city of Youngstown.
Our community lives in the shadow of its former glory. The people who still call it home live in a constant state of nostalgia. But a just as large amount of people live in a state of constant anxiety and frustration. President Obama promised hope and change, and when the unemployment rate of the country sat at a healthy 4%, Youngstown’s remained at 10%. It seemed the recovery was immune to Youngstown and the angst grew with the Democratic establishment and they equally failed to recognize the reality people faced in towns like mine. Soon, that angst and frustration would be channeled into political ramifications that unearthed the political landscape.
During the Trump Era, national media and their interest in towns like Youngstown stem from a characerature of the white working class. These are people that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump both in 2016 and in 2020 and helped flip Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Media often frame and characterize former mill workers, construction workers, and tradesmen as an almost zoo worthy creature full of intrigue and mystery. Their questions rely not on their economic anxieties nor the hardship these people face, but attempt to paint them as uneducated bigots. This condescension is what draws people not only to President Trump, but draws people to the fringes of political thought. This fundamental disregard for the economic realities of the industrial midwest is what led Mahoning County to vote for the Republican Party for the first time since 1972. It was not always this way.
In Barack Obama’s introduction to the nation in 2004 in Boston, Massachusetts he claimed emphatically:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”
Barack Obama won Mahoning County with over 70% of the vote in 2008 and 2012.
To claim that the world is too divided, too hateful, too blind to their own bias, would be easy. To claim these small towns throughout America have gone through such a radical shift that they are no longer salvageable would be entirely misguided. To leave behind good people, whose predominant hope is to work hard, to put food on the table and provide for their families is not only to give up on those folks but to give up on the United States.
That which is easy is rarely worthwhile.
Politicians, the media, and our dialogue needs to recognize the collective struggles of these cities. There are lots of Youngstown’s in the world, filled with lots of people from lots of backgrounds longing for that American ideal.
“E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one.
