Hollowed-Out and Forgotten: Hamilton, Ohio
By Tyler Bridge
Today the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life will host a Dialogue entitled "Left Behind: Working Class Families and Communities." Tyler Bridge, a Georgetown senior studying government and German, offers a personal perspective on how his hometown struggles to find dignity of work and to preserve the rights of workers put forth in Catholic social teaching.
Hamilton, Ohio was once a city hailed as “the greatest manufacturing capital of the world.” From the great Mosler safes, which today secure the Constitution, to the finest paper on which presidents wrote their inaugural addresses, we made it all. It was a city filled with buzzing factories and prideful people who had come from the coal mines of Kentucky in search of work. In reality, these Kentucky coal miners were my ancestors, these paper-millers were my grandparents and uncles, and after 164 years of tradition, everything changed. Any visitor to Hamilton today probably wouldn’t call it any sort of great city. The sidewalks are crumbling, and heroine needles line the way to a giant hollowed-out factory on B Street. Around 2010 the great paper giants of the city found themselves at a crisis point—all of the plants would be closed. It wasn’t just that a factory had closed; people like my uncles lost their livelihoods as well as their jobs. But far worse, they lost their dignity. Holding close 164 years of pride in their product, they gathered on June 27, 2014, with thousands of former workers on the banks of the Great Miami River to watch as their home was blown apart by explosives in less than ten seconds.
Hamilton, Ohio is just once example of the thousands of cities across America’s Rust Belt that have suffered over the latter half of the twentieth century from a combination of globalization, mechanization, and economic efficiency. The pictures are disturbing, but unlike the average Georgetown student, residents of Hamilton drive past these images and confront them every day. They feel largely forgotten, worthless, and they believe that nothing can get better and that no one really cares.
Shortly after both paper mills closed, I sat down at my grandmother’s kitchen table and wrote a letter to the mayor of Hamilton asking what I could possibly do to help. What resulted was an internship in the City of Hamilton’s Department of Economic Development. The question we all asked ourselves was, “How do we show people that things can change, and more importantly, how can we change it?” The answer rested in a two-part process: first, accepting that the era of paper in Hamilton was over, and secondly in pulling ourselves up collectively by the bootstraps, by fostering new, innovative partnerships for redevelopment.
Robert Kennedy once said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other, these ripple build to form a current that can wipe down even the strongest form of oppression and resistance.” Our strategy, at least how we saw it, was to engage everyday citizens, individual companies and banks, as well as individual government organizations, and bring them together in the form of powerful public-private-partnerships, whereby individual citizens could affect meaningful change together. In accepting that we could no longer make paper, new partnerships formed to attract advanced manufacturing to the city, to support the complete overhaul of the downtown business district and surrounding neighborhoods, as well as others to care collectively for the city’s ailing parks.
My grandmother still lives about three blocks from the massive, hollowed-out factory. Surrounding neighborhoods are filled with people sitting on their front porches as their children run the neighborhood (around the needles) wearing torn shirts with stains on them that they’ll probably wear to school tomorrow. The blown-apart factory sits like a ghost in the background. It’s a picture of an America that isn’t always talked about, maybe even ignored. Amidst conversations of “white privilege” so often brought forward at Georgetown, this is just one snapshot into the thousands of cities just like it across the Rust Belt. It’s a picture of what some call “white trash.”
Though Hamilton, Ohio is just one example, strategies for redevelopment that empower ordinary citizens through innovative partnership are working. Start-ups are starting to populate city space, a new micro-brewery has arrived, and the city has attracted various companies to relocate downtown. Manufacturing, too, has picked up, and workers in Hamilton today make smart shock absorbers for Tesla’s electric car models. Tax receipts are up, and the city is no longer reeling from budgetary insolvency. Behind it all, as Robert Kennedy explained, are tiny ripples stemming from mere individuals that have slowly built a current; a current for a Rust Belt revival in Hamilton, Ohio.
related | We Are Hamilton: See these videos (also created by partnership) for yourself!
Tyler Bridge (C'17) is an undergraduate studying government and German at Georgetown.