What Happened to Gary?
Gwendolyn Hart
In 1970, Gary was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country and was a majority-Black city as well. It was host to the National Black Political Convention of 1972, where 10,000 Black attendees gathered to discuss strategy after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Socialist delegates at this convention argued for building a new political party that would fight for Black and all oppressed people.
The corporate elites then ripped the steel industry out of Gary, and with it the city’s economic lifeblood. Business-owners sucked investment out. Jobs evaporated, unemployment was rampant, and workers fled the city. Black workers, however, were largely trapped by segregation, locked out of the new neighborhoods and jobs in surrounding towns. The remaining population was forced to compete over the remaining scraps to survive, leading to rampant poverty, theft, a drug epidemic, and drug-related violence.
Indiana was once at the heart of American steel and industry, but that’s been lost. Capitalist politicians like to blame this on “automation” — no one can be held at fault if they pass the buck to nebulous technological progress. But the decimation of industrial jobs is a long-standing, deliberate policy by Republicans, Democrats, and big business.
After the titanic victories for social movements in the 60s and 70s, the capitalist class launched an all-out assault on the unions to break the power of the working class. And central to this was immiserating Black workers in retribution for the Civil Rights Movement.
In the mid-1970s over one-quarter of Indiana workers were unionized. Today that figure is a mere 6.4 percent. Massive numbers of jobs were lost to NAFTA. In 2012 Indiana became the first “Rust Belt” state to pass Right-to-Work laws, which banned closed shop organizing, a keystone of industrial unionism.
American capitalism has made incalculable profits out of the brutal exploitation of Black workers. We need a militant fightback to pry reparations from the rich, to invest in healthcare, housing, and good union jobs in Black communities like Gary.
The assault on workers in Indiana continues today. From 2000-2015, the poverty rate in Marion county leapt from 11.8% to 21.3% — almost outstripping population growth. What have the Democrats and Republicans done about this?
In 2011, the Republicans banned cities and counties from raising the minimum wage. In 2021, they banned them from passing virtually any tenant protections. The Democrats won’t even pretend to fight back against these restrictions, because they serve the same corporate masters.
We need a party that’s accountable to the workers. That will challenge and unseat these corporate politicians. The Socialist Party of Indiana is doing this today. Join them and build the fight to retake the wealth for our communities.