Although there's near total agreement that almost nothing useful can come of parsing Cosby it would be a pity to leave the topic closed without offering alternative sources for alternative threads... .d.
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I tried to change the focus under `Art and Propaganda' but I guess it was too abstract or didn't seem relevant, or because it wasn't referenced to the Cosby thread it was missed or skipped.
In any event on the material side the solution is butt simple in my mind. Money. That's it. Pardon me, while I stretch out and rant...
As far as I know no collection of corporate investors ever moved into a poor US urban community and re-developed the entire industrial and commercial infrastructure from the ground up the way they have all over the rest of the world. US urban areas that were industrial at some point in the past, had developed the social infracture of politics, unions, municipal, county, and state regulation on labor and environment, all of which `cost' capital too much---so they left.
When I was kid in LA, there was a vast sprawl of industrial and commercial areas that stretched from south central, south and west including Watts and Commerce City toward Long Beach and San Pedro. Much of that area was heavy industry: steel, oil refineries, auto plants, aircraft, ship building, rail yards and so forth. Much of it remained more or less intact into the late fifties. In the post-war years another area out in the Burbank and eastern San Fernando Valley starting with Lockheed exploded into aircraft, electronics, and the early aerospace industries.
During these boom years the highest paying trade unions systematically excluded black and other minorities from all the choicest construction work in electrical, plumping, mechanical, and carpenters. Steel, auto, rail, construction labor, painting, and miscellaneous trades were less systematic. Black machinists, electronic technicians, aircraft speciality and production trades were non-existent.
My second step father was an electronic engineer and worked in aerospace. I never heard of a black engineer or technician in those days.
In the shop where I used to work in Emeryville, I would hear the same story told over and over. My grand parents or parents came up from the south in the Thirties or Forties, and got into the war industries, joined the service and when they got home they worked in this or that factory or ship yard....
The systematic move of heavy industry off-shore, over the border, or out of US urban areas during the seventies through the eighties put a lid on those who hadn't made it out of working class and below. It was no longer possible to start off with no skills and move up through industrial and construction jobs, gaining skills on the job. The communities that developed around these industrial areas, like South Central or Oakland, south of Market SF collapsed in the late Seventies through the Eighties and never recovered.
If a working class community can no longer find work it was trained and expected to do, then what? Then nothing. The older work force moves away or dies out. The community falls apart. No mystery.
Kelley posted, ``Eli Anderson, _STreetwise: RAce, Class, and Change in an Urban an Urban Community_ ...''
During my lunch break at my last job, I used to watch the goings on in the housing project across the street. In front of our warehouse there used to be rail line that moved corn syrup by tanker, 196,000lbs of it per tanker car. Whatever they made out of it up the street closed, the rail line was torn out, EOF.
Across the tracks at the project I would watch mostly black guys, some south east asian and some middle eastern maybe south asia, stop by during working hours for a visit. The jobs I could identify were tow truck driver, taxis driver, auto mechanic, hauling, cleaning, etc. I used to think about all the industries that were collapsing around the area most of which had better jobs. Industrial paper supply, warehouse and distribution, industrial printing, steel warehouses, machine shops, small fabrication and manufacturing, construction and industrial supplies, etc. In an eight year period all of it disappeared and was turned into computer dot com boom bullshit, or that other favorite, the arty loft upscale apartment complex.
The elementary school down the block was turned into a charter middle school, but the kids were too big to have enough room on playground since they put up temporary bungalows in the school yard. Two years ago the school closed because the school district went into state receivership over a budget crisis. Public infrastructure collapsed in the middle of economic boom---dying of thirst in a flood.
It got to be more and more difficult to find parking near the shop. Then suddenly when the dot-com bubble burst, the streets were empty. Meanwhile the people in the project across the street went nowhere. Families move out and were replaced with others in the same plight, because of the two year limit on AFDC . It was apparent that nobody was working in the immediate area. Occasionally I would stay late at work and see mostly women coming back from office work dragging their littlest ones home from day care after their commute to some where else. Meanwhile the older kids were running lose. The school only ran a limited after school program so no kids were in the small school yard except on the particular days when there was somebody running programs. Of course the yard was locked up other days.
So, the whole neoliberal capitalist pig, racist, working class screw job was right in my face every day. I could sit on the grass on the project side of the street during lunch break and consider what a Marxist sociologist and radical revolutionary people's committee would do about it. Shooting everybody in Emeryville city government occurred to me, followed by the developers, investors and the rest of the jack off establishment. Of course the only reason there was a dot com boom was low taxes and zero regulation or planning. Emeryville had bent over backwards, oh do me Johnnie. Como peros, jota? Sure. Whatever.
I noticed in every, and I mean every case of remodeling factories and warehouses into their dot-com crystal palaces or putting up loft-apartments there were never any local contractors. Some were imported from as far away as Texas and Oklahoma. The same scene was repeated over and over. A trendy architect type would do a walk around with his or her cell phone with a developer and his BMW and his cell phone. They had clip boards, rolled plans, and digital cameras. Talking that big capital talk. Then in a fews weeks or months later, the heavy equipment would arrive---mostly old time white guys from SF, San Leandro, Concord or Walnut Creek---never Oakland or Emeryville. Then the carpenters would arrive running a gang of Mexicans to strip the interior. Then more carpenters, mechanical types, electricians, plumbers, steel and concrete and roofers. Only steel and concrete would have black workers, but these were becoming fewer and fewer as Mexicans filled in the lower ranks. None of these later jobbers were union. Dot, dot, dot, ...is it even worth going through the whole routine?
Every opportunity for local people to get out poverty or move up in the working class was systematically blocked by one thing or another. Buildings were being remodeled to house a bunch of office workers with a few down scale entry positions and that was it. Over and over and over. Repeated from 1996 when I started until 2004 when I quit. The new businesses in the area were dominated by the usual suburb types driving SUV's to work and taking up two parking places. I was always late for work so I could never find a place and had park two blocks away. Of course one day the local kids tried to steal my car because it was parked in an out of the way place. They got caught. Since they hadn't done any damage I didn't press charges the cops wanted to use to covert the arrest into time. The district attorney's office called me up and started arguing with me over it. `We know these kids. We need to teach them a lesson, blah, blah, blah.' I kept repeating the same thing. They didn't do any damage and I left the car unlocked so if somebody did try to steal it, they wouldn't break the windows... They got busted and probably scared, big scene with the parents, etc. What else is needed? Jail? Forget it. Ruin their lives over opening a car door and fiddling with the ignition? Yes, but next time, what if... Blah, blah, blah.
What is there to say? Same, stupid, sickening, screw job, year in year out, rain or shine, boom or bust.
During the eight year period I was there, that particular few blocks of Emeryville was a perfect model of all that was wrong with the 90s and the great neoliberal solution. It was like watching a living textbook.
CG