'The American Dream Ain't Here Anymore'

Once steelmaking bastions, small Rust Belt towns struggle against loss of jobs, falling populations, increased drug activity - and a sense of despair.

Associated Press
Published January 18, 2008

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, sun glinting off their chrome-plated hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by the Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.' "

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30-million in business in Beaver County in 2006.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized in the mid 1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the 7-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200-million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

William F. Alston, a former Aliquippa police chief, recalled that in the mid 1980s and into the '90s, he began arresting middle-age drug dealers, some even in their 60s and 70s.

"That was a direct correlation to the decline of the steel industry," he said.

Timothy Hollins, who was one of the first to be laid off from the steel mill, has spent much of the past 25 years drunk or high on crack. He supports his habit with occasional jobs painting homes and moving furniture. He says he would like to be drug-free, but he's discouraged.

"The American dream ain't here anymore," he said.

Pretty soon a lot of other places will also be added to the list of places were the American Dream is no longer located. Can you say "Chinese" or "Indian" Dream?