Sean Kirst interviews the enigmatic and exceedingly well-informed SyracuseB4, aka Theresa Rusho. Great stuff, check it out. One quote jumped out at me, however:

There is a tendency to view the destruction of James Street as inevitable civic change. Rusho breaks that idea on the rocks. She’s found clips from the 1950s that establish how James Street was targeted by a municipal plan that today seems absolutely mad. Indeed, even as our great landmarks were being razed, The Post-Standard of 1952 carried an article that mocked these “rambling homes, surrounded by acres of lawn (that) are of another era. People today don’t go in for big, ornate mansions. …”

It’s weird, but that’s pretty much what forward-thinking people say today about McMansions in the burbs! It’s an intriguing quote.

“What we see in the United States and some other economies is a statistical recovery and a human recession.”
–Larry Summers, Davos, January 30, 2009

“Of course; that was the intention. The stimulus money, QE, low rates, etc., etc, were geared toward goosing the stats. They were never directed toward middle or lower income individuals and reducing unemployment has not even been attempted. So now the stats are artificially inflated. Is the recession over? Of course not… it never was. This is 1936 with 1937 just around the corner.”
–A commenter on Calculated Risk

A further word on “what’s happening to our place” is in next Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Worth a read.

You decide that you want to get rid of the byproducts of human life and that Lake Erie will be a good place to put them. You forget that the ecomental system called Lake Erie is a part of your wider ecomental system — and that if Lake Erie is driven insane, its insanity is incorporated in the larger system of your thought and experience.

Not a new idea to me, but hopefully this article will bring it more exposure.

Last week there was a particularly disturbing news story out of the hamlet of Copake, in Columbia County east of the Hudson. A despondent dairy farmer committed suicide, shooting dead 51 of his cows before killing himself. Although the scope of this private tragedy caught the collective breath of nationwide news consumers (for an hour or two), there is of course nothing new about the desperate struggles of the family farmer, particularly dairy farmers in our own state. Northview Diary has more.

Andy Arthur (your expert blogger on the rural issues of eastern New York) has a thoughtful post up today about the physical, economic and social landscape where this sad event occurred. He points out that Copake is on the very front line between Upstate New York’s economic struggles and a rising tide of affluence coming ultimately from New York City (and Wall Street). It’s a line that used to lay much farther south. This is an on-the-ground situation which is still only abstract to us in other parts of Upstate, although became somewhat less abstract to more people during the regional anti-NYRI protests. Here’s a story about a “farm” (also in Copake, and on the same road as the farm with the 51 cows) that is not really a farm, but apparently a construction-debris dumping ground. With the advance of development-crazy newcomers, Columbia County farms are bearing some strange fruit.

Speaking of dumping — and closer to home — residents of the Town of Camillus’ Golden Meadows subdivision (a homedebtors farm?) are only just realizing how Honeywell has successfully managed to turn the Onondaga Lake sludge-dumping cleanup plan into a fait accompli. This is the same plan that the Onondaga Nation and other local activists have been vocally opposing for several years, but the residents of Golden Meadows seem not to have heard about it. I lost some nice neighbors a couple years ago to the lure of Golden Meadows, and I’m guessing they’re feeling like they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them; they probably didn’t think the waste beds would ever see use again, or were not warned. The sad thing is that if only the Nation, the local activist friends of the Nation, and the residents of the Town of Camillus had connected with each other a few years ago, they could have made a much more effective bloc to demand a better examination of the cleanup issues.

“Divide and conquer” still works, however. It works particularly well here, because some people don’t want to consider that while they may be in different boats, they are still riding down the same river. Simply put, the Camillus situation illustrates perfectly something I’ve been trying to imperfectly express for years: we here in Upstate New York are all “indigenous” now in the eyes of certain other people. We are seen as being as exploitable and disposable as the other natural resources on the land we occupy, whether it is over in Copake or over in Camillus. We’re becoming invisible. The people from the corporations, and maybe the second-home owners too (who are probably more intimately bound up with the interests of corporations than those who can’t afford second homes), tend not to consider “the locals” to be people, any more than the land speculators of the 18th and 19th centuries thought that the Haudenosaunee were people. No, they’re not evil, but they are losing their sight. All natives of this region, regardless of cultural background or skin color (but particularly those with brown skin, and also people of any color with farming or working-class backgrounds), are “removable.” How did this change in identity happen? I don’t know. But I do know that our historical ignorance and pride keeps us from acknowledging this new reality.

