Non fiction comic book “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit”.
We have all heard of the tragedyexperienced by the inhabitants of Lac-Mégantic in 2013, when a driverless oil train from the CP railway company pulling hundreds of cars of explosive petroleum derails in the middle of the night, explodes and kills 47 inhabitants of the city.
The comic book (or graphic novelaccording to some) “Mégantic – Un train dans la nuit ” adds to the information that we already knew about this tragedy. It also exposes several key pieces of information overlooked by the media.
Author Anne-Marie Saint-Cerny worked for years on the file and, in order to convey the content and the emotions in images, enlisted the help of Christian Quesnel. The result is extremely interesting. The formula works: the drawings are very precise, the layout leaves room for the reader to reflect on the events, the colours are appropriate.
In the train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, there are multiple factors to consider, among others:
1) Executives of the CP company making catastrophic choices.
2) As always, a desire to meet the demands of shareholders. There is a reduction in staff and the company self-assesses when it comes to safety.
3) One driver only is allowed for a train carrying hundreds of tanks of explosives.
4) Politicians agree to the new cuts proposed by the company.
5) There is some magical thinking involved: if something goes wrong with the driver, the train stops on its own thanks to a mechanism which, however, is always likely to fail eventually.
6) Dated rails.
7) The transport of dangerous goods is granted to the MMA, a company with a dubious reputation .
8) The DOT-111 tanks are too fragile for hazardous materials and targeted in more than 25 surveys.
9) There is an agreement to tamper with the oil bill of lading. Instead of indicating the code PG1 (the most dangerous, the most explosive) as it should be, it is instead PG111 (not dangerous) that is written.
10) The lead locomotive is terribly worn.
11) The driver reports a problem with his old locomotive. He is ordered to continue on his way.
12) In Lac-Mégantic, the train is heating up. The driver is ordered to apply the brakes and let the engine run. The driver is then allowed to leave the premises and go to bed. This is one of the repercussions of allowing a single driver on a train.
13) During the night, a fire starts on the lead locomotive, the one that had problems. The firefighters shut down the engine. “By turning off the engine, the air pressure in the air brakes is released. Eventually, the train will start to move on its own and descend the slope towards Lac-Mégantic.”
With just one driver gone to sleep somewhere, there are now 5,000,000 litres of explosivesstarting to move on the rails and no one will stop them.
“Firefighters believe they are fighting low flammable oil. They are unaware that the CP and World Fuel have falsified the papers, camouflaging their oil classified as the most explosive and dangerous.” There are 47 dead, including several suicides.
Now that there has been a disaster, those involved directly or indirectly are passing the buck, as is the custom in tragedies. The graphic novel mentions, at the political level, the names of Denis Lebel, Lisa Raitt, John Baird and later Marc Garneau. At CP, the author mentions Hunter Harrison. The MMA’s CEO Edward Burkhardt is also mentioned.
Changes happen, but not the ones you would think…
Naomi Klein analyzes the “shock strategy” devised by Milton Friedman. In step 1, “we take advantage of what the population while it is still dazed: they will not be able to oppose what we want to impose on them.” The zoning is being quickly changed to include the expropriation of houses that are totally outside the disaster-affected area. There are some people who are interested in these properties…
In step 2 of the “shock strategy”, we “use the excuse of mandatory decontamination to wipe out the Old World. Excluding the population from the scene of the tragedy, so that they cannot cling to it, so that there is no going back. “
Finally, step 3: “Faced with a population whose shock has been exacerbated by the destruction of its landmarks and habits, we can launch a reconstruction or reinvention which will be received with resigned acceptance“. We have the case of people living in Fatima, a remote area spared by the disaster: owners must quickly sign their expropriation or they shall lose everything. When the former owners are finally gone, a Jean Coutu pharmacy comes to settle on the vacated land.
On the legal side, the small players are targeted and the investigation is limited as much as possible. Takeovers are carried out and returns to shareholders multiplied.
The book flaunts some of the political and entrepreneurial maneuvers aimed at protecting the railway companies. Even at the dawn of 2022, eight years later, the rails still pass through downtown Lac-Mégantic.
