I am chatting with the folks waiting in line for their weekly supply of groceries, a gift of the people at Canaan Community Church’s food ministry. It’s a Saturday morning, and there are more than 200 people — many with rolling carts, bags and even suitcases — standing in a long, orderly line that stretches east down 67th Street.
Just outside the pantry, we’ve put up a “Little Free Library” that you may have heard about — the oversized birdhouse-like structures that hold a couple of dozen books or so and whose sign on top encourages passers-by to “take a book, leave a book.” It’s going on two years since the free library was erected, and I can’t believe how successful it has been. People really love it. When talking about the Little Free Library, I can’t help likening it to a “book cannon,” blasting knowledge into the neighborhood — though every time I say that, I cringe. You see, we’re in Englewood, and that kind of reference may be a nice bit of metonymy in many places, but it seems surely off the mark here.
A middle-aged man tells me that he’s just biding his time, “trying to be a good person, until that final reward,” when he can be at peace and won’t have to worry so much about anything. Not food, his kids, violence or finding and keeping a job. I’ve been working in and around neighborhoods like these for a while, and though I often hear references to heaven, the “Good Lord” and the afterlife, there was something about this man’s description — or perhaps it was his face and mannerisms — that caused me to finally realize what resignation means.
I’m a former trader on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and a longtime social and environmental activist. I know those two lives seem in conflict — and you’re right, they are. But however that happened, and I don’t mean to brag, the mix has produced some perspicacity. For one thing, I consider myself well versed in economics and political economy. The difference is like night and day. Economics abides inside itself, doing math within proscribed models. Political economy steps back to ask the question, “What are we trying to do with these models?” Or, as a professor friend at DePaul University likes to say, “What is an economy for?”
And so, many years ago I created my own development metric to determine the amount of prosperity in any given neighborhood: the ratio of churches to small businesses. Anyone who has been in Chicago’s troubled neighborhoods knows exactly what I mean. The number of churches is remarkable, especially so because many operate in former storefronts. In years past, these small businesses were places where people would meet regularly and interact socially — five, six, even seven days a week. All of that activity, all of those human beings interacting with each other created and maintained vibrant communities. Though not without problems, they were functionally rich ecosystems. And it was these places that built the fabric of the country — the vibrancy of an optimistic people.
I read with interest, and deep fatigue, the many stories about new development projects, from tech centers to international economic cooperative alliances that are all supposed to bring new jobs and prosperity to Chicago and everywhere across the country. Now you might think this essay is one of those jeremiads about local investment and so on. No, that would just set up an easy target for the pro-development people — World Business Chicago, Chamber of Commerce folks and so on — to take potshots at, to defend themselves against. Their common retorts nearly always make sense to someone — so much so that their pedantic platitudes become and remain policy. We have to grow, they say, and prosperity will come for everyone. My potshot at their development paradigm is a step back from that — more fundamental, so to speak. And unlike them, I haven’t got a plan. In social gatherings everywhere, whether at the Englewood food pantry or my neighbor’s 50th birthday party in Beverly, whenever economics comes up, I say simply, “You know, there’s plenty of money in the world. Plenty. It’s just in all of the wrong places.” Nowadays, nearly everyone nods, no matter where they live. Though most are not exactly sure what that means, it rings true, and as such that glimmer seeds their continued thought.
And so this is a jeremiad. We as a city, a state, a country and a society have believed in and followed the same development paradigm proffered by the same people for years and years and years. Very little has changed. Much has gotten worse, and severely so.
Like I said, I don’t have a plan — and I will no doubt be castigated for that. But that book cannon in Englewood seems to be doing very well, signaling to me that folks everywhere are curious, eager to learn and eager to know, even though many remain resigned. Yes, most of us are tired, deeply fatigued by the plans of the few to develop and develop and develop. But we are increasingly seeing that the fruit of all of that development stays with those doing the developing. And we’re beginning to see that as part and parcel of what economic efficiency means. It’s what you get when you work inside models and never ask the question, “What is an economy for?”
Soon, I think, most people will see that there’s plenty of money in the world. Plenty. But it’s in all of the wrong places.
Jeff Tangel is an associate at DePaul University Institute for Nature and Culture.
