Taking On Issues - Political Issues and Government Policies

A Hot Discussion Forum on Government Policies and Political Issues

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Election 2016
  • Big Government
  • Healthcare
  • The Other Side
  • What’s New
  • Your Freedom
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Are the Lights Back On in Gary?

November 22, 2016 By Takingonissues

Knights of Columbus Building, Gary, Indiana (Wikimedia Commons)

Knights of Columbus Building, Gary, Indiana (Wikimedia Commons)

I knew my involvement in civic matters in northwest Indiana would eventually take me to Gary, about 25 miles from my town of Valparaiso. As I’ve driven along Interstate 90 heading to and from Chicago, I’ve often peered down from the expressway into the city’s empty streets and dilapidated neighborhoods. For many long-time residents of the area, the town’s very name is an epithet for a landscape of failure and fear where it’s thought that no one stays who can find a way to leave. I admit I have not been in a hurry to visit the place but in recent months I’ve come to see it quite differently.

Gary was created as a kind of company town (U.S. Steel basically built the city out of dirt in 1906) and reached a population of almost 180,000 in 1960. Today the city (with a geographical area about the same size as downtown Boston’s) has just under 80,000 inhabitants and is about 85 percent African-American. The Gary Works steel plant went from a peak of 25,000 employees to today’s 5,000. Approximately one-third of the city’s housing stock today stands empty and Gary’s public schools have slowly been closing for a number of years.

And yet. The city has an energetic and popular mayor, Karen Freeman-Williams (Harvard Law grad, former attorney general of Indiana). It has an artsy neighborhood called Miller with the obligatory brewpub, a gallery and some nice restaurants. And it has—if it can find more ways to leverage the asset—Lake Michigan.

The friends of a revitalized Gary include the PlaceLab at the University of Chicago, where social practice artist Theaster Gates is deploying a substantial Bloomberg Philanthropies grant to create ArtHouse, “a social kitchen” in downtown Gary. The grand opening was last weekend and an artsy, mostly African-American crowd of 200 listened to Gates, Mayor Karen (as everyone calls her) and the architects talking about why social practice art (you need to know what this is if you don’t already) can achieve placemaking—even in Gary.

I hope that’s so, as I’m bought in. I want our civic incubator, the C-Lab, to host community microfunding dinners (called SOUPs) at ArtHouse. And I’ve met several great Gary people just networking around this project.

But there’s more. The Diocese of Gary got a new leader, Bishop Don Hying, about a year ago. He has a very genial manner and spent his first two or three months personally visiting every one of his 70-plus parishes. I gradually figured out he was a radical in a Boy Scout uniform, so to speak.

Now he’s leading a discussion group (held at the rectory of the cathedral in Gary, where he lives) on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement with the aim of collaborating on a Catholic Worker house somewhere in town. Note the term “collaborating”: the Diocese of Gary will not be officially sponsoring the house—such an arrangement would probably not be feasible for various reasons—but Bishop Hying does want to help make this happen for Gary. And we’ve got supporters chiming in from Chicago, South Bend, and elsewhere.

Some of our Catholic Worker team think we should publish a blog about the process of creating a Catholic Worker house, as we consider all the different dimensions to this kind of project.

Elias Crim is a civic entrepreneur in Valparaiso, Indiana.

This post originally appeared at Solidarity Hall.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Email, RSS Follow

Related

Subscribe to Taking on Issues

Enter your email address to subscribe to our site and receive notifications of new posts by email.

RSS Political News

  • Anti-Impeachment Democrat to Switch Parties December 15, 2019
  • Nunes tells Schiff he needs 'rehabilitation' after IG report: 'Admit you have a problem' December 15, 2019
  • Schiff defends Democrats' impeachment case against Trump December 15, 2019
  • Boris Johnson's Big Victory Will Be Trump's as Well December 15, 2019
  • Johnson Is Showing Western Politicians How to Win December 15, 2019
  • Comey admits ‘I was wrong’ on FISA conduct, remains defiant on dossier in tense interview December 15, 2019
  • Fox News Poll: Biden still leads Democratic race as Warren drops December 15, 2019
  • Fox News Poll: Trump job approval ticks up, views on impeachment steady December 15, 2019
  • Fox News Poll results December 8-11, 2019 December 15, 2019

Archives

New Featured Articles

  • Miss America execs made disparaging comments about pageant winners, now former winners want them fired
    December 22, 2017

    HuffPost reports on a series of emails exchanged between executives of the Miss America Organization which don’t show a lot of respect for their own contestants. I’ll get to some of those exchanges in a moment, but first here’s the basis for the HuffPost story by Yashar Ali: For this story, HuffPost reviewed nearly three […]

    Email, RSS Follow
  • Religious Left’s Nashville Panic
    August 31, 2017
    The Nashville Statement by Evangelical Christian […]
  • “NY needs to fall”: FBI busts ISIS-linked terror plot aimed at Big Apple
    October 7, 2017
    Another 9/11, another Brussels, another Paris? […]
  • Jason Kessler gets yelled at by his dad during livestream
    August 15, 2018
    I’ve written a bunch about Antifa and how […]
  • Report: Vegas shooter was overheard complaining about Waco, Ruby Ridge, “FEMA camps,” gun confiscation
    May 17, 2018
    The claims are noteworthy but so is the sourcing. The […]
  • Breaking: Manafort jury reaches verdict on eight counts, hung on 10; Update: Mistrial on latter declared; Update: Guilty on eight counts
    August 21, 2018
    I cannot — cannot — believe that the […]
  • End the Economic War on Iran
    June 27, 2019
    The economic war on Iran is one of the main reasons […]
  • Atlanta coughs up $1.2 million to former fire chief in religious-liberty case
    October 16, 2018
    “Was a city employee fired over faith or […]
  • Today’s hot topics: Hello 2019, impeachment queen, shutdown preen, Vice‘s spleen, and more!
    January 3, 2019
    Today on The Ed Morrissey Show (4 pm ET), we have […]
  • So now we’re using AI to interpret “mysterious space signals”
    August 13, 2019
    While still being a bit on the frightening side, the […]
  • Gut health: Protecting your second brain
    February 19, 2019
    Everyone knows about the brain in your head, but did […]
  • Don’t Mess With Fergus Falls
    December 19, 2018
    Local heroes Michele Anderson and Jake Krohn kicked […]
  • Helplessness & The Santa Fe Shooting
    May 18, 2018
    I’ve not blogged about the shooting today, […]
  • Pelosi should come to the table with Trump says… the WaPo?
    January 20, 2019
    Did somebody hack the Washington Post website? That […]
  • Joy Reid has lost 20% of her audience since fake hacking scandal
    July 12, 2018
    It has been nearly three months since Joy Reid claimed […]
Copyright © 2019 TakingOnIssues.com

Contact Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Advertise | About Us