I’m not a second-home-owner who works for a Wall Street corporation (although I currently serve them) and I have never been able to think like they do. They see things differently. We’re not all the same people. But the even more ironic thing is that the second-home-owners are desperately seeking authenticity by (usually unconsciously) sweeping away the actual authentic culture (the indigenous peoples of all kinds, from the native nations to the farmers to the factory workers) and building artificial, pretend versions in their place. Yet their desire for cultural authenticity never seems to be sated, and they use their affluence to travel the world seeking it, creating “ideal communities” Upstate, or clearing out cities for gentrification, or buying dead factories to make shrines for art that strives to get them back in touch with the “authentic.” They’re always chasing the indigenous peoples away — but in the end, they’re always chasing after them.

What an absurd cycle. Does it have to be this way? And does there have to be conflict? The Two Row Wampum says no. It seems to me the indigenous peoples of today’s upstate regions, and the “new people” from elsewhere (I mean the affluent, not the immigrant), ought to work out a new agreement. But such an agreement won’t happen if we don’t have any good local leaders to articulate and respond to what is actually happening.

This unconventional Senate reapportionment map, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, would divide the U.S. into regions with more or less equal representation by population. As usual, upstate NY gets cut into pieces, but that’s not surprising.

CNY is handcuffed to WNY in this scenario, but I suppose worse things could happen. The name seems well chosen (resonating with Lake Erie as well as the Erie Canal), although the northern boundaries ignore CNY’s current media market, which does so much to foster a sense of regional identity. I’m not sure if the North Country belongs with “Northern New England,” but maybe it does.

Noticed this at Dmitry Orlov’s website-

In all of my experience, communities — of people and animals — form instantaneously and rather effortlessly, based on a commonality of interests and needs. What takes a lot of work is not organizing communities, but preventing them from organizing — through the use of truncheons and tear gas, or evictions and mass imprisonment, or, more recently, more subtle and ultimately more successful techniques of the consumerist political economy… How representative a democracy the US ever was is rather beside the point; the point is, it was once a country where people could successfully and openly self-organize, and now it isn’t. Once there were strong, cohesive communities in the US, which could organize and bring pressure to bear on their elected officials. And now… there are no such strong, cohesive communities in the US, and so… they can’t organize, because, I would think, there is nothing for them to organize. Existence of communities allows communities to organize; lack of community prevents communities from organizing.

Thoughts?

If State Senator Michael Nozzolio’s manifesto about Upstate becoming “the 51st state” was anything more than bottom-feeder political posturing, it would be something more than a simple repetition of the canard that New York City sucks Upstate dry and gives nothing back. It would honestly lay out the nuances of the real situation — not denying that Upstate is reliant on New York City for subsidies of various kinds, but rather being bold enough to list those subsidies (and the equivalent of subsidies, such as prison jobs).

It would be brutally honest about the weaknesses of New York City’s Wall Street-driven economy and cautionary about how long that particular economic engine can continue to support an entire state.

And then it would speak equally honestly about how this numb overreliance on New York City has damaged the bedrock of our economy, stunted its growth and sense of purpose as a (however loose) community, and ultimately has contributed to the diaspora of our well-educated young people, many of whom would really rather remain here near their families and friends than in the sticky, ant-infested South.

It would ask, “Do Upstate people really want to continue existing like this under this system? Can we do better with a different system?” And then it might suggest some achievable near-term goals for more Upstate autonomy within the current political system we have in Albany.

Don’t look to Michael Nozzolio for a real manifesto on Upstate independence, as he’s clearly not politically capable of it. (Never send a boy to do a man’s job.) Look for new candidates who are politically capable of saying these things.