“MMA-Canada, essentially bankrupt, has paid nothing and has not been sued.“
“Nothing has changed in rail laws in Canada since the tragedy: companies self-regulate, self-monitor and, in the event of an accident, self-investigate. Thus, it was the CP itself that investigated the deaths of three of its employees in an accident in February 2019 in British Columbia. The CP investigator, prevented from investigating, denounced his employer and called for an independent investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Transport Safety Board (TSB), an investigation immediately accepted by the chief investigator responsible for the case at the TSB. That same day, this TSB investigator was dismissed from his post. The CP investigator concluded on a CP no-fault.”
This is what a Demag AC435 all-terrain telescopic crane looked like before it received the colors of the Quebec company “Grues Guay“:
Demag AC 435 crane
This all-terrain crane was recently at work in Old Quebec, on the Côte de la Montagne. The coast has a fairly steep slope and it was necessary to create an artificial horizontal surface using pieces of wood to make the work safe.
Stabilization of a Guay crane at work.
The crane operator used a stepladder to get in and out of his vehicle as needed:
Stepladder provided for the Guay crane’s driver at work in Old Québec.
So this gave the following result, once the crane was at work:
All-terrain Demag AC 435 crane at work in Old Québec
With the telescopic arm fully extended:
All-terrain Demag AC 435 crane from Guay at work in Old Québec in 2021.
In the last photo below, you can see a person in a basket that is suspended at the end of the telescopic arm, confident that the tens of thousands of pounds of counterweight will keep the crane from tipping over. The calculation had to be very precise. Everything had to remain stable throughout the day! And since the work on the building lasted several days, the same operation had to be repeated every morning …
Guay crane at work in Old Québec on Côte de la Montagne in 2021.
Cover page of the book Black Detroit by Herb Boyd.
As the author Herb Boyd writes, « this is the first book to consider black Detroit from a long view, in a full historical tableau. » (p.14). If you are looking for a significant black person that influenced Detroit’s history, he or she is in the book.
The author covers the arrival of Blacks in Detroit through the Underground Railroad the type of work they could find, the music they created, their need to have their own church to avoid racism, the work at Ford, the influence of trade unions, the poor housing conditions, etc.
Of course, there are several paragraphs on racism, police repression and useless violence, the problems caused by the KKK and how a few individuals dealt with it, the Smith Act, the American Civil War and the desire the end slavery, the presence of Rosa Parks in the city and Nelson Mandela’s visit in Detroit in 1990.
There is not only something on the past history and development of Detroit but also thoughts on the future of the city and how it will have to deal with the fact that there are so many people choosing to live in the suburbs instead of in Detroit itself.
Since the fight for equal rights, racism, police repression and the useless deaths of so many black individuals have continued to be an important problem in United States, I have chosen a few quotes from the book on those subjects.
I also chose a paragraph on Nelson Mandela’s visit in Detroit. When Nelson Mandela left United States to fly back to South Africa, his plane had to do a stopover in Iqaluit, in Canada’s Arctic. I was working as a flight service specialist (FSS) at Iqaluit in 1990, so I could see him and Winnie attending an official ceremony in the middle of the night at the airport’s terminal. You can read the real life stories in Iqaluit on my website.
Detroit and Canada.
« In 1795, Detroit was still under British jurisdiction, and the city was a de facto part of Upper Canada. » (p.22)
« Judge Woodward stipulated in a later ruling that if black Americans were to acquire freedom in Canada, they could not be returned to slavery in the United States. “Two of Denison’s children […] took advantage of this ruling by escaping to Canada for a few years and then returning to Detroit as free citizens”. Theirs was a landmark case and would be cited as a precedent in a number of appeals for emancipation by enslaved African Americans. (p.25)
The Smith Act
“The Smith Act, was written so that labor organization and agitation for equal rights could be construed as sedition and treason, the same as actually fighting to overthrow the government by force” (p.162)
Police repression and brutality
“[…] Twenty-five blacks had been killed in Detroit while in police custody in 1925, eight times the number killed under police supervision that year in New York City, whose black population was at least twice as large” (p.112)
“During STRESS’s (Stop the Robberies and Enjoy Safe Streets) first year as a death squad – cum – SWAT team [near 1970], the city’s police force had the highest number of civilian killings per capita of any American police department. During its three and a half years of existence, STRESS officers shot and killed 24 men, 22 of them African American.[…] Among the STRESS officers, none was as seemingly problematic as crew chief Raymond Peterson. Before he was assigned to STRESS, he had amassed a record number of complaints. During his first two years on the squad, he took part in nine killings and three nonfatal shootings. Bullets from Peterson’s gun killed five of the victims. No charges were brought in any of these cases.” (p.226-227)
The policeman Raymond Peterson and a murder charge in Detroit in the seventies.
