c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)

UNDATED _ Across the street from my home in the inner-city of Trenton, N.J., is an abandoned grocery store. Its faded sign and crumbling brick facade give little clue to the prosperity it once knew and, perhaps, could know again. Instead, it bears witness to a phenomenon sociologist William Julius Wilson has called the”suburbanization”of employment, whereby urban communities are unable to retain the jobs necessary to remain viable.

Like many cities, Trenton was once a thriving industrial center. At the turn of the last century, it was known worldwide as a producer of steel cable for bridges, ceramic tile, and numerous other industrial products. Its workforce was made up largely of European immigrants whose varying cultures and traditions added immeasurably to the life of the city.

Over the course of several decades, however, the economic base of the city began to erode. As the patriarchs of the city’s leading families began to pass on, many companies were sold to interests who lacked a commitment to the city. At the same time, the city _ like the rest of the country _ was forced to endure the cataclysmic effects of the Great Depression, World War II, and the development of national conglomerates as a result of the post-war economic expansion.

The net effect was that by the 1960s, Trenton’s industrial base was only a fraction of what it had been a half-century earlier.”White flight,”the decay of the city’s school system and the increasing pressure to convert to a technology and information-based economy led to a reduction in the city’s population _ more than 14 percent between 1980 and 1990 _ high unemployment in the city’s black and Hispanic communities, and a resultant increase in violent crime.

To be sure, the above outline paints Trenton’s urban and industrial landscape with a broad brush. Still, it suggests that, writ large, the pattern that led to Trenton’s abandoned grocery stores, factories and other businesses can be seen in cities across the country. Even more important, it is to suggest the urban renaissance currently enjoyed by Trenton, Newark, Baltimore and other communities may not, of itself, eliminate the problems that led to the abandoned buildings in the first place.

As Wilson points out in his 1997 book,”When Work Disappears”(Alfred A. Knopf):”I argue that the disappearance of work and the consequences of that disappearance for both social and cultural life are the central problems in the inner-city ghetto. To acknowledge that the ghetto still includes working people and that nearly all ghetto residents, whether employed or not, support the norms of the work ethic should not lead one to overlook the fact that a majority of adults in many inner-city neighborhoods are jobless at any given point in time.” My neighborhood provides a case-in-point.

I live in what is largely a working-class community. The prostitutes, dope dealers and breaking-and-entering artists who live in my neighborhood are small-time hustlers trying to make ends meet. Most are high school dropouts supplementing the income from their sporadic, often seasonal jobs with money derived from what is called”the informal economy.” Like many inner-city residents, they can neither relate to the city’s storied past nor are they prepared to participate constructively in its promising future.

Who will invest in them? Who will help ensure that their futures and those of their children _ whose generation may well produce criminologist John DiIulio’s vaunted”super-predators”_ do not become faded and crumbled like the abandoned grocery store near my home?

DEA END ATCHISON