The DePOT Project: Race, the Environment, and Deindustrialization
I am involved in a large, transnational research project, “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (or DePOT) (https://deindustrialization.org/). DePOT is a partnership of some 35 organizations across the U.S., Canada, and Europe with the goal of understanding deindustrialization in comparative perspective, from causes through responses, effects, and legacies. The research is organized into six initiatives. For this NCPH working group, I am bringing my experience and research with two of these: “Race, Populism, and the Left,” and “Deindustrialization and the Environment.” The “Race” initiative examines the ways in which race, immigration, and sectarianism are entangled with class resentments heightened by deindustrialization. It foregrounds the experiences and voices of communities of color. The “Environment” initiative examines the toxic legacies of deindustrialization, how sites transition from “brownfields” to “green,” and how working-class communities continue to seek environmental justice, as well as the ways in which the political divisions affecting communities addressing deindustrialization are often framed as “jobs” versus “the environment.” There is plenty to unpack in each initiative (and there is a lot of overlap among all six), carried across many communities in many nations.
One of my projects uses oral history, as well as textual sources, to understand the experiences and legacies of deindustrialization among Puerto Ricans in Lorain and the Mahoning Valley in Ohio. In both areas, steel companies recruited Puerto Ricans to work there starting in the 1940s. In Lorain and places like Youngstown, Puerto Rican men found good secure, well-paying jobs for better part of three decades. They expanded to work in the automobile industry as well. Then, these jobs declined and disappeared as factories shut down. While some returned to the island, many stayed and have continued to create a visible Puerto Rican culture in the cities. The place of Puerto Ricans and Hispanics more generally in the scholarship of deindustrialization is sparse but changing. My project, and the larger aim of the DePOT initiative on race is to challenge the dominant historiography of deindustrialization with its focus on white male workers.
There are other layers to the story as well. The reach of industrial capitalism pulled labor from around the world to Ohio in the early part of the twentieth century. The process continued in the 1940s with Puerto Ricans in Lorain and the Mahoning Valley. This involved an added layer of colonialism, given the island’s history and relationship with the United States. Puerto Ricans are also experiencing a duality regarding the history of industrialization and deindustrialization. The United States invested heavily in promoting industrial development in the island through Operation Bootstrap. This “boom” period for Puerto Rico lasted until 1980s. After this, deindustrialization accelerated as the United States removed industrial incentives from Puerto Rico under Section 936 of the federal tax code. The island fell into indebtedness since the early 2000s. So, Puerto Ricans in Ohio faced the crisis of deindustrialization at the same time those in the island did. I want to understand not only the individual experiences and legacies, but also the larger Puerto Rican experience. How are these cities and their public facing narratives addressing the long arc of industrial and deindustrialization, and what role do Puerto Ricans play in this narrative? How does the inclusion of Puerto Ricans and the colonial past change the dominant narrative of industrialization and deindustrialization? How are Puerto Ricans (and by extension other minority groups in other postindustrial areas) navigating the postindustrial world in their communities?
For the environmental initiative, I am looking at a “success” story. Inside the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which lies between the urban centers of Cleveland and Akron, there is a site formerly known as the Krejci Dump. This was a toxic waste disposal area for many large companies between 1948 and 1980. When the Cuyahoga Valley National Park acquired the property, supervisors discovered the site’s toxic history. Through the federal Superfund law, the National Park Service successfully sued the major companies responsible for the pollution. After two decades and $50 million, the site is now clean. I am interested in understanding the history of the site and how the NPS used the law to force the corporations to pay for cleanup. I am also interested in how the CVNP tells this environmental story. Here is an opportunity to analyze how a major federal organization devoted to public environmental history reacts to an incident that exposes the toxic ways that humans interact with their environment, how the NPS addressed that knowledge, and how the organization now interprets that history for the general public. While people and animals certainly benefit from the Krejci site being “greened,” does the site’s interpretation reveal the full picture of the industrial and deindustrialized history as it relates to the park? Are there lessons in this story for other organizations or communities that must address these issues? What role does the environment play in how communities address their industrial and postindustrial past, present, and future? As Jeffrey Stine notes in his survey of public history and the environment, there are places like the Adirondack Museum in New York and the National Museum of Australia that are centering the human interaction with the environment among different cultures and in places like parks that appear as something “wild” or “natural.”[1] The CVNP, with its centering of the Cuyahoga River (made famous by the 1969 fire), can also serve as a model for relating the history of industrialization and deindustrialization as environmental stories, looking to respond to crises of issues like pollution and climate change.
[1] Jeffrey Stine, “Public History and the Environment,” in Paula Hamilton and James B. Gardner, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Public History (New York: 2017), 190-206.
The US mass media have for decades since WW2 portrayed ‘workers’ as Archie Bunker types – perhaps a second generation, Eastern European ethnocentrist. The germ of reality there is the wave of post-WW2 immigrants from ‘behind the iron curtain’ and the social networks that welcomed them. This elides the vast majority of the working class in America which, especially in the rust belt, includes the Great Migration (escaping the southern US states) and, as you describe, the post-war Puerto Rican diaspora. It also elides the earlier waves – 19th and early 20th c. – of working class immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. The dislocation of the ‘labor force’ is of course an essential mechanism of capital, as are colonial and neocolonial transnational relationships. The Puerto Rican economy and ecology was ruined (it didn’t ‘fall’ so much as it was pushed) in the course of that extractive process. Importantly, after a century of US colonialism, it is ruined today. Similar extractive processes have degraded regional and urban ecologies in the rust belt. There are important intersections of those stories that could better illuminate both, and promote social solidarity in the process.
