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The New Shame Of The Cities
American politics is dominated by an enduring myth—that Democrats are the party of the common man; the voiceless, the powerless, the poor. That if you care about what happens to the least among us, you will cast your vote in the Democratic column.
But the reality is this: the vast majority of voiceless, powerless and poor people are concentrated in Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, and America’s other large urban centers. All of them are run by Democrats and have been for 50 to 100 years. On the Democrats’ watch, these cities have become the equivalent of holding cells for the poor and minorities. Everything that’s wrong with America’s cities that can be affected by policy, Democrats are responsible for. There are poor to be helped, but Democrats have buried them deeper in poverty and powerlessness. There are minorities who seek opportunities, but Democrats have kept them second-class citizens. Democrats have been the problem rather than the solution.
In 1904, Lincoln Steffens, a major figure in the group of journalists Teddy Roosevelt called “muckrakers,” published a groundbreaking book calledShame of the Cities. In it he examined the inner workings of America’s great urban centers and found them swarming with graft and corruption. In his searing portraits of these cities, Steffens documented the inner workings of political machines across the country which were then imitating the apparatus built a few decades earlier by Tammany Hall’s notorious Boss Tweed, first of this new breed of crooked backroom Democratic princes of the city. Steffens showed how these machines ran over and flattened the lives of ordinary working people. But even more than corruption itself, Steffens was incensed by the complicity of intellectuals and opinion makers—people who knew that the political machines mangled democracy but had nonetheless allowed them to make America’s cities cesspools of poverty and despair.
If Lincoln Steffens was alive today, he would feel even greater outrage at the current disastrous state of America’s cities, as documented by John Perrazo in The New Shame of the Cities. Steffens would see in Perrazo’s portraits of the present-day machines of the Democrat Party, which have ruled America’s cities for a generation, today’s equivalent of Tammany Hall. He would see their governance not simply as an expression of failed policies, but as a massive human rights violation that has delivered the poor and minorities into a state of hopelessness and made them a permanent underclass. And, as he did in his own time, Steffens would feel contempt for today’s political class that has stood by and watched this urban tragedy unfold and bought into the Democrats’ myth that they are actually protectors of the poor.
By John Perazzo, Aug. 15, 2014, Frontpagemag.com
American politics is dominated by an enduring myth—that Democrats are the party of the common man; the voiceless, the powerless, the poor. That if you care about what happens to the least among us, you will cast your vote in the Democratic column.
But the reality is this: the vast majority of voiceless, powerless and poor people are concentrated in Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, and America’s other large urban centers. All of them are run by Democrats and have been for 50 to 100 years. On the Democrats’ watch, these cities have become the equivalent of holding cells for the poor and minorities. Everything that’s wrong with America’s cities that can be affected by policy, Democrats are responsible for. There are poor to be helped, but Democrats have buried them deeper in poverty and powerlessness. There are minorities who seek opportunities, but Democrats have kept them second-class citizens. Democrats have been the problem rather than the solution.
In 1904, Lincoln Steffens, a major figure in the group of journalists Teddy Roosevelt called “muckrakers,” published a groundbreaking book calledShame of the Cities. In it he examined the inner workings of America’s great urban centers and found them swarming with graft and corruption. In his searing portraits of these cities, Steffens documented the inner workings of political machines across the country which were then imitating the apparatus built a few decades earlier by Tammany Hall’s notorious Boss Tweed, first of this new breed of crooked backroom Democratic princes of the city. Steffens showed how these machines ran over and flattened the lives of ordinary working people. But even more than corruption itself, Steffens was incensed by the complicity of intellectuals and opinion makers—people who knew that the political machines mangled democracy but had nonetheless allowed them to make America’s cities cesspools of poverty and despair.
If Lincoln Steffens was alive today, he would feel even greater outrage at the current disastrous state of America’s cities, as documented by John Perrazo in The New Shame of the Cities. Steffens would see in Perrazo’s portraits of the present-day machines of the Democrat Party, which have ruled America’s cities for a generation, today’s equivalent of Tammany Hall. He would see their governance not simply as an expression of failed policies, but as a massive human rights violation that has delivered the poor and minorities into a state of hopelessness and made them a permanent underclass. And, as he did in his own time, Steffens would feel contempt for today’s political class that has stood by and watched this urban tragedy unfold and bought into the Democrats’ myth that they are actually protectors of the poor.
Read the full story: www.frontpagemag.com
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