Two Students Chatting: A Conversation on the Working Class and Catholic Social Thought
By Max Rosner
Last week, Tyler Bridge wrote a reflection on his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio and the dignity of work. We decided to do a follow-up piece to further explore the themes of Catholic Social Thought (CST)—most notably the principle of subsidiarity, the call to community and participation, and care for God’s creation—in regards to the revitalization of this Rust Belt town. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation.
The principal of subsidiarity states, “Matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority.” How does this fit in with the revitalization of Hamilton?
Starting in 2010, I got to work in local government and see what you can actually do when local government starts to do something. The problem in Hamilton was that there was a local government that struggled to do anything, a local government that had been taken over by the state. It couldn't balance the books, it had companies that were leaving, there were no young people working in government. You have all of these Rust Belt cities with lifeless local governments. How do you get government working again? In Hamilton, we created this little fellowship program that got young people from across the country to work for the government, and they gave them free housing.
Another principal of CST is the call to family, community, and participation. It’s nice to talk about the importance of civil society, but when it comes down to it, how can Hamilton use civil society and community participation to move forward?
The principal of subsidiarity is incredible because you can go even smaller than local government. It’s about the people within that community. Hamilton tells people that if you have a great idea, come to us. We’ll help you out. We’ve created a business incubator. It made calls across the community to find young people or anybody who is or wants to be an entrepreneur, and they’ll bring them to the center, and provide help, resources, and mentorship. Artistic groups are flocking to the city, and they are painting murals and decorating old fire hydrants across downtown. You have this experiment where the city is becoming a laboratory. The city let residents take the German Village and start a flea market. It’s the most successful flea market Hamilton has ever had, and it's right downtown. You have a microbrewery because there were a few people who said, “Hey, we want to make beer!” The city lets them make beer in the old city hall. The mayor even holds open hours at the Waffle House. All of these examples highlight the keystone of partnership.
I want to add something—there’s a paradox in our country. People are so consumed with national elections, but the most important ones are those local races. All of my local races had candidates running unopposed.
Same for my local races. You talked about steel, electricity, and paper mills—all heavy industries. A lot of these closed industries significantly dampened the rights of workers. How do you balance the rights of industrial workers with another principal of CST, care for God’s creation?
This is an interesting fact. Hamilton has the best drinking water in the world due to the aquifer. We won this competition for three years in a row. Yet, when we made paper, it poisoned our waters. Now, we are taking the same natural resource used previously for paper and asking what else we can do with it. The business incubator is investing in sustainable hydroelectric businesses. When you transition away from heavy industry, the worst thing that we’ve done is not be able to preserve that legacy. We’ve just blown up the smoke stacks. We’ve blown up these toxic buildings. There’s no place you can go that marks this history. We are not honoring the legacy of these people at all.
So how do you envision honoring their legacy?
I got to spend a lot of time in Germany. There is an entire region in Germany that was all coal mining. There’s not a single mine open anymore. Yet, they still have this industry culture. Museums are all over, but that’s just one thing. It's interesting that they have a lot of these workers from the old guard being paired up with new technologies and young people. If you can take people with prior knowledge and unique expertise that these young people have, pairing them up is the key to success. They have knowledge that needs to be passed down. Partnership should be the priority.
Max Rosner (C'18) is an undergraduate studying government and theology at Georgetown. Tyler Bridge (C'17) is an undergraduate studying government and German at Georgetown.