The Perils in Pittsburgh

On the positive side, as the G 20 meetings were about to start, p.r. savvy local officials could continue telling the world the good news about Pittsburgh, that it had changed from the Smoky City, or "hell with the roof off." Of course that basically happened more than six Super Bowls, 3 Stanley Cups and several World Series championships ago. But apparently the world is a slow learner. Even Mr. Daily Kos thought Pittsburgh was a "hellhole" before the recent Netroots convention there. I assume he knows that Chicago is no longer in the grip of Al Capone.

To be fair, it may be surprising that Pittsburgh has successfully diversified from steel, while still being solidly grounded enough not to go crazy in the real estate bubble, so the city weathered the Great Recession better than, say, Detroit. But that process has been going on since the 1970s, when I was watching it from a lot closer.

On the less positive side, the news coming out of Pittsburgh on Thursday was about police using tear gas and rubber bullets on demonstrators. (It now seems they used a kind of tear gas, but not rubber bullets.) The police in Pittsburgh have been known to be thugish, so it's possible they played into the scenario of the provocateurs who show up at every international meeting with a G in front of it. But the Post-Gazette account suggests that the combined forces that included state troopers from Ohio may have screwed up at times, but didn't go wild.

The peculiar form of corporate capitalism enabled by government force called globalism should face indictment--check out The Shock Doctrine. But these demonstrations are a mixed bag at best. That's especially clear when it happens close to home. I read the wire service and especially the Pittsburgh Post Gazette accounts (a newspaper I wrote for) and noted that the first trouble, during the day on Thursday, happened very close to where Margaret's son and grand daughter live.

There was more trouble in the evening, in the area around the University of Pittsburgh and up towards Carnegie Mellon. The traveling anarchist contingent managed to break some windows of corporate businesses, one of which was the Subway sandwich shop on Craig Street. By a kind of amazing coincidence, I happened to eat there on my visit to Pittsburgh in June, after doing an interview at CMU. There were three employees in the shop and though I don't remember precisely their nationalities, I was struck by how "multicultural" it was behind the counter--I seem to recall the young woman was Middle Eastern, and each of the two guys were from completely different cultures--except they were all part of the Ipod, cell phone culture. Things are complicated in this dizzy world of ours.

And hey kids, welcome to tear gas. We could tell you some stories...