The Honorable Alvin Parks, mayor of East St. Louis, Illinois, has what could optimistically be described as a tough row to hoe. His city has been largely written off by virtually everyone, even to the extent that the Simpsons' mythical hometown of Springfield has been rated higher (Number 299) on the list of "Three-Hundred Worst Places to Live in America." As Comic Book Guy snidely remarked on what might be called Southern Illinois' Worst Episode Ever, "Take that, East St. Louis."
Friends of mine who have (in their words) been "forced" to argue cases in the federal courthouse in East St. Louis charitably describe the area as "worse than Hiroshima." The badly-polluted area is afflicted with "brownfield" problems, the stockyards (the largest outside of Chicago) are deserted, and the biggest local industry is a floating gambling casino that provides a small number of minimum-wage jobs in exchange for draining badly-needed consumption income out of the community.
In short, the area is pretty much a basket case as far as American cities are concerned. Nevertheless, there is hope . . . and if there is hope for East St. Louis, there can be hope everywhere.
Mayor Parks, while projecting optimism and what seems like boundless enthusiasm, is not an impractical Don Quixote, meaninglessly tilting at windmills that are not only not giants, they're not even there as windmills. With the mayors of ten of the surrounding communities, all of which are pretty much in the same boat as East St. Louis, Mr. Parks has taken on the task of bringing East St. Louis into the twenty-first century via a revolutionary land development proposal called the "Metro East Citizens' Land Cooperative," or "MECLC." The MECLC combines the work of design-science innovator R. Buckminster Fuller, the "binary economics" of Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, the social justice concepts of Reverend William J. Ferree, and the vision of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. into a synergistic whole that holds the promise for bringing the city back to life and for providing an exemplar model for cities and towns across the United States and, eventually, the world.
Fuller, who lived in the area and who first developed a plan to revive the city, is probably best known as the inventor of the geodesic dome. His work, however, is much more profound and far-reaching than a construction design. His idea, which he called "ephemeralization," is that humanity is continually engaged in the process of "doing more with less," thereby improving our habitat and quality of life.
Kelso and Adler are probably best known for systemizing the theoretical basis for Kelso's invention of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or "ESOP." They co-authored two books, "The Capitalist Manifesto" (1958), and "The New Capitalists" (1961). Kelso and Adler proposed widespread capital ownership and democratic access to the money creation powers of the Federal Reserve to finance acquisition of productive assets by people who lack existing accumulations of savings. The proposal, systematized by the Center for Economic and Social Justice as "Capital Homesteading," would (as the subtitle of Kelso and Adler's second book puts it), "free economic growth from the slavery of savings." The rich could spend their money as they liked without having to worry about confiscatory taxation to fund welfare and Social Security, while the currently poor would gain democratic access to no-interest, low-fee, insured capital credit through local commercial banks . . . but only to acquire capital assets, not finance consumption spending.
Reverend William Ferree, "America's greatest social philosopher," analyzed the natural law social justice concepts of the Catholic Church, and developed a short list of "laws and characteristics of social justice" in his pamphlet, "Introduction to Social Justice." Intended to provide equality of opportunity, not equality of results, social justice is based on each person's dignity as a human being. Social justice works through humanity's unique ability to organize and consciously restructure our social institutions to conform more closely to our special needs and wants.
The vision of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. hardly needs explanation for any American. Suffice it to say that any proposal that has the potential to lift people out of poverty without regard to race, religion, or politics, and to revive America's dying cities and towns without burdening the taxpayer or increasing government debt would probably have his full support. This vision was inserted into the East St. Louis project by the late State Representative Wyvetter Younge, who died recently after a lifetime of service to her state and her community.
The heart of the MECLC is that the owners of the future economic growth and development will not be faceless corporations or foreign investors, but the residents of eleven Metro East communities: Alorton, Brooklyn, Cahokia, Centreville, East St. Louis, Fairmont City, Granite City, Hartford, Madison, Venice, and Washington Park. All net profits will be distributed to the owners as dividends. All resident shareholders (every man, woman, and child) will have a single no-cost, lifetime, non-transferable, fully-participating share and vote.
If universal direct ownership of the means of production is the heart of the MECLC, the "head" consists of an advanced power generation plant, capable of providing 7.5 megawatts of power. This "E-Macrosystem" power plant, a joint venture with Equitech International and ARES, LLCs, will provide energy for a manufacturing center to replicate the projected success of the East St. Louis initiative.
In short, as we reflect on the current economic crisis and the disastrous effect it is having on cities and towns already in serious trouble, we need to realize that there is hope. While problems may seem (and be) insurmountable at the individual level, in social justice terms, as Reverend Ferree pointed out, "nothing is impossible."