Saturday, October 17, 2009

New Art, Dead Industry

Artists behind folding tables, their art on top of the tables, in the lot across an all-decked out Morgan Industrial Center. I love walking around this little nook of a Jersey City neighborhood, once known as the Jersey City Warehouse District. The factories and warehouses and industries here, built the United States into a country that could free Europe. Then of course, Ronald Reagan took our nation’s wealth, consolidated into bulk of into one percent of the population, and allowed these industries to move over-seas, removing the blue collar mostly union worker from the middle class. We don’t make things in America any more. The factories and warehouses are closed, some are land marked, some are being turned into luxury apartment buildings, and some are art gallery spaces like Morgan, until they become condo-ized I guess. The art reminds me of a daisy springing up in a sidewalk crack, a tiny sign of hope. The real art though is what these warehouses and factories used to do, the people they used to employee. And it’s not just here of course, it’s all across the country, reminders of what our nation used to be.

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