“[Around 1999] gentrification was one thing to worry about, but police brutality was a far more menacing immediacy for young black Detroiters. They were keenly aware there was little mercy awaiting them from the police, nor from school conselors or employment agencies, and certainly not from the drug dealers” (p.292)
“[Around 2001] Detroit, according to reports from several local papers, had the highest number of fatal shootings among the nation’s largest cities” (p.300)
“Throughout the nation over the previous decade, from 1999 to 2009, gun violence had taken the lives of thousands of young black men and women, and hundreds of them were unarmed victims of unwarranted police violence. Few of these terrible tragedies were as heart-wrenching as the killing of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones by a police officer in May 2010. It was around midnight and Aiyana was asleep on the couch with her grandmother nearby watching television. Neither of them had time to react to the thud at the door nor the flash-bang grenade tossed into the living room by the police at the start of the raid.
Officer Joseph Weekley immediately began firing his MP5 submachine gun blindly through the window into the smoke and chaos. One of the bullets entered Aiyana’s head and exited through her neck. She was killed instantly. The SWAT team had come looking for a murder suspect who lived upstairs but left with only a dead child. […]. » (p.327-328).
Education
“Ethelene Crockett, having raised three children, earned a medical degree from Howard University in 1942. She completed her internship at Detroit Receiving Hospital, and because no Detroit hospital would accept an African American woman physician, she did her residency in New York City. Finally in 1952, she was accepted at a hospital in Detroit, becoming the first black woman in her field of obstetrics and gynecology to practice in the state.” (p.163)
No middle-class for young blacks.
“With the traditional routes to middle-class success closed, young black Detroiters sought other means of survival, mainly via the underground economy.” (p.254)
Nelson Mandela in Detroit
“In the summer of 1990, Nelson Mandela toured the United States after spending twenty-seven years in prison. […] When Mandela and his wife, Winnie, emerged from the plane [in Detroit], one of the first people they recognized was Rosa Parks. Nelson Mandela stated that Parks had been his inspiration during the long years he was jailed on Robben Island and that her story had inspired South African freedom fighters’” (p.268).
Detroit’s future
“Most Detroiters live in neighborhoods, and in these areas, development is uneven. There are some flashes of improvement, but by and large, communities are still struggling with unemployment, crime, and low-achieving schools. Detroit is a city with large expanses of uninhabited land and is sprinkled with thirty-one thousand vacant and dilapidated houses. In various pockets throughout town, community-based organizations have worked tirelessly to maintain their respective areas against a tide of neglect and disinvestment. The current mayoral administration has tried to use an assortment of methods to arrest the decline of the neighborhoods, with moderate success. This gargantuan task has been assisted with massive aid from the Obama administration, but the city still has major hurdles ahead with a large poor, unskilled, and semiliterate population.” (p.342).
Click on the link for other books on the history of cities on my blog.
In Quebec City, a few floors of the Hôtel Le Concorde receive patients recovering from the coronavirus.
Hôtel Le Concorde and the rooms reserved for patients who had to deal with the coronavirus.
Within seconds of taking this photo of the hotel, a Corona delivery truck appeared in front of the hotel. It was just a coincidence. But somebody was in need of the Mexican serum!
Hôtel Le Concorde and the Corona delivery truck.
Speaking of coronavirus (COVID-19), I was recently at Costco and was wearing a protective mask. I heard some people near me say: “I don’t see why he’s wearing a mask, it doesn’t even protect him!” I tried to explain to them that I was wearing the mask to protect the people around me, but that did not convince anyone. It seems that taking selfless action to protect others is inconceivable. The purpose of wearing a mask is to protect the neighbors. And if the neighbors wear one too, they protect me. The more we wear the mask, the more we protect each other. We help each other. However, it seems to be a surprisingly difficult concept to grasp!
