In Youngstown, Ohio, Deindustrialization Erodes the Old City, but Palimpsests of Place Yield Insights for Workers, Artists, and Activists, Including Me

In The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization, Jasper Bernes says that artists, workers, and countercultural activists began to demand changes in the conditions of life and work in the 1970s, sometimes through participatory movements. He concurs with Andrew Ross who writes in No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs that these participatory movements didn't do as much to improve working conditions as workers and artists might have hoped. As a consequence, today there is a “generalization of the ‘mentality’ of artists’ work across the entire economy, not just among creatives.” This becomes easier to see as more workers enter the gig economy and are forced to be as flexible, adaptable and without job security as artists have long been. In this creative essay, I use a visit to Albert Street in Youngstown, Ohio, on the 50th anniversary of my time as editor of an alternative magazine, as an occasion to compare the 1970s, a time when Youngstown was a steel center with thousands of good jobs and I was involved in a countercultural project there, to the 2020s when Youngstown is a deindustrializing city and I work as a freelancer. The essay includes photos which record palimpsests of place, showing how much of the past still can be viewed in the present and the insight these contrasts provide.