Traficant, Mahoning Valley, and Me
Only those of us who stayed in the Mahoning Valley after
the close of the steel mills understand what it was like to see the fabric of
our local society torn apart. Back in
those days we did not have the degree of government safety net that has been
built up over the past twenty years.
This community not only lost the mill jobs, but the community leaders
who left with them. Locally owned
corporate headquarters either disappeared through bankruptcy or just packed
up their bags and left. No community can lose upwards of 60,000 jobs and survive. Youngstown was the capital of the Rust Belt, a center for disdain, the punch line of jokes as we watched all that we grew up with disappear in front of our eyes.
As long as I can remember, this area was a center of
corruption and mob violence. It went on
year after year after year after year.
We earned our reputation as Bombtown, USA. Could somebody explain to me that even as
a teenager if I knew who the mobsters were; if I knew where they lived; if I knew
where they hung out; if I knew which were the mob businesses; how come nothing
was ever done about it? Where was the
law enforcement…local, state, and federal?
I went away to college, got
married, and moved back. Things were
exactly the same and never got better.
Corruption was everywhere. It was
just assumed.
The Federal government let this area flounder
financially. Nobody came in to offer
programs or financial assistance. It
didn’t exist back then. Even as the
mills were closing and people were being thrown out onto the street, the State
of Ohio continued to take more tax money out of the area than it was sending
back as it made the overt decision to build Columbus into the state’s
show piece at the expense of the rest of the state. We were left to our own devices.
Jim Traficant represented the melding of all of these
issues. He was the personification of a
collapsed economy, a tone deaf state government, a corrupt local political
system, and a state and federal law enforcement system that just kind of let it
go on and on and on and on. He was the Mahoning Valley made flesh with all of our strengths, and all of our
flaws. He represented and was
representative of the people who sent him first to the Sheriff’s office and
then to Congress.
We may not have known it, but he tapped into our sense of “us versus them." He used the
resources that were available to him to try to pick up the pieces. Some of those resources weren't so nice. He defined who we are…survivors. He said we were junk yard dogs. We are still junk yard dogs. We know how to compete. We know how to survive. We know how to stand up for ourselves. All of those are lessons hard learned.
In the process, he brought money and hope to the
Valley. He was a forerunner of the Tea
Party in his disdain for the IRS. It
turns out he was right. He was a champion
for the working man always standing up for labor. He understood the importance of business, and
went out of his way to resolve labor disputes leaving us with a legacy of how
labor and management can work together to save jobs so all can benefit. His
handling of foreclosures was an eerie foreshadowing of the 2008 financial
collapse. He gave the Valley hope when we had none. He gave us a voice when we
needed one.
It's easy to criticize in hindsight. How soon we forget at the time he was the only lifeline we had to grab. You can debate his methods. You can debate his handling and his involvement
with the dirty underbelly of this area. You can debate his antics in Congress. You can debate his bad hair and his bad
clothes. But he was there when we needed
him. You cannot debate his love and
dedication to the Mahoning Valley.
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