At the entrance of a huge garden store, a lady refused to rub her hands with gel. She said to the clerk: “No way am I putting liquid germicide on my hands, it’s not good for my health.” The clerk was very nice and replied: “Okay, so come in with me and wash your hands inside with soap and water.” She had no choice because she would not have been allowed to shop. This is another example of a human behavior that is hard to understand. If she was so interested in her health, taking care of her weight situation would have been more sensible than to focus on a bit of liquid germicide.
Airmail OACI In flight with the United Nations 1971
I got this first day cover thirty years ago. It had no real monetary value but certainly a historical value for whoever is interested in aviation and airmail history.
After multiple hijacked flights in several countries, hijacks that could easily have been avoided, the pilots got tired of the situation and decided to take matter into their own hands. With both pilots and politicians involved, the situation progressively changed.
International laws were modified and security was also increased, both at airports and in the aircrafts.
Airmail Airline Pilots Special 747 Flight Committee 1971 New-York to Montreal
Below is a quote from the ICAO document:
“The series of skyjacking incidents, several of them desperate and dramatic, was a great and particular concern for the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA, Member of IFALPA, the largest airline pilot union in the world representing pilots from U.S. and Canadian airlines); ALPA sought an innovative step and an extraordinarily direct method to intensively lobby influential politicians from all over the world, as the fundamental problem in advancing a solution to the skyjacking problem laid in the realm of politics. A Boeing 747 sponsored by ALPA was rented from Pan Am and nearly 300 United Nations personnel flew on Saturday 6 November 1971 on a short international flight from New York to Montréal, being the home of ICAO; the aircraft was piloted by Captain Stanley L. Doepke of Pan Am. More than 30 crewmembers who had been skyjacked placed these world political leaders in a controlled and dramatic situation where they could hear their stories. All the international politicians from the UN General Assembly who accepted ALPA’s hospitality on the Montréal excursion went home vowing immediate action by their countries. A special first day cover was issued to commemorate this unique event and a medal was given to the UN Delegates. More information on this issue can be obtained by clicking on the following link: Hijacked Pilots Urge UN Action.
However, even with these two new Conventions signed in 1971, the issue on sanctions was not sufficiently addressed and a few terrorist actions early in 1972 gave rise to grave concern and threat to the safety of civil aviation; it was felt that perpetrators of such acts were not or not appropriately brought to justice. Because governments had failed to deal adequately with such hijacking, the International Federation of Airline Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) called for a world-wide 24-hour shutdown of services by pilots on 19 June 1972. The United States pressed in the ICAO Council for rapid action to complete the work on a convention which would provide for sanctions against states that did not punish hijackers. The ICAO Council adopted on 19 June 1972 a Resolution which directed the Legal Committee to convene immediately a special Subcommittee to work on the preparation of an international convention to look at this issue of sanctions.”
Turkey presented the case that Fethullah Gulen, an american cleric living in the USA, is behind the 2016 failed coup against President Erdogan of Turkey and it wants M. Gulen extradited.
To explain the USA’s refusal to send Fethullah Gulen over to Turkey, Fareed Zakaria said something along the lines : « My contacts say that there is nothing solid that supports the fact that the 2016 coup against Turkey was organized by the Imam Fethullah Gulen ».
The well-prepared Prime Minister of Turkey then responded : « When you said that Osama Bin Laden was behind the September 9/11 attacks, we did not ask for proof of that. We just supported you ». [And immediately went to war in Afghanistan without proof of Bin Laden’s involvment].
In other words, to stay friends with the United States, Turkey did not ask that the USA prove with any hard facts that Bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks, a fact that Bin Laden denied from day one. They knew that the United States had strategic interests in Afghanistan and they supported whatever reason, proven or not, that would justify an invasion of Afghanistan.
Now, Turkey says that the Unites States are not willing to commit themselves to Turkey’s national interests the same way Turkey supported the USA. It is like saying to the United States : « Don’t ask for hard facts, just do it, like we did for you. » In 2016, on the same issue, Erdogan said : « If we are strategic partners or model partners, do what is necessary“.
We can extract two things out of this discussion between Fareed Zakaria and Binari Yildirim:
1) That the cleric Fethullah Gulen has possibly nothing more to do with the coup in Turkey than Bin Laden had to do with the 9/11 attacks. But as Gulen strongly opposes Erdogan, he is considered a threat to Turkey’s national interests (or to Erdogan’s chance to stay indifinitely in power?).
