Rhode Island: The Michigan of New England

BOULDER, Colorado -- While Michigan is often cited (including in this blog) as being on the leading edge of America's economic downturn, many people would be surprised to learn that Rhode Island also has one of the country's highest unemployment rates, which hit a whopping 9.3% in November. This ranked second behind Michigan's figure of 9.6%, and the two states have seesawed back and forth for the top spot over the last few months.

There are many reasons for this terrible situation - the collapse of manufacturing, poor job retraining, and low levels of education. Rhode Island ranks well behind every other New England state except Maine in terms of the percentage of the workforce with a college education - Massachusetts and Connecticut rank first and sixth, respectively, nationwide, while Rhode Island sits in 19th place. The Washington Post recently posted this video about the state's economic plight, and the New York Times ran this piece on the subject back in October.



Rhode Island is a very provincial place, and residents are struggling to cope with economic transition. Mason Briggs is reluctant to take a job in Oxford, Massachusetts, a town a mere 40 miles away from Pawtucket. His wife catalogs all the towns she has worked in, but they are all only a few miles apart. I am not blaming these people for their hardships, but there are reasons why the state's economic malaise has been confined within its short borders. I am not callously suggesting that they pick up stakes and move, but some measure of economic relief is just a short communte down I-95.

I have always believed that reviving America's manufacturing base will be a critical component of restoring the country's economic competitiveness and fixing the imbalances and inequalities that currently exist. But it is important not to get too nostalgic about the post-war golden age of the American industrial worker that so many pine for. As Itchy mentions about battery manufacturing, many of these jobs and industries are dirty and unpleasant, and few of us would like a factory like this in our backyard. Manufacturing may have given every American family an icebox and a wireless, but it also gave us the Love Canal.

These industries also had an impact on education. In places like Michigan, and to a lesser extent Rhode Island, the existence of high-paying, low-skill manufacturing jobs actually created huge disincentives for people to pursue an education, when they felt confident that as soon as they graduated high school, they would be able to get lifetime employment at the local plant. As a result, Michigan languishes in 36th place when it comes to educational attainment, when its industries should be a source of innovation and research.

To combat this problem, some communities have adopted innovative plans. Last year the city of Kalamazoo introduced a plan they called "The Kalamazoo Promise," which established a scholarship fund that would pay full tuition to any Michigan state college for any student that graduated from the school district. The program has not only increased school enrollment, but it has boosted property values, and cities across the country are hoping to imitate it.

Of course, there is one growth industry in Rhode Island: incarceration. The immigration detention center in Central Falls has been doing booming business, especially since Rhode Island became the only state to mandate that all state and local law enforcement agencies enforce federal immigration law. This is a story that has been repeated across the country from Flint, Michigan to Susanville, California, when laid-off workers move from the assembly line to the corrections academy. Let's all hope that the next generation of workers is made up of more engineers than prison guards.

Pets or Meat: Squirrels to Become Staple of American Diet

BOULDER, Colorado -- Did you know that squirrel can be a delicious and nutritious meal? No, this is not a message from the Arkansas Chamber of Commerce, but rather from the people of England, who are gobbling up the rodents in everything from stews to Cornish pasties.

Annoyed at the infestation of their country by the American gray squirrel (an invasive species), which is squeezing out their beloved native red squirrels, the Brits have decided to kill and eat the interlopers. And as part of their effort to convince you that the United States is just weeks away from complete collapse into an Omega Man-style dystopian future (or perhaps another Charlton Heston film is a more appropriate analogy - Planet of the Apes? Soylent Green?), the New York Times wants to tell you all about this absurd new cuisine. But the reporter concludes:

One might think that because of easy availability, squirrel would be the perfect meal-stretcher for these economically challenged times, but it takes a lot of work to get the meat off even the plumpest squirrel.

Squirrel is not that hard to skin and gut, actually. As the article points out, it is important not to eat the brains, as some people down in Appalachia have contracted ailments similar to mad cow disease from them. Today my friend Tyler sent me these helpful instructions from a Russian book about how to gut a rabbit, but this method could be easily applied to squirrels or other small woodland creatures (the original is posted here):

[A method for disemboweling the carcasses of wild rabbits

1. Firmly wrap your hands around the carcass in the area of the ribcage.

2. Strongly squeeze the carcass in the direction of the stomach, lift it above your head, and with one sharp, strong motion, similar to swinging an ax, swing it downward, bringing your hands between your legs.]

As an additional step, make sure no one is standing behind you when you fling the rabbit's innards out of its anus. As Michael Moore pointed out in his film Roger & Me, rabbits are often the first victims of a recession, as they are one of the few animals that American culture finds acceptable as both pets and meat. But if you lost all of your money in a pyramid scheme, and you are forced to rely on in-home animal husbandry for both your income and your sustenance, make sure you have the proper facilities to legally slaughter, dress, and butcher your furry friends.



Finally, I recently discovered a follow-up documentary that Moore made three years after Roger & Me, which includes interviews with many Flint residents from the first film, including the rabbit lady, Rhonda Britton. The title of the film is, fittingly, Pets or Meat, and you can watch it here on Youtube.

Beleaguered Workers Turn to Sit-Down Strikes

BOULDER, Colorado -- The laid-off employees of the Republic Doors and Windows factory in Chicago's North End are refusing to leave the factory. The company laid off 250 workers, and the former employees are claiming that Republic failed to properly notify them of the impending layoffs, the New York Times reported Monday. The workers have occupied the building since Friday, and they have no intention of leaving any time soon.

As the Times noted, the sit-in is vaguely reminiscent of the strikes in Michigan in the 1930's that led to the creation of the United Auto Workers union. One of the most important of these was the strike at the General Motors Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint in 1936-37, when workers occupied the plant for 44 days before management caved to their demands. Here's an article from the Detroit News chronicling those events, which were also mentioned in Michael Moore's documentary Roger & Me:



Close to 1,000 workers were holed up in Plant No. 1, surrounded by 4,000 National Guardsmen, and there were a number of violent clashes during the long siege; the action was part of a nationwide strike at GM plants that involved 135,000 workers in 35 plants in 14 states. That's a far cry from these 250 window assemblers, but in these tough times, someone has got to stand up (or sit down) to save their jobs.

The Republic employees are members of Local 1110 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, or UE - check out their website to see what you can do to help these workers.

Another party implicated in these layoffs is Bank of America, which is well on its way to becoming exactly that - the only bank in America. Republic claims it had to cut vacation and severance pay because BoA had revoked their line of credit; this came not long after the bank had received billions in taxpayer dollars to restore its ability to lend money to customers.

New England residents learned not to trust Bank of America years ago. In 2004, after acquiring FleetBoston bank, BoA laid off more than 1,000 workers in Massachusetts after making repeated promises that they would maintain Fleet's current levels of employment as a condition of the merger. I don't know how implicated they are in this Republic deal, but basically, they can go to hell, and I will never, ever bank with them.