CHAT: East St. Louis (was Re: Re: CHAT:geographicalnomenclature [was Re: La

Writing from across the Mississippi, and speaking from unresearched recollection of
recent events...

East St. Louis is about as close to "completely" destitute as they come. The
arrival of the casino was an extraordinary civic improvement (to the point that
it was, at least a couple of years ago, on the City Seal), which has helped
ever so slightly. Its police force, schools, and many other civic necessities
were taken over by the state of Illinois for a few years, as well, as ESL
couldn't afford such luxuries. For as long as I've been aware (ca. 12 years),
East St. Louis has been ridiculously poorly managed, especially under a recent
series of what are perceived to be massively corrupt and incompetent mayors and
aldermen. (I say "perceived to be" since they all fought off their indictments,
for the most part.) There should be a book about East St. Louis; it hasn't
always been in this condition but the general feeling is that it's been
declining since the race riots of 1918.

Alfred

---
Last Good Book Read:  Confessions of a Chess Grandmaster, by Andrew Soltis

AIM screen name:  alfredhw



On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:09:56   Robert Hailman wrote:
>Dan Sulani wrote:
>>
>> On 16 Dec, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>>
>> > Yes, yes.  But would the German likely know that? Probably not.
>> > (On the other hand, he might:  E. St. Louis' complete destitution
>> > could plausibly get headlines in the more anti-American segments of
>> > the European media.)
>>
>> It's _completely destitute_?!
>> My visit did take place some 20 years ago,
>> and I know that things change. But that bad? What happened?
>
>I, personally, don't know, but E. St. Louis was mentioned in Tom Waits'
>song "Time", and Tom Waits' music tends to focus on the completely
>destitute, so...
>
>--
>Robert
>

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