Turkey expects the United States to refrain from looking for hard facts of any wrong doings by Gulen and nonetheless send the cleric to Turkey as a sign of goodwill and friendship between the two countries.
2) That friends of the United States don’t seem to ask a lot of questions and proof when it comes to the 9/11 attacks. They go with the flow and expect a return of favors when comes the time…
Fareed quickly changed subject …
For more explanations on the failed coup in Turkey, click on the following link on CNN : Turkey failed coup explainer
About the September 9/11 attacks, you will find several facts presented in a book written by a former well-known french journalist, Éric Reynaud, in the « controversial issues» section of my blog.
The Quebec Bridge, the longest cantilever type bridge in the world, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017. For the occasion, several activities were organized in Quebec on September 23rd 2017, culminating with fireworks near the bridge.
Reflections on the St. Lawrence Seaway. The 100th anniversary of the Quebec Bridge was celebrated with fireworks.
Several workers lost their live while attempting to build the bridge. A Wikipedia article resumes its history: The Quebec Bridge
In 2017, the safety issue was brought back in the news. This time it was about the lack of maintenance that favored an increasing amount of rust on the metallic structure.
The funds that would allow to paint the bridge on a regular basis seems hard to find. The bridge owner, the Canadian National Railway Company, and the different levels of government are attempting to find a solution that would be acceptable for all. This discussion has been going on for years. While the bridge holds on, everything is fine.
September 23rd 2017 celebration for the 100th anniversary of the Quebec Bridge.
About the photography
During the fireworks several boats equipped with an additional lighting system approached the bridge.
It was impossible to get really sharp shots of the boats since they were constantly moving due to the strong current of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The fireworks lasted about thirty minutes and attracted a huge crowd, both along the St.Lawrence Seaway and on the higher grounds of bothLévis and Quebec City.
Fireworks for the 100th anniversary of the Quebec Bridge
Frequent adjustments of the camera’s aperture and ISO were needed since it is always very demanding for a camera to deal with sudden burst of lights appearing in the darkness. It was necessary to limit the exposure time in order to avoid an accumulation of blurred light trails.
The Quebec Bridge is 100 years old in 2017
The pictures were taken with a Canon 5DSR full frame camera mounted on a tripod. A Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM was used to capture the fireworks.
The title of this French book could be translated as: “Memories without glory: the confessions of an airline pilot”. A bit of modesty was certainly required in order to publicly expose one’s own flying mistakes, especially when that person is an airliner captain.
Front cover of the book: “Souvenirs sans gloire – Les confessions d’un pilote de ligne”
However, the book does not relate only some of the errors made by the author, Michel Vanvaerenbergh, but also those of the crew members working at the time for the Sabena airline company.
Generally, flying errors are discussed in private and corrective actions are published by each airline company for their staff in order to limit the risk of repeating the same mistakes. But to actually publish a book on one’s own mistakes is quite original and also very useful. Beginners or experienced pilots will certainly profit from the author’s past experiences.
Some of the stories are quite scary: on several occasions, the reader realizes that the pilots and passengers were lucky to survive a flight. Once, the pilots had to decide if a runway was long enough for take-off. They did not have the appropriate documents on board to calculate what was needed and the Sabena office was closed. They estimated that they could do it but realised too late that is was not the case, seeing the end of the runway approaching quickly. They forced the Boeing off the ground before it had reached the appropriate speed. The aircraft refused to climb for seven minutes. That meant that the aircraft was close to stalling and that everyone on board nearly escaped death.
Back cover of the French book: “Souvenirs sans gloire”
The author tells the story of crew members under the influence of alcohol with whom he had to deal with. There is also the unbelievable account of a test flight with Yemeni pilots who never used the appropriate charts to adjust the parameters of the aircraft. To make it easier, they preferred assuming the aircraft was always at its maximum weight.
On a few occasions, too much assertiveness from pilots and crew members almost resulted in an airliner crash.
The literary style has only one objective: go straight to the point. So forget any fanciful writing. Moreover, there are no paragraphs in this small book, something to which I was not used. But those are only details and the reader can easily deal with them.
