As a true blue Hoosier, here’s my hot take on the Chicago Bears moving to Hammond: no dunking on NWI.

I’m seeing a lot of disgust for Indiana in related Bears commentary that troubles me, especially the comments about NWI as a place of blight, beyond consideration or repair, obscuring the stakes behind a regional geography of race and class. Meanwhile, I am glad that people from Chicago suburbs have found occasion to think about their neighbors in Hammond and Gary. There is life outside of Schaumburg.

Indiana’s history as a state is thick with race and class problems, perhaps best captured in the old phrase calling it the “middle finger of the South thrust into the North.” That middle finger reaches right up and touches Chicagoland. Indiana’s policy approach to this dynamic is predictably toxic, having cleaved communities like Hammond and Gary from state investments and statehouse power. Indy loves business and it loves a chance to razz Chicago. Guess why.

“The Region” in Northwest Indiana is practically and functionally the south side of Chicago. You can drive from Gary through East Chicago and Whiting straight into Pullman and Bronzeville, without much marking a state line other than some signage and an iconic White Castle. But everything on the Indiana side of the line is governed from a statehouse that rarely considers them at all until there’s a chance to further demean and isolate them. Like so, with Indiana’s current plans for redistricting that further disenfranchise Gary residents.

Does it serve to remind us that Gary was founded as a company town by the world’s first billion dollar corporation? I think so (and great article btw). The town was the subject of serious curiosity and consternation during the early days of industrialization, especially when comparing the claims of the owners and capitalists to the realities of the workers. Poet Carl Sandburg famously wrote the poem “The Mayor of Gary” to illustrate the casual venality that the ownership class felt toward the steelworkers. This dynamic is still very much alive in the minds of the people in surrounding communities, who are perpetually worried about a “Chicago influence.”

This is why we train a jaundiced eye on characterizing working class communities like they’re beyond consideration or redemption. The world isn’t a Costco. People live among the brownfields. I spent a lot of time in this area in my twenties – all my friends in The Region were somehow connected to US Steel, even still. Feel however you feel about the Bears deal, but we don’t do Gary slander in this house.

Yanking this back to the question of writing: if you want to catch an interesting news source from the area, Capital B’s Gary outlet does some amazing reporting and opinion.