I watched some PBS programming the other night which was all focused on Haiti and the crisis that continues there.  Highlighted were the suffering and anguish of people and those who wanted to see and work towards a new and better reality.  NGO's, concerned nationals,  a commited police chief and UN officials were all present working on the details of that country's future.  All of that comittment yet the challenges before them seemed insurmountable.  My mind wandered and I thought, are the "solutions" being applied workable?  Is the problem very simple or a splintered array that must need time being considered even as more problems spring up because of natural progression?  Is the right approach being concieved of or are we stuck in the 20th century logistics that did not conquer our greatest challenges? 

These were my thoughts even as my mind shifted to things even closer to home.  US cities face nothing close to the devastation of the Haitian predicament although there was a familiar hopelessness in the faces of young and old across Haiti, one recognizable to people who have lived in the squalor too often prevalent in certain parts of our great nation.  The hidden tragedy of the American poor and the vexed communities that have languished in destitution for decades known quietly by many yet conveniently avoided in much of our national discussion.  A public secret,, national embarrassment, and neglectful shame.  Bobby Kennedy once asked "why" in the pinnacle of affluent society, the "greatest country in the world" the richest ever on Earth. Today, over 40 years later Bobby's question is haltingly relevant.  Today our poverty levels are sky-rocketing even as the number of working poor increases and the neighborhoods that are shells of their former selves fester in crime disease and despair.  America has a poverty problem that is at the root of our crime and public health crisis while it doubles as a symptom of failing education and lack of community cohesion and advancement opportunities.

This problem, like many in American life, is one that can be addressed and even more severely needs to be solved. As I saw many in Haiti craving Education and labor I thought the same craving existed in our poor communities. So why not begin right here right now with these people in the aftermath of the great recession? Why not invest in the longterm poor and their education plus their hopes for a brighter future? America needs big projects for sure, on the scale of WPA and mobilization equivalent to WWII that led to the greatest boom economy the world has ever seen. The flourish and rise of the American middle class through the decades after the war was no accident, it was infrastructure investment, education expansion and the development of an unmatched military that brought phenomenal returns. There have been some investments down the line, but none such a dramatic effort with targeted efficiency to match the New Deal/WWII era.

In any case, much of the last 40 years in this nation has unfolded as a rebuff to our developmental phase. The “conservative” movement has been hell bent on destroying all of our pillars of American economic might even as time has caused necessary erosion as well. The most recent success I can point to is in the 1990s when the Clinton Administration embraced globalism and the internet age. We experienced unprecedented consumer access to cheap goods around the world while silicon valley was advancing and the dotcom bubble contributed to boom time. Unlike the previous era, however, the US is not yet the big winner economically. It's emerging economies like China, Brazil, India and so on who flood our markets, as well as those of other developed nations with inexpensive goods. The question is, can we win big in this era? I believe so, we need a grand project though. An immense undertaking geared toward renewed prosperity. Though much of our resources are tied up at the moment, machinations of war and our corporatte welfare programs that are part of a wholly undemocratic betrayal, hope is right around the bend.

The means to our success is readily available in the skill and labor of our citizens. As our infrastructure, crumbles, imagine sweeping programs that train the unemployed to build the bridges, roads, buildings and even power supply for their own communities. Imagine, in the face of a national crimewave, a national service corps trained in tactics to take back our streets from drugs and gang violence. We need to innovate and engineer and then export our ideas. Imagine a world where US engineers were in high demand globally because of the amazing feats they achieve right here at home. This all sounds like a world that once was and ought to be again. They say that the 20^th century was the American Century. What if this is one too?