Considering the intensity of real life stories, “Souvenirs sans gloire” is certainly a book not to be missed, especially for the aviation enthusiast.
Click on the link for other books relating specifically to human behaviour on my blog.
The French novel by author Catherine Mavrikakis : Les derniers jours de Smokey Nelson
Catherine Mavrikakis dedicates her French novel “Les derniers jours de Smokey Nelson” to those “who die murdered by the governments of numerous States of America”. She also wishes to underline the work of “David R. Dow who, in Texas, tries to save them”. [my translation]
The author presents the faults of Middle America with, in the background, the sordid murders of of a family of four people in a motel, twenty years ago. Details of the crime are only incidental in the novel.
The crime is the opportunity for the author to present the very different lives of the people who were directly impacted by the drama. Through the personal history of these people are expressed the fear and the imbalances of the Americans. Catherine Mavrikakis has an original way of presenting the injustices lived because of a different skin color. She also skillfully develops on religious habits, mental illness, drug and alcool abuse, lack of education and extreme gaps in wealth among American citizens.
Another theme presented in the novel is the fear of their own government by many Americans who see it as a potential enemy and against which one must protect himself using firearms if necessary. An American citizen, like Timothy McVeigh, becomes a terrorist as he is so absolutely sure of “ the conspiracy of the State against his beliefs” [my translation].
Backcover of the book: Les derniers jours de Smokey Nelson, by Catherine Mavrikakis
The novel also addresses the difference of treatment between Blacks and Whites in front of justice. This really is not a surprise. There are far more Blacks in jail than there are Whites, and far more that end up in the death row too.
The inequality of treatment between Blacks and Whites is also raised by the author when she brings back to memory the damages caused by the Katrina hurricane and the questions surrounding the destruction of the dams protecting the different neighborhoods.
Rumours are that some dams were volontarily destroyed in order to control the trajectory of the flooding. The will to protect wealthy neighborhoods, mostly inhabited by Whites, would have caused the destruction and flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward district, where a majority of Blacks were living. It is up to the reader to determine whether a further research is justified.
Some sections in the novel marvelously summerize the contradictions present in the religious discourse. On numerous occasions the reader witnesses a God proned to bragging, in front of which humans must prosternate in order to celebrate “His Glory”. A God approving the use of violence and justifying radical actions in order to win over a Satan who, sometimes, takes the liberty to take a break. This short absence is always an occasion not missed by God to fully shine.
At the end of the book, the death row inmate, after having taken a last hearty meal, reflects on the pertinence of meeting a priest before being executed. He has this snarky remark: [my translation] “A pastor is like a steak, at the last moment, it can’t be refused”.
The 2016 televised political debates on CNN between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump put forward the topic of racism in the United States. Chicago was specifically mentioned as it detains the national record for violent deaths. The book “Histoire de Chicago” allows, among other subjects, to better understand what feeds social inequalities between Blacks and Whites since the creation of Chicago.
The reader understands that it is not the cultural deficiencies that are at the base of the problems but an institutionalized racism and the economic choices of the different municipal administrations.
The city grew set against a background in which the color of a person’s skin determined the type of work that he or she was allowed to occupy. Eventually, even urban planning was designed so that Blacks and Whites would be separated: the artificial walls created by the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway or the Dearborn Park are in themselves good examples.
In 2016, the polls show a strong support for the Unites States republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump knows Chicago very well and he had his “Trump Tower” built there.
The republican candidate takes over in his political platform some of the elements that have made the popularity and success of the Daley family who ruled over Chicago for decades: the exploitation of fear between ethnical groups to build and maintain a political power, the idea of building a wall and the use of torture as a simplistic solution to complex problems.
This populism attracts a certain class of American electors who are easily scared by the differences between people and cultures.
The book “Histoire de Chicago” is very much a reflection of what is happening today and the authors do no fear to raise delicate political subjects.
Cover of the book “Histoire de Chicago” by Andrew Diamond and Pap Ndiaye
Chicago
Chicago became a territory of the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Subsequently, natives progressively lost their lands through different manoeuvers, among them the signature of contracts while they were drunk. Around 1830, when the Indians were definitely gone, the speculative fever started.
