City on the Edge

Michael Streissguth

Description

Why do people stay in a struggling city? City on the Edge explores this question through the lives of five people in Syracuse, New York, a quintessential rust-belt metropolis. Once a booming industrial center with a dynamic civic life and prominence on the world stage, Syracuse has endured decades of crime, drugs, economic depression, absent-minded political leadership, and population decline. Michael Streissguth spent more than three years interviewing a young survivor of the streets, a refugee from Cuba, an urban farmer, a community activist, and a city elder, who shared their stories as they found ways to make life work against sometimes formidable odds. He also contextualizes their extended commentary and storytelling with secondary characters and various episodes, such as a tragic Father's Day riot and the trial that followed. The result is an eye-opening look at life in America in the twenty-first century, where people strive to turn their ideas, frustrations, and disadvantages into new hope for themselves and the city where they live.
Acknowledgments

Introduction: City of Moments

1. A Tragic Father's Day

2. Reimagining a City

3. Coming to Syracuse

4. Refuge in the City

5. No Place More Vital

6. Barriers Everywhere

7. Welcome to America

8. Proceed to Go

9. Temptation

10. Crashing

11. A Glittering Night

12. The Trial

13. Burning Down

14. Redemption

15. At Home

Epilogue: Still on the Edge

Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Regional
• History of the Americas
• Region
• Local history
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438479897
• Langue: English

Extrait

CITY ON THE EDGE
CITY
ON THE
EDGE
HARD CHOICES IN THE AMERICAN RUST BELT
MICHAEL STREISSGUTH
Cover: The State Tower building in Syracuse.
Photograph © 2020 Jordan Harmon
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 Michael Streissguth
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Streissguth, Michael, 1966– author.
Title: City on the edge : hard choices in the American rust belt / Michael Streissguth.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2020. | Series: Excelsior editions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019037042 | ISBN 9781438479903 (paperback) | ISBN 9781438479897 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Syracuse (N.Y.)—History. | Syracuse (N.Y.)—Biography. | Syracuse (N.Y.)—Social conditions. | Syracuse (N.Y.)—Economic conditions. | Deindustrialization—New York—Syracuse. | Deindustrialization—Lake States—Case studies.
Classification: LCC F129.S8 S733 2020 | DDC 974.7/66—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019037042
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: City of Moments
1 A Tragic Father’s Day
2 Reimagining a City
3 Coming to Syracuse
4 Refuge in the City
5 No Place More Vital
6 Barriers Everywhere
7 Welcome to America
8 Proceed to Go
9 Temptation
10 Crashing
11 A Glittering Night
12 The Trial
13 Burning Down
14 Redemption
15 At Home
Epilogue: Still on the Edge
Selected Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
More than 20 years ago, my wife and I came to Syracuse with our two-year-old daughter and another daughter six weeks away from delivery. A growing family will help you get to know a community and, sure enough, we met neighbors who were also parents and they introduced us to others around the city. Soon, there were church and nursery school and then elementary school to expand our social circles. The people in our neighborhood, those beguiling West Siders, became our Syracuse.
But even after two decades I really didn’t know the half of it. I understood Syracuse community life was great and its mild summers couldn’t be beat, and I accepted the irksome things, like unfocused economic development and the ninja motorcyclists who kicked up turf in our city parks. And I still often felt more like a Washingtonian than a Syracusan, resisting the unrelenting snows and never really understanding the allure of salt potatoes. So I wrote this book as a kind of submission to the city, accepting finally that Syracuse blood flowed in my veins.
This deep dive into my adopted hometown revealed the Syracuse Five: Stefon Greene, Elise Baker, Jessi Lyons, Justo Triana, and Neil Murphy. Three years later, I thank them for helping me to better understand how life courses through a city when it can seem to a cynic a static thing. They never shied away from hard questions and gave generously of their time. Much of that time was spent in the city’s coffee shops, the real idea incubators in Syracuse, so thanks to Café Kubal, The Broadway Café, and Salt City Coffee.
Early drafts of this book were burdened by my blustery criticism of careless state policies and leadership, local indecision about the future of the I-81 highway, and developers who suck up tax breaks mostly for hotels that do little for economic development. There may still be a book to be written about those plagues, but my subjects didn’t really care about them. Instead, they focused on what they—not political leaders—could do as individuals to build a bridge to the future. That was the yellow signal flag they raised in Syracuse, and I feel fortunate to have finally seen it.
My deep gratitude also goes to other interviewees: Debra Mims, Maurice Hoston, Rob Hoston, Trevor Russell, Brandon Baker, and Jasenko Mondom.
So many others have shown me their Syracuse and influenced my thinking about the city. At the top of the list are Edward and Carolyn Brown, with whom my wife, Leslie, and I have spent countless hours discussing urban life and our place in it. And there’s Sean Kirst, the city’s foremost writer and another coffee partner, whose work at the (Syracuse) Post-Standard and the Buffalo News , and in numerous books, has helped readers better understand what it means to live in New York’s upstate cities, bearing witness to the nobility of this region.
Le Moyne College, my employer for as long as I’ve lived here, has been another pathway to the city. Earlier in the decade, President Linda Le-Mura, then provost, asked me to be a dean for one year, which pushed me to many forums where the school’s and the city’s interests intersected, and I’ve joyfully tracked many former students who have chosen to live and work here. Indeed, Le Moyne—in the shadow of Syracuse University—is a driver in these parts. Thanks also to the college’s Research and Development Committee, which approved the sabbatical that allowed me to complete this book.
I’m particularly indebted to Amanda Lanne-Camilli, Jenn Bennett-Genthner, and James Harbeck at SUNY Press, and Dr. Micki Pulleyking, who invited me to the 2018 Public Affairs Conference at Missouri State University, where I met colleagues who were essential to the life of this book.
Many thanks to my neighbors throughout the Strath more neighborhood. And to Maureen and Ozzie Mocete, Mary Jo and Jim Spano, J. B., Joe Kelly who continued to ask, Fernando Diz who championed “edge” over “moments,” Chris and Gretchen Kinnell, Adam Sudmann of My Lucky Tummy, Peter Willner, Fr. Fred Mannara, Sarah and Masih Robin, Jamie Cunningham, Angela Locke and Astrid Choromanska of the West Side Learning Center, Mike Woods, Jay Subedi, Rai Thetika, Naureen Greene, Mike Melara of Catholic Charities of Onondaga County, Sarah Kozma at the Onondaga Historical Association, Steven Featherstone, Wayne Stevens, Dan Roche, Dave Smetters, Phil Novak, Martin Goettsch, Jordan Harmon, Julie Grossman, Bryan Cole, Fr. David McCallum, Jim Hannan, James Joseph, Fr. Joe Marina, Ann Ryan, Kate Costello-Sullivan, Shawn Ward, Farha Ternikar, Josefa Alvarez, Melissa Short, Jeanne Darby, and David Lloyd.
And my eternal thanks to the home team: Leslie, Emily, Cate, and Will.
INTRODUCTION