Thanks Kevin – I really appreciate how you connected the Puerto Rico story to the continental one. I am seeing reminders here that local, or regional stories, are also global stories – and perhaps one task we have as public historians is to remind our audiences (whoever they might be) of those connections.
I really appreciate this reminder of how interconnected so much of this is. Besides the fact that industrialization isn’t just a white male phenomenon, the connection with American colonialization is so important.
I’m particularly interested in the NPS’s efforts to acquire and clean up the Krejci Dump. I’d be curious to see a comparison of these kinds of efforts by the NPS between the 1980s and now. It’s my guess that the NPS isn’t nearly as willing (or able?) to acquire toxic land and assume the responsibility of cleaning it or pursuing legal avenues to hold industries accountable. In Pullman, the park shares ownership of the factory site with the State of Illinois, with the state owning the lion’s share of the grounds. As a result, the remediation of the soil around the Administration Building was only subject to state standards, rather than the more stringent federal standards. I would think the cost of remediating industrial sites probably has a chilling effect on the representation of American industrial history within the National Park system. But your example shows that the NPS can do more than just preserve nature, and I would love it if the NPS saw itself more often in this light.
Greg, obviously my interests lie with the “Race, Populism, and the Left” part of your project, though I think the second part also sounds fascinating. As Kevin noted on my project, the use of oral histories is a great foundational step– i wonder how much the broader project to which you are contributing is engaging more deeply with the communities affected by deindustrialization (and for that matter the communities who executed the deindustrialization project). That deeper engagement brings political challenges while also creating more community buy-in that can feel uncomfortable for us traditional academics but has enriched our project so much. I can’t wait to talk more about this during the conference and beyond!
Kevin, thank you for sharing this fascinating piece! Coincidentally, I really enjoy DePOT’s newsletter and seeing how communities, individuals, and organizations are grappling with a lot of these same issues globally. What I especially enjoy here is the reminder of the transnational/hemispheric role of US-Puerto Rican relationships in building/perpetuating industrialized landscapes. This reminds me of the new work of Latina/o Urbanist scholars, such as A K Sandoval Strausz, Johana Londono, and others about the role Latin American immigrants have played in forging transnational cities but revitalizing urban and deindustrialized spaces (often until they are popular again and ripe for gentrification or some sort of redevelopment/reindustrialization). I completely agree that one of the key threads is the residents of postindustrial communities that do not have a connection to the labor (or even viewing these residents beyond instrumentalizing all of their experiences down to laborers at X facility). I look forward to folks thoughts on this stage of deindustrialized communities!
The question of how one interprets the history of an environmental cleanup is fascinating to me. As a complement to the social, economic, and personal history that you explain compellingly, I’d love to see interpretation of the technical side of the process. I’m a fan of graphic media that helps us understand an industrial process. Two such graphics on exhibit at the Carrie Blast Furnaces helped me conceptualize what the plant was doing and how the jobs of individual workers contributed to the overall process. I’d like to see graphic interpretations of how a site cleanup works.
In addition, what happens to the output of the cleanup? Is the toxic waste or contaminated soil shipped out of state or abroad? If we export our waste to a foreign country, are we engaging in a new form of colonialism?
The story of the Krejci Dump is really fascinating, though the most shocking part to me is that the companies responsible for the environmental damage managed to simply tiptoe away from the site in the first place, leaving NPS to mobilize to sue the companies and clean the site. It’s truly horrifying to recognize when environmental tragedies are only being remediated as a result of activism, advocacy, and lawsuits; Erin Brockovich comes to mind here. I hope that important side of the story comes through in the interpretation, as many communities impacted by industry would benefit from learning about the process.
Looking forward to talking further about ways to address the toxic leavings of past industry and the impacts on the people who lived and worked there and the natural environment — painful but important stories to tell.
Ugh, this is what I get for tackling these later at night with multiple tabs open. I meant Greg.
The story of Krejci Dump and how the NPS was left as the enforcement arm of cleanup is really fascinating. It speaks to a number of issues about environmental restoration, rehabilitation, and stewardship, including the lack of industrial (i.e. corporate) responsibility in the creation of a sustainable “post.” It makes me think about the current back and forth between environmental regulators and USS, particularly the Clairton Coke Works. The company poisons the air, the water, and the ground with toxic emissions, and all that winds up happening is a slap on the wrist, a fine, and a promise to clean up that goes unfulfilled. What happens if/when Clairton closes and USS leaves behind the decommissioned plant for someone else to clean up? What will be done to support residents who lack access to clean air, water, and soil?
Additionally, it brings forward the topic of environmental racism as proximity to the most toxic sites most often reinforce racial and socioeconomic strata. What happens to communities in the wake of industrial cleanup? Are resources put back into communities, and what roles do various industrial histories play in the shaping of such resources?