Railways
Starting around 1860, Chicago organized itself to become the main hub for the most important railway companies of the United States. The city grew very quickly. Passengers, livestock, cereals and other merchandise had to transit through Chicago. The city depended on the train to grow, and the railway companies depended on Chicago to be profitable.
The rapid growth of Chicago’s population was essentially the driver of migration from Europe (Irish, Germans, Polish and Italians). The evolving and often violent relationships between Chicago’s ethnic groups is well explained in the book.
Retail stores
Just before 1900, the Chicago population witnessed the creation of the first retail stores in which a customer could order through a catalogue and use credit. New categories of employees and managers were added to the working population and helped shape the middle class.
Black immigration in Chicago
Around 1910, there was an important increase in the Black immigration coming from southern United States. Chicago was an abolitionist city. This does not mean that it was favoring racial equality but that it was against slavery. In fact, Chicago progressively became the most segregated city in the United States.
Blacks were massively arriving from southern United States, not only for economic reasons but also to get away from the slavery, racial violence and segregation that was the norm in multiple states. Although far from ideal, the situation in Chicago was better than in the south of the country.
The First World War considerably reduced the number of immigrants coming from Europe. This created a serious problem for a city that was benefiting from numerous military contracts and needed a very high number of employees in its manufacturing companies. This also favored the “great migration”, which is to say “the spectacular intensification of the Afro-American migration towards the North-East and Middle West major urban centers […]” (p.143)
Chicago’s slaughterhouses
Chicago was renowned for the very high number of its slaughterhouses, in particular its pork slaughterhouses. The smell and pollution created by this activity was terrible. Chemical laboratories allowed for the commercial use of all parts of an animal. The writer Georges Duhamel wrote in his book that in Chicago “nothing leaves the slaughterhouse but the squeal” (p.63).
Black workers did not have the right to work in the Chicago steel industry and had to limit themselves to slaughterhouses where they were hired as manual workers. They had no access to qualified jobs.
The Second World War
During the Second World War, Chicago was competing with other major American cities to obtain huge military contracts. The city did not manage its efforts to show it supported the American government. Chicago eventually received billions of dollars for the construction of tanks, tractors, torpedoes, bombs and aircrafts (among them the B-29 bomber aircraft).
To compensate for the lack of manpower, since a lot of men enrolled as volunteers and had gone to war, women massively entered the workforce. Employers saw an opportunity to maximize their profits by reducing the salaries of working women, which corresponded only to 65% of the men’s salary for the same work. This represents the way women were thanked for their effort and collaboration.
Transformation of the Chicago economy
A United Airlines Boeing B747 is taxiing over the expressway at the Chicago O’Hare international airport (on aviation postcard)
Chicago experienced a profound transformation during the ‘70 s. The closure of the slaughterhouses in 1971, and the diminishing demand for steel mills products signalled the end of the industrial era. It was followed by an opening on the international and the development of a new economy based on specialized services like finance, real estate, insurance, marketing, publicity and legal services.
The Chicago mayor, Richard M. Daley, fostered the establishment of a new socio-professional class of creators in the city (design, arts, music, etc.) by considering it like another “ethnic group” who needed privileged space to express itself.
The development of housing estates and complexes during the ‘60s and ‘70 s
During the ‘60s and ‘70s, the Chicago landscape was profoundly modified. Huge housing estates and complexes were built (Magnificent Mile, Sandburgh Village, Marina City, Lake Point Tower, Dearborn Park) where the White population lived, in the north part of the city. The Chicago Tribune said of Dearborn Park that it was “a fortress reserved for Whites and aimed at protecting the financial district against the Blacks”.
The Daley administration had to fight against urban sprawling and consequently favored the construction of skyscrapers to maintain the presence of Whites in the central area while receiving more property taxes. Two stock exchange institutions were created, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The creation of those two institutions as well as of the complexes did not do anything to change the dynamic between the Whites and the Blacks.
The racial segregation
Although Martin Luther King was a dominant figure in the fight for the civil rights of the Blacks in the United States, the authors underline that the black population of Chicago had not waited for a leader to promote their rights as they had already started to mobilize themselves years before.
Martin Luther King’s ideas on the integration of Blacks did not receive the support of everyone in the black community, especially the Chicago black politicians who benefited from a special treatment from the Daley machine, which favored the status quo.
