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Madison and Lincoln are basically large college towns built on agriculture and dairy industries. Milwaukee and St. Louis are major economic (albeit rust belt) centers built on immigrant labor and manufacturing. Very different types of towns.
And now Madison and Lincoln are becoming like mini tech centers. St. Louis and Milwaukee are basically rust belt cities that have been declining (St. Louis much more so). The manufacturing sector has changed, and the economies of those cities have been affected.
So maybe what the OP is suggesting is that we shouldn't exploit the labor of migrants, and possibly we should abandon all forms of capitalism. After all, it was the incessant build-up of factories and industry that drew so many able-bodied black men from the south, as well as Slovaks, Latvians and Lithuanians into cities like St. Louis, Cleveland and Chicago (read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair... dark but eye opening). Now that those factories have been mostly closed, the gaping holes left in the communities are sore spots for criminal activity. The Poles and the Lithuanians were assimilated into suburban wasp culture for jobs in finance and technology, but civil rights and social opportunity have been much slower to come to communities of color.
Something else I've noticed. Cities that are among the violent also have a history of racial violence. St. Louis is not a stranger to it. Milwaukee isn't either. Birmingham, which has a murder rate similar to Baltimore and St. Louis, another rust belt city with a history of racial violence. Detroit is imfamous. Cities that have watched their manufacturing economies decline severely. Those who were able to make the transition have managed to do well. Those who couldn't, well, the results are not pretty. And I'll say this. Blacks were among the last to truly benefit from an industrial economy and among the first to be hurt by its demise.
More than a dozen people were shot in Cleveland overnight, including at least one fatally.
A double shooting in Halethorpe, Md., in Baltimore County, left a man and a woman dead.
Two men were shot and killed at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
In Lubbock, Tex., two people were killed in a shooting outside a nightclub.
In Philadelphia, two people were killed on New Year’s Eve.
A man and a woman were shot and wounded at a bar early on New Year’s Day in South Bend, Ind.
In Des Moines, Iowa, a 14-year-old boy was shot and killed Wednesday morning.
In Kalamazoo, Mich., an 18-year-old man shot at a group of people on a porch. But the only gunshot victim, the police said, was the gunman, who shot himself in the leg.
In New York, a man was found dead from a gunshot wound in an apartment in the Bronx, in what the police said was the city’s first murder of 2020.
Something else I've noticed. Cities that are among the violent also have a history of racial violence. St. Louis is not a stranger to it. Milwaukee isn't either. Birmingham, which has a murder rate similar to Baltimore and St. Louis, another rust belt city with a history of racial violence. Detroit is imfamous. Cities that have watched their manufacturing economies decline severely. Those who were able to make the transition have managed to do well. Those who couldn't, well, the results are not pretty. And I'll say this. Blacks were among the last to truly benefit from an industrial economy and among the first to be hurt by its demise.
That mostly makes sense. I can't cite statistics on the origin of laborers broken out by nationality/ethnicity across different industrial cities during the late 19th, early 20th century, but East St. Louis used to be a thriving steel mill town, and I am told the mills were operated by mostly black men from the south. It was never a fancy city and all of the housing was built with thrift and efficiency in mind (i.e., cheaply). At the same time, I am led to believe it was a decent community for its residents up until the close of the steel mills. Driving through East St. Louis today (I have done it many times), it is a ghost town. It's like something out of a dystopian movie. When is Trump going to reopen those steel mills?
That is barely above the national average, which is 13%.
Huntsville, Alabama is 30% Black and has a lower murder rate(and less violent crime) than Tulsa does. Both are red cities in red states. Why does Tulsa have more violence, in spite of a lower percentage of Blacks?
In Tulsa, Republicans look down upon the poor as a disgrace to themselves, their state and their country.
That mostly makes sense. I can't cite statistics on the origin of laborers broken out by nationality/ethnicity across different industrial cities during the late 19th, early 20th century, but East St. Louis used to be a thriving steel mill town, and I am told the mills were operated by mostly black men from the south. It was never a fancy city and all of the housing was built with thrift and efficiency in mind (i.e., cheaply). At the same time, I am led to believe it was a decent community for its residents up until the close of the steel mills. Driving through East St. Louis today (I have done it many times), it is a ghost town. It's like something out of a dystopian movie. When is Trump going to reopen those steel mills?
Steel mills in East St. Louis is a new one on me -- don't remember any. There's a steel mill in Granite City. Oil refineries in Wood River. East St. Louis had manufacturing and factories that closed. There were huge stock yards and rail yards and barge depots near the river. that side of the river was very industrial. More recently, there was a flood wall that was built to protect the place but someone stole the steel flood gates and sold them for scrap. Miles Davis was from there as was Jimmy Conners, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Senator Dick Durban, and Ike & Tina Turner lived there for a while.
That mostly makes sense. I can't cite statistics on the origin of laborers broken out by nationality/ethnicity across different industrial cities during the late 19th, early 20th century, but East St. Louis used to be a thriving steel mill town, and I am told the mills were operated by mostly black men from the south. It was never a fancy city and all of the housing was built with thrift and efficiency in mind (i.e., cheaply). At the same time, I am led to believe it was a decent community for its residents up until the close of the steel mills. Driving through East St. Louis today (I have done it many times), it is a ghost town. It's like something out of a dystopian movie. When is Trump going to reopen those steel mills?
I know about East St. Louis. There was still alot of racism going on. East St. Louis had a race riot in 1917. At the same time, this has to be said. When people have work, when people can provide a way for themselves in a legal, moral way, the likelihood of becoming a criminal drops rapidly.
East St. Louis is a very sad case. The railroads got restructured during the 1950s and 60s. Alot of jobs were lost in East St. Louis as a result. Alot of meatpacking plants left the city. Alot of jobs left. Those who could find jobs elsewhere ending up leaving. It wasn't just the steel mills that closed down. Meatpacking, alot of industries associated with the railroads, that stuff left too
East St. Louis does have a big dystopian look. It is surrounded by alot of pollution. High rates of asthma and cancer in this area. And it has declined rapidly. At one time 82,000 people lived in East St. Louis, back in 1950. Now the population is somewhere around 26,000, probably 25,000 as of 2020. It's oddly fitting that you said it looks like something out of dystopian movie. Part of Escape From New York was filmed in East St. Louis, in 1981.
I don't think Trump will do anything about East St. Louis. No President will. East St. Louis might become a ghost town for real soon.
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