Sangry—both sad and angry—is the best description I’ve found lately for how I feel about politics: local in Chicago, national in the U.S., and global. It was difficult not to be sangry the whole way through Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis. The book describes how Amazon became dominant in the U.S. economy.
As I worked on a review of the book, connections abounded with mid-century America. (I’m researching the era to understand the congregation I’m writing a book about, which started in 1965.) Marty Jezer, a historian writing about life in the U.S. from 1945 to 1960, details how big-business consolidation hurt small businesses and family farms and the communities that flourished with them. “It was during this period that long-existent tendencies, accelerated by the war, transformed the economy into a centralized, corporate-controlled juggernaut—carving up urban neighborhoods and isolating small towns,” he wrote. “New highway construction brought death to backroad towns and contributed to random commercial sprawl, boosting standardized corporate enterprise at the expense of neighborhood, family business.”
This reshaping of the nation for the largest companies to flourish influenced U.S. involvement abroad as well. Jezer writes, “A foreign policy predicated upon the expansionist needs of the domestic economy continued to be misrepresented as moral response to Soviet aggression.” Some in the younger generation, Jezer observes, became disillusioned as they learned about the discrepancies between rhetoric and reality during their childhoods in the 1950s, shaped by the Cold War and threat of nuclear annihilation. Jezer observes that “the bluster, the militaristic stand, the desperate concern for being number one made no sense to a generation that had to cower under school desks in civil defense drills in helplessness and fear.” Some chose activism, organizing against racial segregation, the Vietnam War, sexism, and homophobia. Most acquiesced and chose the comfortable, consumerist life prepared for those from white middle-class families.
Government let the corporate world expand unfettered because in many cases leaders had gone through the revolving door that was established about 75 years ago. “The Washington-finance nexus was long identified with Republicans, the party of business, but it absorbed Democrats, too, around the time of the Second World War, when businessmen of both parties were brought into government,” MacGillis writes. “The movement accelerated after the war,” as presidents chose investment bankers to be treasury secretary more often than not.
In the past 20 years, Amazon and its lobbyists learned to play politics well, ultimately replacing many of the previous consolidated corporations. It makes billions while evading millions in taxes and reshapes cities and regions as it chooses where to place its warehouses, data centers, and headquarters.
Seattle, where the company started, is facing a housing crisis. In 2018, Amazon helped fund opposition to a modest tax that would have generated revenue to address homelessness. Katie Wilson, a Seattle activist, reflected on the defeat: “The homelessness crisis is, after all, the convergence of trends, any one of which reveals a social order on the rocks: soaring housing costs and stagnating wages; decades of cuts to safety net programs.” To her generation, growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, “the notion that a fundamental restructuring of society is in order doesn’t feel all that radical.” She imagines that those who opposed the affordable housing efforts in Seattle were frightened by the societal disintegration around them and couldn’t see how different government decisions would help. To instead believe that social problems such as addiction and homelessness result from individual weakness “must be a comforting antidote to despair.”
Working on the West Side of Chicago, despair stalks us. This week I heard the news that another person I worked with died of an overdose. Knowing the history above helps me understand what I’m seeing, that present conditions are part of a pattern in our society. On my commute, I pass the original Sears Tower, next to what was the company’s headquarters until 1973. Jobs and people left the neighborhood for decades.
Now, Sears is almost completely out of business. A few miles away, Amazon plans to build a vast new distribution center. I stave off despair by clinging to solidarity with others who are working for justice and peace. Tending our community garden, amid empty lots neglected by their landlords, we create a refuge for renewal and grow food for our neighbors. I’m feeling sangry, but I’m not giving up.
Gathered and Scattered book update
The Community of Christ, the innovative congregation I am writing a book about, became more fully ecumenical in the late 1960s, with Catholics actively participating along with the Protestants from several denominations who made up the Community at that point. (To my knowledge there were no Orthodox Christians, so the CofC lacked a major branch of Christanity.) To better understand what it was like to be Catholic at that time, I am reading Colleen McDannell’s The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America. It’s also great as another example of what I'm trying to do in the book I'm writing: centering women’s stories, weaving biography and wider context.
Reading and listening
Now for something entirely different: I read this week about new research on the benefits of fermented foods. It was good timing, as recently I finally found a brand of non-dairy yogurt that actually tastes good, at least to those of us who don’t want sweet yogurt.*
I was sitting in New Horizons Garden as I listened to this in-between-seasons episode of Prayer Pod. I watched a goldfinch aloft one of our 12-foot-tall sunflowers, calling out what I imagine to be an invitation—party over here! The swamp mallow and other flowers were blooming, pollinators crawled all over the tomatoes, peppers, and beans. My colleague Tim Kim asked, as the final line of Mary Oliver’s poem, “A Summer Day,” “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I thought, “This.”
*I included a link in case any of you are also looking for dairy-free yogurt. I received no payment or other compensation in exchange.