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Buffalo Alumni Arena Jam Packed For Bernie Today! (Original Post) CorporatistNation Apr 2016 OP
He started talking about 730pm. JonathanRackham Apr 2016 #1
His message resonates here, we were a thriving city full of blue collar middle class families once, Dragonfli Apr 2016 #2
very moving story dragonfli, thank you. 2banon Apr 2016 #4
I have relatives in the southtowns, Cheektowaga and NT. JonathanRackham Apr 2016 #5
K&R CharlotteVale Apr 2016 #3

JonathanRackham

(1,604 posts)
1. He started talking about 730pm.
Mon Apr 11, 2016, 10:48 PM
Apr 2016

My daughter said people were showing up at 11am. By 4pm traffic was chaos that end of campus. Near triple the size of Hillary's crowd and 10x louder.

They should start looking for a retirement home for his opponent.

Dragonfli

(10,622 posts)
2. His message resonates here, we were a thriving city full of blue collar middle class families once,
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 12:00 AM
Apr 2016

with a huge amount of diverse factory jobs available, now, it is either high end medical work, or multiple min. wage jobs for most of us.

I began with a loss of jobs at the Bethlehem Steel plant, a once giant industrial plant with well over a dozen mills in neighboring Lackawanna, a city of connected factories that touches much of our border and employed not only the bulk of that city, but, as it was a small city with a large complex of steel plants taking up most of the area (nearly all of it close now, I think one of the smallest mills is still running, but we are talking an entire city of Steel Mills in it's day, nearly decimated by trade deals), well more than half of those employed there lived in buffalo.

They paid well and were union, and now Lackawanna is basically a ghost town of poverty crime and desperate people. That happened due to Trade relations with China a source of cheaper (albeit far less quality steel). We lost most of the others due to NAFTA. Starting with the American Standard plant in Riverside (an area in buffalo) and the rest followed like dominoes in less than twenty years.

Anybody that has read my Ops knows of the poverty that surrounds me, there are pockets of wealth and gentrification, but mostly, we are a city of poor and working poor, our saving grace is great universities that bring in some money, and state of the art medical facilities. But lacking a very high level of education, this is not a place to find the American dream anymore, only a place to grow poorer by the day, once it was a showpiece of the American dream, with a largely blue collar middle class, but we have fallen hard, hard like a mountain on a blade of grass since those times, due to free trade. A big issue of Sanders' and one he consistently fought hard trying to prevent, if others had helped him fight this would not have happened to my city.

Centrism and neo-liberalism utterly destroyed my city and completely decimated Lachawanna, that is part of the reason he will get support here, as "we get" what free trade does in a personal way.

The other support he will get here are because of his policies on education, and student debt, as I said, other than Mcjobs, one has to jump to a very high level of education here to escape poverty, best if it involves the medical field.

Besides the long time city dwelling students UB attracts, students from around the country, and around the world come here to learn.

It is a City made for his solutions, our infrastructure is completely falling apart as well, so that too is relevant.



In summary, I am not in the least bit surprised he could pack any venue here.


 

2banon

(7,321 posts)
4. very moving story dragonfli, thank you.
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 12:09 AM
Apr 2016

there's more of us, than the oligarchs. but there's still far too many brainwashed, fearful, low information voters across the spectrum, most all voting against their own interest.

On the other hand, there's certainly a force that's been awakened, and that makes me optimistic!

JonathanRackham

(1,604 posts)
5. I have relatives in the southtowns, Cheektowaga and NT.
Tue Apr 12, 2016, 06:29 AM
Apr 2016

I remember lumber mills, Republic Steel, Hanna Furnace, Calspan, Bell and other large aerospace manufacturers around the Buffalo airport. When I was a kid we took the surface electric train to the Broadway market. Public transport was well developed then. NT lumber mills were pre WWII. The other industrials were unfortunately war driven. Collapsing economy drove me south in the 70s.

We need non war uses for big industry.

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