By Steve Erdelen (From Summer 2011 Hard Copy Edition)
If you turn back a page, you’ll notice a bug on page three. Not a real bug, but what is known as a union printer’s bug. That in itself is no big deal, but I happen to be very proud that our magazine is now being printed at a union printing shop. There was never any kind of protest against our magazine by any union member or any pressure applied by anyone to print at a union shop. It was my decision to go that direction, and a very competitive bid helped me along. Decisions like that are made every day by millions of small businesses around this country, and our business is no different. The only thing that sets us apart from the vast majority of other small businesses is that our product is a direct reflection of the communities in which we are circulated.
In other words, if you pick up a copy of the Springfield News-Leader on your way to visit your child at Missouri State University or on your way to Branson, the chances are pretty good that your future perceptions of Springfield, Mo., will be influenced by that newspaper you just bought. My first job in the advertising business was in 1984, and since that time, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that perception is everything.
One of our contributors told me that she intentionally drops off copies of our magazine in trendy little coffee shops around the St. Louis area. She apparently does so because she is proud of the magazine, and she wants to help stop the perception that our area is on the decline and that we have very little to offer in terms of culture and commerce. As most of our readers realize, Northwest St. Louis County is brimming with great history, tremendous talent, fine businesses, beautiful homes, and very friendly people. Region- wide perceptions about this area, however, could be dramatically improved.
Combine the devastating decline of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, the destruction of 2,000 homes and nearly 100 businesses in Bridgeton for a seldom used runway, and the effective abandonment of Northwest Plaza in St. Ann, and what do you have? What you have, my friend, is a perception problem. Pile on top of that the nationwide trend in the 1980s and 1990s to migrate out of inner cities and their original suburbs and then what kind of community are you left with? I guess the answer depends on your perspective and your insight. It depends on whether your perceptions are influenced by your peer group, people you aspire to be like, or pure, deductive reasoning. It’s sometimes easier to look down your nose at a person or a geographic area than it is to study the real facts about that individual or place.
The bottom line is that, no matter where people now reside, they are generally very proud of the area, but where they “grew up” is almost always sacred to them. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. On the local Facebook Groups I’ve organized, I’ve read thousands of fond remembrances from area baby boomers about Northwest Plaza, St. Charles Rock Road, Pattonville and Ritenour High Schools, and virtually every neighborhood around here. When I announced online that we were launching the Rock Road Reporter, I was immediately flooded (and still am) by requests for copies of the magazine from former local residents who now live in St. Charles County, Lincoln County, Warren County, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Bradenton, Fla., to name just a few. Did they think that our magazine was going to be the second coming of Time or Newsweek or Rolling Stone? Nope. They just missed the area where they’d grown up and thought that our magazine could bring a little piece of home back to them.
The area in which they were raised was and still is considered to be “working-class” and “middle-class.” Their parents might have worked at McDonnell-Douglas (Boeing) or at the Ford or GM plant. They may have been in “the trades” as a machinist, pipe fitter, equipment operator, electrician, welder, plumber, carpenter, painter, bricklayer or laborer. Just like today, local people sold clothing and shoes and furniture and waited tables and tended bar and swept and mopped the floors at schools and businesses. They worked hard and took pride in what they accomplished. They put food on the table and sent their freshly scrubbed kids to school every day. America was booming, and it was the working-class and middle-class paychecks that kept it booming. Families would buy that new Ford or Chevy or Dodge every three to five years and the new Zenith color television and new Frigidaire, as well. It made sense that one job here created another job here.
Things have changed quite a bit since then for the working class. Lifetime jobs with the same company are now extremely rare, as are retirement pensions. Loyalty to workers is a thing of the past, and the dignity and honor of an honest day’s work is often overlooked and underappreciated. Greed is rampant, and the divide between rich and poor is much greater than it has ever been. A good friend and top salesman that I worked with in the early 1990s told me back then: “It used to be that sales and marketing people ran companies, and now it’s the bean counters that run companies.”
His point at the time was, instead of investing in new markets and new products to create more profits, companies were beating down vendors and cutting jobs to prop up the bottom line. Very little has changed from his statement of 18 years ago. In fact, it has gotten far worse. Corporations, with the tacit approval of Congress, have basically declared war on the working people of this country. In the name of the bottom line, unions have been targeted and broken up, pension plans eliminated, insurance premiums increased, and job security abolished. “Increased productivity” typically means that one person is doing the job of two or three people and they’d better not complain about it. Most people know exactly what will happen to them if they do. Even if a worker keeps his or her mouth shut, the possibility of that job being shipped off to a foreign country remains a very real possibility. And speaking of foreign countries, American corporations are allowed to defer taxes from overseas profits to the tune of over $100 billion a year.
Hundreds of billions of hardworking taxpayers’ dollars have been used to save banks and financial institutions that were “too big to fail.” The very same banks and financial institutions that helped to create the subprime mortgage lending crisis that ultimately wiped out trillions of dollars in middle-class home equity all over this country. Thousands of middle-class people hear a statement similar to the following every day: “We’re sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, but your house that was valued at $160,000 in 2007 is now worth $100,000. The $60,000 in equity that you thought you had has now disappeared; therefore, we cannot issue you a line of credit to capitalize your new business because you don’t have enough collateral.”
When that happens (and I can personally attest to the fact that it does happen), new jobs are not created and small businesses are not allowed to start up or expand. The middle class is rapidly getting squeezed out of the American dream while billionaires are using millions of dollars of our tax money in the form of TIFs (Tax Increment Financing) to “assist” them in the development of big-box stores that sell mostly foreign made merchandise. (For reference, see the new Walmart Supercenter being built on St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton. Also remember that the Walmart at Cypress and the Rock Road will be completely abandoned and presumably left for dead.)
Not to rub it in, but with two wars being fought overseas, we have found the “generosity” to grant the wealthiest among us a $700 billion tax break. Add to that the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and you’ll come up with enough money to send 20 million of our citizens through four years of college.
Following World War II, the GI Bill proved that educating Americans was a very smart thing to do. The bill helped to create the most innovative and skilled work force in the history of the world. These days, however, it seems that our tax money is better spent on subsidizing the wealthy in the hope that some of that money will “trickle down” to all of us peasants and “create jobs.” Job creation is a concept that politicians love to talk about, but have no idea how to really make it happen. Rebuilding our infrastructure and investing in inner suburban redevelopment doesn’t seem to be a viable option for them. It’s much easier to simply hand over money to corporations.
How can ordinary working-class or middle-class people (or whatever sociologists like to call us) fight back against raging greed and self-serving politicians? I believe the way our parents did it and the way their parents did it before them was, first, to get off their rear ends and go to the polls and, second, to form and join unions. They teamed up to bargain collectively and to strike with work stoppages against unlivable wages and unnecessary greed. They boycotted companies that mistreated workers and marketed shoddy products. They practiced the time-honored lesson of vigorously protecting their own interest. The same lesson any rich people would teach their sons or daughters.
By the way, did I mention that there was a bug on page three?
No comments:
Post a Comment