Free trade came and crushed the soul of our cities

The city I grew up in and worked in is gone.

Our city newspaper had a good article about the demise of homes in Cleveland. At the same time an editor, told about the many high rise office buildings that are empty or half empty downtown in the heart of the city. The economic diseases of free trade has hit us hard.

An article by Robert L. Smith and Rich Exner starts out by telling us how Philadelphia has a three acre wetland where birds nest, streams casade and stormwater is naturally filtered into creeks that feed the city's drinking system. It is located where a once-empty section of Philadelphia existed. Terry Schwartz, a local Cleveland urban planner hopes Cleveland might do the same. Cleveland now has acres and acres or empty urban space.

Housing vacancy in Cleveland surged by 65 percent and the result is ghostly. Nearly 20 percent of Cleveland's housing units have no one living in them. The percentage would be much higher but many homes have been demolished in the last decade. Many more were torn down years before that.

It is not uncommon to see homes that stand out like a farmhouse in a once densely populated neighborhood.

When I commuted to John Carroll University during the 1950s, from the west side, it was was impossible to drive to Carroll in any reasonable time by going through the middle of the city. The main avenues were full of busy activity and commerce. Now, the fastest way to get to Carroll is to go through the middle of the city's main streets even though there are more highways than ever.

Now this commerce and activity is gone. There are however, 230 urban farms. Urban planners envision neighborhoods of energy-efficient homes with parks and urban gardens.....or, maybe, a big beautiful pond. No one talks about re-creating what we had - a vibrant local economy. No one talks about restoring our former local value added economies. In fact, they just ignore how free trade came and stole our soul.

There is plenty to abstract from the flourishing economies we once enjoyed. We need to sort out what was good and what was bad but as a whole it supported twice the population we have today.

The newspaper story has a map and graph of the worst areas in our times. It hit home, because I spent many years doing business in these neighborhoods. In the 1960s, I served the last of the larger family super markets and could travel in any neighborhood with little fear of anything happening to me. There were hundreds of family food stores and super markets. They knitted neighborhoods together. Close by were factories full of workers and churches. Now more than 50 churches have been closed and all the family super markets gone. The soul of our city has been stolen by free trade.

It was not easy back then but no one expected things to get that much worst. In the 1960s, about seven grocery owners and workers were killed do to robberies. In the 1990s, with the number of family supermarkets reduced by about 90 percent, a few Arab American stores took over. They apparently, were the only ones willing to risk their lives in neighborhoods that were now war zones. In the 1990s, about twenty Arab American small store owners lost their lives during a robbery. This happened even though these stores represented just a small percentage of what once existed in these neighborhoods. This happened while President Clinton was proclaiming prosperity after sending factories to Mexico and then sending billions of dollars to bail them out. The first stimulus package went to Mexico, a foreign nation, during the time when many small grocery store owners in the inner city were being killed being robbed.

I also noted in one of the maps, and area where a company I was with came in and restored a small factory. We were hoping to be a part of revitalizing the area. We never knew how much worst things would get. Our company was put out of business by unfair competition. The corner tavern where we ate lunch almost every day closed a few years after we left. The owner was shot dead during a robbery.

In the late 1960s, we drove through the Hough riots in an open convertible. The vice president of our company was standing up on the rider side trying to stop the violence and burning. We tried everything we could to save the situation but failed. Later I saw how many of the former supermarkets I served burn down never to open again. We thought this was horrible but never expected things to get even worst when free tade came and knocked out factories and stores. Instead of talking about how many good things we could salvage from these times, the talk about urban gardens instead in the middle of a wasteland.

In my work history, I also worked downtown for many years. Right after high school, I worked at the largest advertising art studio in our city and perhaps in our whole state. There were several large advertising agencies in areas that now have empty office buildings. When taking a proof to one of these agencies just about eight blocks away, I usually tried to jump the shuttle bus to get there fast. However, many times, it was faster just walking since the street traffic of people, buses etc. was too busy for the shuttle bus to get anywhere. The immense activity was overpowering at times.

Later, I worked out of a office right in the heart of downtown where an editor now writes about all the half empty office buildings. I worked at the statewide office of Air France. In the surrounding two blocks, there were numberous airline offices and we had an airline community in downtown Cleveland. After many years of existence, all these airline offices closed down.

During a Christmas vacation, I worked a Higbee Department Store on the square. There were several large department stores downtown. They are now gone and the Higbee building is now going to house a gambling casino.

For many years when I was in the computer industry, I called on many major corporations downtown with many being international headquarters of companies that were in existence for many years. Free trade came and knocked them out in a relatively short time.
I also had a regional office for a computer manufacturer right on the square where we demo the latest computer equipment. Offices like that faded away too. When hundreds of computer companies and manufacturers closed down due to free trade, everyone tends to forget that there were about 50,000 workers in the Cleveland area that sold and supported major and small computer systems.
It was not the rust belt as it is branded in the news media. Cleveland was a center of high technology and traveling to Silicon Valley on a regular basis , everyone in the industry was looking at Cleveland as a core of high technology innovations. I was part of several start ups and help launch the cat scan industry and computerization of other industries.

Free trade came and stole it away.

Now they talk about urban gardens and ponds taking the place of all this industry, business and commerce we once enjoyed.

I live in two different worlds now. The news media tells about it once an awhile but never make a connection to what was and what could be if we just wrote about the real world instead of make believe.

The city spent millions on the Euclid Avenue Corridor from downtown Cleveland to the Cleveland Clinic. The street itself looks good even though most of the businesses are gone but behind the street is a wasteland. And there are only a few people visible on the streets. One letter writer suggested the city should put up cardboard images of people to make it look like something is happening.

Free trade came and stole it all away. And the Silicon Valley was never the same.

John Carroll magazine | 1955