The Chicago Reporter has been doing some good, depressing work on south- and west-side unemployment: “In 2008, 52 percent of people ages 16 to 30 in East Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale and West Garfield Park had not worked during the previous five years or longer.” That’s from a profile of an workforce agency that struggles to place people, many of whom are homeless, mentally ill, and/or have criminal records, in jobs in communities where precious few exist.
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It’s a vicious circle: where there are no jobs, there’s no money, which means that businesses don’t want to come to those places, which means there are no jobs, which means there are more troubles, which means there are fewer jobs than that, and so on. Given the perilous state of city and state finances (here and elsewhere), that’s why so many people are looking to the federal government for an infusion of money; it’s the spender of last resort.
(Plus, as Nelson Lichtenstein pointed out in his interview with Max Brooks, Target, beloved of the middle and upper-middle-class, doesn’t get nearly the blowback Walmart does. This is attributed to unions’ desire to start with the big swinging dicks at Walmart, but I can’t help but think when it comes to more diffuse anti-Walmart sentiment that there’s a class and regional component.)
