I spent the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks roaming around America’s other “ground zero,” otherwise known as what’s left of New Orleans. Most of the city is still abandoned, struggling businesses in the Quarter are closed and up for sale, and the Lower 9th is basically uninhabitable. No electricity, no certified potable water, and the city on a bulldozing rampage, hell bent on seizing every home and plot possible under Eminent Domain. Community organizers tell me it’s one big land grab, that the city doesn’t want the displaced to return, not if they can redevelop it for a “higher caliber” of resident.
It was really difficult not only to see the devastation on the ground, but the wreckage deep in the eyes of those who remained as they struggled to survive. By and large they possessed strength, hope and spirit for their future, but they were shell-shocked. But their love for their city, and each other, was manifest. They were good people, and they were kind.
But the trends still speak for themselves. Whether it’s Iraq, New Orleans, the World Trade Center site, or as you’ll read in this issue, a successful organic seed farm and neighboring conservation district, there is no natural or national resource beyond the reach of the land grabbers. Greed is ruling the day, and the money makers are hard at work capitalizing on as many national tragedies as they can fit into their schedule. A year after Katrina little has been rebuilt despite a reported $110 billion in Federal aid for rebuilding efforts. Five years after 9/11 Lower Manhattan is still scarred by an empty, gaping wound while politicians, developers, and bureaucrats obstruct progress, and by extension, healing and closure.
But changes are taking place, and I’m certain you see and feel them too. Disillusionment with government is at an all time high, be it Federal, State, or local, and people are looking for something more, something better.
Communities are coming together to solve their own problems. When a McMansion development threatened Mayo Underwood’s organic seed farm, she mobilized the people of Woodstock to stop it. Alderman Joe Moore rallied the Chicago City Council to pass a (short lived, but revolutionary) Big Box living wage ordinance. The Illinois Green Party, who could only manage to scrape together 5,000 petition signatures for the 2004 election, had no trouble gathering 40,000 this year to be able to run for Governor. And Chicago was featured in not one but two powerful documentary series about sustainability, Design e2: The Economics of Being Environmentally Conscious, and Edens: Lost & Found. This in a city that only 15 years ago had over a thousand Brownfield sites. It all translates to change.
There’s somethin’ happenin’ here, and what it is is pretty clear. Tragedy and adversity may cause some to regress, but many of us find that the challenges push us to our best, most creative, most ingenious, and most compassionate.
Keep it up, Chicago.
— Charles Shaw