The Urban/Rural Divide
Traveling between my past and present.
In the last year I found myself driving back to my hometown in rural Southern Illinois several times as I visited my father who was getting treatment for leukemia. Two of those drives I was by myself, driving nearly 10 hours with nothing but some audio books and my own thoughts as I traveled across the farmlands of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. It’s a physical trip connecting my rural past to my urban present.
I’ve made this drive dozens if not hundreds of times in the last 20 decades since I moved to Minnesota. My spouse’s family lives just south of Chicago near Joliet. I’m very familiar with the roads that take you from Minnesota to the Land of Lincoln, my home state. I’m a true kid of Illinois, born to parents raised in the Chicago area. My father’s family first immigrated to the US directly to Chicago from the Netherlands during the Gilded Age. They operated General Stores and worked in the stockyards during that time. I was born in Champaign, near the University of Illinois campus, and raised in Southern Illinois, the first place in the state where European colonists first arrived, and I’m a fourth generation Cubs fan. Illinois is definitely my home state. The drive is always a bit of a time capsule for me, a trip from my current life to my past.
Southern Illinois is an interesting place with tons of old and deep history. The home of the ancient Cahokia peoples - an indigenous civilization who built massive cities and mounds around the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, operating an extensive network of water trade routes that spanned from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. Their civilization disappeared long before Europeans slaughtered their way across the continent. Archaeologists are still finding evidence of their expansive civilization. Southern Illinois also has a deep history of the fossil fuel industry. A major coal production region throughout the 19th and 20th century. That industry was essential to modern development of the region and was so essential to the economy of the area for so long, towns and regions are named after coal - my alma mater of Southern Illinois University is in Carbondale for example. The Illinois coal industry is all but dead at this time, as the high-sulfur bituminous coal is dirty by even coal standards, and EPA regulations of the 1970s spelled the beginning of the end of Illinois coal. Union General John A. Logan from Southern Illinois was instrumental in the national recognition of Memorial Day and Ulysses S. Grant planned his Western Campaign to crush the Rebellion from his headquarters at Fort Defiance in Cairo Illinois.
One of the big reasons I left Southern Illinois after college was the lack of opportunity for anyone, let alone a new college graduate. Most of the legacy industry/economy in the region is based on decaying/dying industry. From the aforementioned coal, to river transport for instance, at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio, many port towns in Southern Illinois were major hubs for shipping, milling, and factory shipping as the access to water power and shipping were essential to the early industrial revolution. The change to the global based economy and the American workforce moving to service/white collar based jobs decimated multiple industries in the region. Nearly every city in the area has a much smaller population than it did 10, 20, 30 years ago in spite of overall population growth in the United States. The median income in the region is about 20% lower than the rest of the state as well.
Every time I return to my home region the decay and lack of opportunity is apparent. Neighborhoods in my home town have multiple abandoned houses, rotting into decay even as others in the neighborhood beautifully maintain and care for their homes. Local businesses are all but gone, as the majority of new buildings and jobs are large chains/franchises that pay minimum wage and don’t contribute much to the local economy. Driving though the main drag of my hometown is a contrast of boarded up old mom and pop shoe repair stores, florists, pharmacies, et al, and replaced by Chick Fil A and Starbucks drive-thrus, predatory cash advance lenders, and THC dispensaries owned by large out of town conglomerates.
It’s in this decaying landscape where I begin to understand the resonance of populist messaging from political figures. Southern Illinois is a region that has been in a long decline since the early 1980s. The residents have lost opportunities, their businesses, and hope for a bright future. Southern Illinois also suffers from being a region with little racial diversity, where a significant population of black Americans tends to be isolated in a handful of towns like East St. Louis, Carbondale, and Cairo. In light of this it’s sadly easy to see why the MAGA movement is so prevalent in rural, economically depressed areas like Southern Illinois. When someone like Donald Trump says the reason they are suffering is because of black and brown people - that’s an easy conclusion to come from. Locals can’t help but think THOSE people don’t really live here so obviously they are the reason we are suffering here. Having those biases confirmed by an army of right-wing podcasters, and Fox News only amplifies this effect. People tend to not blame their neighbors, but it is easy to blame the diverse urban communities for their struggles. It must be the city folk that are the problem. Similarly us folks in the urban areas tend to blame/make fun of the rural “yokels” for their bigotry and hate for their own issues. And the urban/rural divide grows. Egged on by our billionaire controlled media, and reactive right-wing politicians.
As someone who has spent nearly even amounts of his life in both a financially depressed rural region, and a diverse, working class urban area it’s very evident to me that folks in both areas have more in common than most will admit. In my hometown of Mt. Vernon it was common for me to see a family buying groceries with SNAP benefits almost every time I went to the store as a kid. It’s a very common site on the East Side of St. Paul as well. Hardworking, low income people just looking for a little bit of help to put some food on the table. The homes in Southern Illinois and on St. Paul’s East side are all built in similar eras as most of the development is 60 years old or more. New home construction in both places is nearly zero. Old houses with character (and rot) amidst old, ancient trees, and crumbling roads. Water and electric infrastructure ages and crumbles in both places as well - the tax base isn’t enough to spur politicians to action.
I don’t have a real conclusion to this essay other than while both places - my current home and my past home have some of the same economic wounds and struggles, both often place the blame on the wrong things. We have a common problem in the extraction of wealth from working folks in urban and rural areas by a small group of greedy men and corporations. Until the residents of both areas walk up to this reality both are cursed to decay until we demand better from our government and hold those responsible accountable. For now, I’ll just be doomed to travel between the worlds of my life and watch as they solely die to the altars of greed in this new Gilded Age.