Nathan Porceng, a Syracuse native and United States Navy veteran, is a current Max Berger ‘71 Public Interest/Public Service Fellow at Columbia Law School in New York.
Micron claims their new manufacturing plant in Clay will bring 50,000 jobs and billions of dollars to Central New York. Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon forecasts that the new plant could spur a 60% increase in Central New York’s population over the next 20 years.
No one has ever mistaken us Central New Yorkers for an optimistic bunch. Still, after decades of the local economy swinging between stagnation and recession, there appears to be real hope that Micron will bring about a sort of regional renaissance.
Perhaps it will. I hope it will. That said, I worry the Micron plant will fail to bring the relief Central New York truly needs. Specifically, I fear Central New York’s communities of color who mobilized and voted for the politicians who passed the CHIPS and Science Act to subsidize the Micron plant will not derive any benefit from it, that decisions will be made without their input, and that they will suffer as a consequence.
History bears out my concerns.
It’s tempting to take pride in the racial history of Central New York. Indeed in the antebellum era, Central New York was a hotbed of abolitionism. In 1851, in what became known as the “Jerry Rescue,” Syracuse residents freed an enslaved person named William Henry from the clutches of the city’s police force and facilitated his escape to Canada. Frederick Douglass spoke in the city. The “American Moses” herself, Harriet Tubman, made her home in Auburn. Local boys from Baldwinsville to Oswego left home to fight for the Union. Many never returned.
Growing up white in Central New York, that’s where most would end the story, save perhaps a brief nod to the Onondaga Nation, the region’s original inhabitants. Storytelling carries tremendous power, and the story we told ourselves was comforting. It was also woefully incomplete.
To bring real, meaningful change to Central New York, we must tell the region’s full story, its real racialized history, and place the new Micron plant within that context.
White Americans robbed the Onondaga Nation of their once sprawling lands and confined them to a reservation. Local industry then polluted the Onondagas’ sacred, eponymous lake to historic levels. The half-hearted cleanup of Onondaga Lake falls far short of the Onondaga Nation’s proposed measures.
Black Americans in the region fared no better. William Henry’s much-publicized rescue obscures the fact that he spent his years in Syracuse defending himself against trumped-up criminal charges and dodging both racist police officers and the bounty hunters active in the region following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Henry’s time in Syracuse, like that of so many enslaved persons and free Blacks, was one of racialized terror.
Following World War I, thousands of Black Americans fled the Jim Crow south and moved to Central New York in hopes of finding work in the region’s booming manufacturing plants. Management at Globe Malleable Iron Works, desperate to break immigrant unions, used Black Americans as strikebreakers. When the striking workers found out, they directed their anger not at their bosses, but at their Black counterparts. Whites attacked the Black workers with clubs, stones, and firearms. It took the entire Syracuse Police Department to quell the riot.
Following World War II, white veterans took out cheap G.I. Bill loans and moved from Syracuse to its surrounding suburbs in droves. Banks refused to extend the same credit to Black veterans, and their families remained stuck in the now rapidly declining city.
Things only got worse.
The city of Syracuse razed the predominantly Black 15th Ward and constructed Interstate 81 through the remains. In doing so, they destroyed the homes and businesses of most of Syracuse’s Black community and displaced over 1,300 families. Those who stayed suffer from air pollution, housing discrimination, education discrimination and racist policing. Nearly half of Syracuse’s children under 18 live in poverty.
If and when Micron brings transformative change to Central New York, it must be for the benefit of all. Micron must recruit workers from the city of Syracuse, not just its white-dominated suburbs. City and county officials must work together to provide direct and affordable public transportation between the city and Clay. Local leaders must closely watch the city’s housing market and intervene if necessary to ensure Black and brown residents can rebuild their communities without being displaced by gentrification.
Micron and New York’s Community Investment Framework addresses some, though not all of these concerns, and how the framework will be implemented remains uncertain. To avoid the mistakes of the past, Micron and government officials must continue solicit and take seriously the input of Black and indigenous community leaders.
Maybe then we’ll finally achieve the change we need.
Related: Could Micron help Clay realize decades-old dream of a waterfront village?