I know where it’s hiding.

View Larger Map

Keep driving north. Run the red light. You’ll find it.

(Note: This is only for those who have exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the Zombie Outbreak Simulator.)

Governor Paterson’s annual S.O.S. (State of the State) was given yesterday. You can read the address here; and more about the plan. A lot of attention has been given to the reform angle of his speech, but I’m feeling very out of touch with reform sport these days (it’s kind of like “dance sport” - but even though it’s not allowed in the Olympics there’s still always gold involved). The big story, for this blogger, is how Paterson seem to abandon all rosy rhetoric about reviving Upstate economically as a green-tech or higher-educational-research hub. Very little new said about that. No, those halcyon days are past:

New York State is home to an estimated 60,000 back office jobs. The Paterson Administration will focus on expanding the State’s back office opportunities by making Upstate New York the preferred back office for corporate America. There is no denying that we have the workforce, space and livable communities to support these office operations throughout Upstate New York.

For those of us with unglamorous back office careers in Upstate New York — getting up dutifully, eating our thin morning gruel, slogging through the snow each dawn to serve our daily 9 to 5 sentences — it’s comforting to know that soon we’ll be joined by thousands of economic refugees eager to compete with us for our Bartleby the Scrivener jobs. Because you know, in all seriousness, the Creative Class b.s. was getting hard to stomach (even the Creative Class itself can no longer stand it). Nice to see that our governor isn’t into selling snake oil either.

However, if this is what the governor means by “back office operations,” I really must protest:

When Tobias “Bags of Money” Boyland went looking for a new career after serving 13 years in prison for armed robbery and drug dealing, he quickly found something that suited his sensibilities: He opened a collection agency.

It was, in some ways, a natural move for a young man in Buffalo. Desperate for jobs, this chronically depressed Rust Belt city has become home to one of the biggest concentrations of debt collection businesses in the U.S. “Collections is the Bethlehem Steel of Buffalo,” said Boyland, 44, recalling the industrial giant that once employed 20,000 people in the region. “You can make a decent living in a town where there isn’t a lot of opportunity.”

Yet, law enforcement and consumer groups point to a dark side: Buffalo, they say, has also become a center for some of the worst elements in the business. Debt collectors, some of them convicted felons, have illegally posed as lawyers or unlawfully browbeat people — threatening to have them arrested or stripped of custody of their children — to scare them into making payments.

“Get some clean clothes because you’re not coming home any time soon,” one debtor was told.

Such a deal! Wall Street gets to remain the head of the business operation, while way way on the opposite end of the state, Buffalo gets to be its asshole. (As for the new revival of “Upstate’s traditional manufacturing industries,” as Paterson mentioned in his plan, there certainly will be an increased need for brass knuckles and tire irons.)

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it actually does. Wow. Why are we staying with this guy? Maybe the plan is not so bad. Is it?

The only other thing Paterson had to say about Upstate was highlighting Buffalo as the starting point for a Sustainable Neighborhoods Project:

“There is no other region of the country with the affordable housing stock, the close-by schools, the natural beauty and the untouched small towns that families would cherish.”

Yes, after a long hard day on the phone chain-smoking and threatening to take people’s kids away, you too can go home to your picket fence.

Oh, and he also mentioned the Erie Canal. Gotta do that, or else it doesn’t count as a State of the State.

Help.

A rather good guest editorial from a Syracuse expat in Sunday’s Post-Standard hints that people are starting to come around to my way of thinking on Richard Florida. I’m quite sure it’s not because anyone has read my stuff, but possibly because a prolonged economic slump for everyone tends to relieve one’s thirst for snake oil. The rest of the country is finally catching up economically with Syracuse. The author mentions that many young people are returning home, although if they are, I wonder how many are really in a condition to roll up their sleeves.

It seems to me that many children are unable to leave due to the economy, but I’m not sure how many are returning. Maybe young Mr. Caliva’s message will be best received by people like young Mr. Tryt.