‘The Promise’ begins

This Wednesday, The Vindicator launched into a partnership with two other newspapers and folks from Columbia University in New York to take a long-term look at the Donald Trump presidency through the eyes of typical Americans.

The project selected three distinct parts of America that make up a portion of the Trump narrative. We were glad to be selected, along with Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and McAllen, Texas.

We are three very disparate communities and populations – thinly linked because of our part in the Trump victory or because of the potential of the Trump changes.

The articles from each will be available for all to read.

It is officially called “Letters from Flyover Country – Three American Towns in the Age of Trump.” It can all be found at www.thebigroundtable.com.

Each newspaper recruited three distinct citizens who agreed to share opinions, incidents and general interactions in their life as it pertains to our new president.

The launch this week starts with a textured description of each town. We are up next Wednesday with our first profiles. Each Wednesday, the project will update for – well, for awhile. Enjoy.

The Columbia overview

America woke on the morning after the presidential election feeling like a nation of strangers, as if we did not understand our countrymen, our neighbors, or even our relatives and friends.

In truth, this singularly divisive election was the culmination of years during which Americans pulled further away from each other, reducing one another to labels: Coastal elite. Small-town bigot. Radical Muslim. Illegal immigrant. Misogynist. Un-American.

Trump’s America is profoundly divided: The America that supported Hillary Clinton, for example, according to a set of revealing maps in The New York Times, lives on just 15 percent of the nation’s land mass yet comprises 54 percent of the population. “The Promise” is the story of America in the Age of Trump. It is set in three small cities: Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Youngstown, Ohio; and McAllen, Texas.

The idea is simple: Perhaps the best way for Americans to begin to know and understand one another better is to hear stories about who we are, what we do, what we want, who we love and hate, and what we dream.

Welcome to our towns.

FROM YOUNGSTOWN

Youngstown is a useful symbol for illustrating the decline of the status, wealth and hope of a Midwestern community and the workers who called it home.

What’s left are the survivors who manage to coexist amid abandoned mills, shuttered factories, gutted labor unions, massive population loss, poverty and a heroin crisis.

Of course, the city has more to offer than its utility as a symbol. Over the past decade, revitalization efforts in downtown Youngstown have resulted in the birth of an arts and entertainment district, which in turn spurred the creation of a handful of downtown apartment buildings aimed at young professionals.

Regardless of whether one thinks Youngstown is phoenix or ash, the evidence for both can be found through the neighborhoods.

FROM CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA

Call Cedar Rapids “flyover country” and locals might agree with you. They often lampoon the town’s official slogan, the City of Five Seasons, calling it the City of Five Smells. The town is home to major manufacturing plants, including a towering Quaker Oats plant that wafts the odor of oatmeal and Crunchberries over the downtown.

But the locals here also will want you to know their town is much more than a set of easily dismissed Midwestern tropes.

The city of 130,000 is home to a major engineering company, Rockwell Collins, which designs avionics and weapons systems for the military. It is also home to factory workers and engineers, small-town transplants and young professionals, Midwesterners and immigrants. The median age is about 36.

Linn County, in which Cedar Rapids is the largest city, voted Democratic in 2012 and 2016, but the town is surrounded by a sea of Trump voters; only six of the state’s 99 counties went to the Democrat in 2016. And Linn County voters re-elected Chuck Grassley, their longtime Republican senator, by a wide margin.

In this town, the lives of liberals and conservatives have always been intertwined.

From McAllen, Texas

If Trump makes good on his plan to build a great wall along the border, it will rise on the edge of McAllen.

The journey of illegals from Central America to the Rio Grande Valley is harrowing. It can often take a month. Human-rights agencies estimate that 80 percent of migrants making this journey will be robbed or assaulted. They also estimate that 60 percent of women will be raped. Many of the younger women are kidnapped along the way and forced into sexual slavery.

These immigrants do not sneak into this country. They cross the Rio Grande and promptly walk up to U.S. Border Patrol agents and surrender. Because they are claiming refugee status, U.S. law affords them a day in court.

But the courts are now overwhelmed, and migrants who have relatives already in the United States are being released into their custody.

And this trend is where the story begins, a story about the convergence of McAllen, the Rio Grande Valley, former Gov. Rick Perry, current Gov. Greg Abbott, Trump, and his famous wall.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.