Chicago’s mayor Richard M. Daley experienced much success. To stay in power, the Daley Machine “rested squarely on the continued separation and competition between communities”. (p.322-323) The separation between Blacks and Whites was planned and maintained. There was and there are still two Chicagos.
A highway, the Dan Ryan Expressway, was even positioned in such a way that it would create an artificial wall between the Daley’ s district, Bridgeport and the Black Belt: “This was the most massive obstacle that the city could build, other than a wall, to separate the white South Side from the Black Belt” (p.259).
The Daley Machine
We cannot talk about Chicago without underlining the importance of the Daley family and its political machine: “Through an authoritarian control of the “machine”, Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M. Daley, each one in his own style, dominated the Chicago political scene for forty-three years, between 1955 and 2011.
During that period which saw the development and the subsequent decline of modern civil rights, the ghettoization of huge parts of the West Side and South Side, a massive immigration wave from Latin America and the transformation of the city from an industrial giant to a world-class global services economy center, Chicago barely knew one legitimate municipal election or one real debate at the municipal council” (p.16)
There was rampant corruption and secret budgets in the Daley administration. In total opaqueness, the City Hall diverted the funds reserved to disadvantaged neighbourhood and distributed it to the privileged ones.
“[…] While important businessmen, Mafiosi and others who had links with the Daley machine were getting richer, Blacks and Latinos in need were shot in the street or tortured in the precinct’s’ back rooms” (p.394)
Law firms and entrepreneurs gave huge sums of money in exchange for important contracts. The Daley Machine was never short of money.
Beechcraft N35 Bonanza N545T in flight during the years when the Daley family was reigning over Chicago (on aviation postcard)
Racial tensions and repression policies under Mayor Daley
“By the 1930s, Chicago had become, according to the historian Frank Donner “the national capital for police repression” (p.321)
The black migration that took place during the 1940s and 1950s scared the Chicago population that felt besieged. This increased racial tensions that were already present and maintained. It was easier to accept more policemen than social housing.
The muscled tactics of Mayor Daley were the most obvious during the 1968 Democrat Convention, when policemen and 7000 National Guard soldiers “went down hard on the [crowd of 10,000 young protesters] in an explosion of mindless violence” (p.315)
The exploitation of racial fears was quite successful. Daley was defending his policies by saying that “ most people are more worried about a black uproar than of a mayor that orders the use of lethal force to put an end to it and they recognized themselves far less in pacific protesters than in policemen that hit them with truncheons” (p.319).
Media propaganda and the Daley Machine’s police were efficient in convincing the Blacks to respect the established order. Torture was common in the zone 2’s precinct, in the South Side, between 1972 and 1991.
The expected arrival of a new black mayor, Harold Washington, during the 1980’s, increased the fear that everything would change in Chicago. Everything was done to undermine Washington’s candidacy, but he eventually won helped by the black vote.
There were several left-wing political movements which all had their own objectives and were unable to unite under the same progressist banner. This provided the necessary margin of manoeuver to the Daley Machine, who worked in cooperation with the federal authorities to organize the state repression.
Back cover of the book “Histoire de Chicago”
Social problems in disadvantaged neighbourhoods
During the 1995 heat wave, 739 persons died in Chicago. The social precarity helped increase the number of deaths, but it was easier to determine that the victims were responsible of their fate.
The Blacks and Latinos believed, and still do, that the problems related to their school system and neighbourhoods come from some cultural deficiencies, but in trying to understand the real nature of their problems, they overlook the ongoing racism and economic choices of the different city administrations since the creation of the city.
“The 1980 census showed that ten out of sixteen of the poorest neighbourhoods in United States were in Chicago, in the Black Belt, of course”(p.334)
In 2002, Chicago was the American murder capital, with 647 victims. In 2008-2009, the city held the record of students killed in public schools which were gang related.
Today, there are two Chicagos
Today, Chicago benefits from well-defined ethnic neighbourhoods that attract tourists in search of diversity. However, the sustained racial segregation policies have isolated the black neighbourhoods and in 2016 Chicago still has the sad reputation of being the murder capital of the United States.
“The Chicago situation looks more and more like a science-fiction scenario. While part of the city has an economic capacity that sets it among the five first in the world, the other part is frozen in an austerity situation that could very well become irreversible” (p.443)
