Used to be a beautiful place, once in a time, then it just wasn’t.” When I ask him about the few abandoned buildings that scar his block, he stops and thinks, and then says: “Gary just went down. They have robot cranes, so they don’t need crane men like me. “He ain’t going to bring the jobs back – the factories mostly run themselves now. I worked 34 years as a union crane man.”ĭespite not following politics, he did vote for Clinton, because “I am a Democrat.” When I ask him about Trump’s promise to bring back factory jobs, he looks at me like I am crazy. “When the house next door burned down, I cleaned it up and made it into a garden.”Īlphonso was born in Gary, quit school in 11th grade, and walked straight into the steel mill. He points to a large vegetable garden next to his home, one of only a handful of empty plots on an otherwise filled block. I spent my life working, and then I retired.” “I don’t deal much in politics or listen to them much. They have robot cranes, so they don’t need crane men like me.’ Photograph: Chris ArnadeĪlphonso Washington, 72, makes it clear he came to his views himself, not from politicians. More than 84% of Gary is African American, and although Gary has experienced more decline than most places, a strong majority voted for Hillary Clinton.Īlphonso Washington: ‘The factories mostly run themselves now. Those towns voted heavily for Donald Trump for president, but Gary is different. Gary’s decline from a peak in the 1960s has brought a destruction and despair that I have seen in many de-industrialized towns across the US. We used to be the drug capital of the US, but for that you need money, and there aren’t jobs or things to steal here.” He explains before leaving: “We used to be the murder capital of the US, but there is hardly anybody left to kill. I agree, not out of politeness but because it is my fourth day in Gary and I have seen the same. He tells me unprompted not to be worried about my safety, that the residents of Gary get a bad rap but that they are hard-working, polite and smart, despite what the town might look like. He grew up in Gary, left for the military and then stayed away for work but is now back to care for his mother. We used to be the murder capital of the US, but there is hardly anybody left to kill As I photograph the rubble of a collapsed building, I am entirely alone until a Drug Enforcement Administration agent rolls up in a huge SUV. Walking the emptier parts, I see only a few solitary signs of life: the rush of a passing police car, a grandmother walking her grandchild to a corner store. Although Gary is only 40 miles from Chicago, it has the feel of an isolated town.
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