I was born in the early 1980s to a world that was on the precipice of wide-scale and rapid change that would be brought on by technological advancements, sustained peace between countries that make up the global north and economic globalization on a scale never before seen.
Technological advancement, sustained peace, and globalization are all good for the planet as a whole but with any good change there come outliers who are negatively impacted by the change. Change brings loss, uncertainty and a form of collective trauma that is typically only found in communities who have been struck by natural disasters or man-made atrocities. For these outliers, collective trauma via economic loss can be found in the steady drip of job losses punctuated by seemingly random large-scale plant closings or relocations. Communities lose resources, people and prestige while they gain crumbling buildings, shuttered gathering spots and an unending stress response that wonders when the knockout blow will finally land.
My hometown of Decatur, Illinois where I have been a resident for over three quarters of my life is one such outlier.
If there is any doubt that economic loss is traumatic, ask any life-long resident of Decatur the following questions and then ask them what sort of emotions they feel in responding:
Did you hear ADM is moving their corporate headquarters to Chicago? Did you hear Firestone is closing? Did you know Zexel is closing? Did you hear Caterpillar is moving a whole division to Arizona? Norfolk is moving its dispatch to Atlanta.
What happened to (Cheddar's, PlaMour Lanes, Mister G's or any other of the dozens of Decatur businesses and restaurants that seemingly closed before their time)?
Remember when Stephen Decatur was a high school? Remember Lakeview High School? Woodrow Wilson Junior High School? Mound Middle School? Roosevelt Middle School? Washington Elementary School? Brush College Elementary? Coppenbarger Elementary? John Adams Elementary School? Thomas Jefferson Middle School, Durfee Elementary School, Stevenson Elementary School and Enterprise Elementary School are more recent additions to that list.
How many people from your graduating class of high school still live in Decatur?
Decatur is a typical Midwestern city in which the separation between urban and rural is much less defined than it might be in a much larger metropolitan area such as Chicago, New York City or Los Angeles. Decatur has an economy based heavily on manufacturing, healthcare and service industry jobs in town while farming jobs dominate the job market outside of town.
Decatur hit its population peak in the early 1990s but over the last thirty years, Decatur has lost approximately 30,000 residents due to economic factors shifting jobs out of the area. The loss of jobs and industry is brought up often in and around Decatur. I hear community leaders often discussing how to “bring back Decatur". The talk is always about getting jobs back in some form or another. The logic is understandable but it does little to address the impact of losing your neighbors, your livelihood and the general underlying fear that at any time another shut down means losing more.
The human loss to the community is not often mentioned but it is no less important. Job loss on the scale that Decatur has experienced several times over has ripped to shreds the social fabric that makes a community strong, vibrant and reasonably healthy. It is not to say Decatur was perfect before it's dramatic population decline began. Decatur has always had its fair share of difficulties related to race, poverty and class struggles. But, rather that any hope Decatur had of reaching its fullest potential has been effectively dashed by the collective trauma the community has experienced over the last thirty years.
Collective trauma shapes the narrative a community tells about itself.
"Decatur is the kind of place I don't mind being when I'm there, but I'm never in a hurry to get back." - from a friend who has since moved away from Decatur.
I have yet to find anyone in Decatur who disagrees with this statement after a moment's reflection.
"Decatur. We Like It Here." - City slogan from the late 1990s/early 2000s.
A well-intentioned marketing campaign that unfortunately reveals a lot about how residents of Decatur feel about their community.
Personally, my own prevailing notion I have about Decatur is everyone eventually leaves. It makes it difficult to build meaningful relationships with neighbors and co-workers when everyone is on some level wondering when it will be their turn to leave. For those who are left behind, it creates an odd mix of survivor guilt and bitterness at being as survivor.
Amongst my friends when we were growing up, getting out of Decatur was a common conversation topic. By my own estimate, around 70% of my graduating high school class has moved away (including myself for a time before family brought me back to the area.) In working in the school systems both in Decatur and the surrounding county, I have not found that conversation about getting out of Decatur to be any different now.
I also find there to be a significant disconnect in Decatur between those who are new to Decatur versus those who have lived here for decades. An example of the disconnect can be found in a conversation I observed between two co-workers a few years ago. One person was relatively new to Decatur and the other had lived here most of their life. The new person was discussing how much opportunity there was in Decatur and what a "lovely" community it was. The older Decatur resident was scoffing at the notion of opportunity in Decatur and listing all the reasons why Decatur was in no way lovely.
The new person eventually became frustrated and chastised the other person for being so negative. The other person was not surprisingly offended and an icy silence took over.
In reflection, what I wish I had said then in defense of the life long Decatur resident was that it is unfair to criticize us, you are new and you do not understand what happened here nor do you seem very willing to try and understand what has happened here.
This notion of understanding what has happened is vitally important in trauma recovery. When working with individuals the question to wonder is not what is wrong with them but rather what has happened to them. Only by reasonably understanding what has happened to someone can you have any hope of helping them to recover from it.
In our community, from our leaders on down, the question is often asked in some form of what is wrong with Decatur. The answers are always then in the form of how then can we fix what is wrong. As a social worker who never makes any claim that I ever "fix" anyone, I would argue then that we are asking the wrong question.
The better question is, what has happened here?
Answering that question allows for a broader response that allows a person to feel hurt, to feel grieved by what has happened to our community while also providing hope towards a reasonable path forward.
My take is that what has happened here is that the loss of jobs in Decatur over a prolonged period has created a community wide foundation of unresolved trauma with no real end in sight. Unresolved trauma can lead to elevated levels of anxiety and depression, increased aggression and an inability to deal well with conflict, and hopelessness and the feeling of not having any value.
How then can we support each other in our collective experience of trauma?
Accept reality as it is rather than how we would like it to be. Talk about the trauma. Don't overpromise. Build resiliency. There's more to it than that but those are words for another post.
A good friend and his family recently moved due to his job at the railroad being transferred to Atlanta. Most of our conversation regarding the move was positive and about the new opportunities it would provide his family. But, honestly, the whole thing sucked. Our families got along well, our kids would have eventually attended the same school. We spent time together socially and shared many of the same values.
It does not change what happened to say it sucked but at least I am being honest with myself and can then grieve the loss and work forward from it. To go on wishing life was different only creates a fantasy world that will never come to fruition. There is, of course, a world of difference between reflecting on memories and hopes for the future versus ruminating on loss in a way that leads to unhealthy coping.
I still miss my friend and his family and wish that the economic powers-that-be had not felt they needed to move his job. The difference is being able to live with sadness and letting it have its place instead of doing everything we can to avoid it with mostly empty promises of new economic growth that will do little to bring back friends who have already left. New growth, no matter how grand, does not fill the deep wound that was felt when companies like ADM, Caterpillar and others ripped jobs from our community in the name of profits and with little regard for the social impact it would leave all while holding us hostage with further loss if our city leaders did not toe the company line.
The tricky part is that those companies are not even wholly at fault. The global economy is simply put; complicated as fuck. It's why a phrase like "Build a Wall" can be popular because it simplifies everything to a level that the emotion center in our brain is satisfied even if the policy itself has no coherent foundation in reality. There is little lasting relief then in raking those companies over the coal because the unresolved root trauma remains.
What has happened here is part of the collective trauma of all who have lived here in Decatur. It is trauma that cuts across socio-economic class, race, gender, age, or any other identifier. It is the story of us and currently the prevailing narrative is one of past loss and future hopelessness. Loss of identity, loss of livelihood, loss of value and loss of community. It is a difficult story to live but it is not a story that has ended. To paraphrase a cliché, we are all in it together and only together will we move our narrative forward.
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