CITY OF MOMENTS
The gods of the urban epoch grant an American city at least one golden moment, a time when it comes into the light and finally embodies its destiny. Think Boston in the pre–Revolutionary War period, Chicago at the dawn of the twentieth century, and Memphis at the mid-twentieth-century mark, when it lubricated the Mid-South economy and exported blues and rock and roll music to the world. A city in the moment has distilled its gifts—geographic location, natural resources, human intelligence, labor—and joined networks that connect to the nation and beyond, economically and culturally. Without question, “in the moment” is the place to be.
A few cities may have more than one moment. New York City exploded in economic and artistic influence in the twentieth century thanks in part to the mass of humanity from Europe that had arrived in its harbor, and it could do so again by addressing hyper-gentrification and global warming’s rising waters. In North Carolina, the city of Charlotte lost its textile-fueled moment starting forty years ago, but today it’s a national economic and transportation hub with pro sports and multiple colleges and universities, a city in a second moment—though not without flaws—that attracts new residents who can chase their dreams.
Syracuse, New York’s moment lasted for more than half a century, 1900 to 1960, an era of incredible economic expansion and population growth that delivered the “Made in Syracuse” tag to almost every home and business in America. Buoyed mostly by an ever-blooming employment market, Pax Siracusa seemed endless. It even communicated a certain mystique, which some current residents might find humorous, accustomed as they are to rutted streets and the untamed brambles that now line the main arteries into town.
But, truthfully, the popular imagination used to see Syracuse in gunmetal glory—reliable, barrel-chested, and tempered by the harsh snows that sweep down from the Great Lakes every winter. Like Duluth, Akron, or Erie, it ranked in the second tier of industrial cities, dwarfed by Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago. But the city projected an everyman spirit, a place where good souls lived. It was home to the historic Erie Canal, a proud immigrant tradition, and blue-collar running backs Ernie Davis and Jim Brown of the 1950s and 1960s racing down the field in a streak of orange, the color of Syracuse University. In the movies, the best friends came from Syracuse, and if the plot hinged on a traveling vaudeville show, chances are the troupe had just finished a good run in that most American of middle-Amer