Lessons From Lockport

A writer’s close-up learnings about the great American divide, and the bridges across it.

A long-time progressive activist and writer moves to a small working class town in the conservative northwest corner of New York state. He becomes a weekly opinion columnist for the city’s 200-year-old daily newspaper. His columns force light into the dark corners of local politics and provoke local debate over national issues from guns to climate change.  Dozens of people begin to speak to him about his columns – in stores, on the street, in bars, in playgrounds and beyond. His columns also spark fierce debate in a community Facebook group that includes almost everyone in town. The result is an up-close education about what makes small town America tick, just as small towns like this one are driving a national political rebellion of working class conservatism. Told through stories that will entertain readers as well as make them think, the book offers a unique look at one of the most misunderstood corners of American culture.

From the Prologue

The bar was packed. It was a Saturday night in late Spring and the western New York crowd was still giddy about being out and about after a long winter. It was a working class bar where pickups in the parking lot were plentiful and a rock and roll band on stage belted out hits from the  1970s, 80s, and 90s. 

“Hey, are you that guy who writes for the newspaper?”

The man with the dark shaggy hair and a beard to match showed up suddenly at my side. I got asked this question so often at this point that I had a standard response at the ready. “Do you like that guy who writes for the paper?” This always left room open for a denial if it seemed needed. That night though, two drinks in, I just went for a straight up admission. “Yes I am.”

“I disagree with almost everything you write. But I think you are honest.”

That began a ten-minute soliloquy that ran through the misdeeds of Joe Biden, the general decline of the nation and assorted complaints about the sins that Democrats and liberals were inflicting on the country. I listened. When he hit his grievances over inflation I couldn’t disagree with his anger. “I’m a plumber. I make $29 hour and I can’t afford anything anymore,” he told me.

Then he landed on an issue that took me aback. “The transgenders! They are everywhere! They are shoving it down our throats.” I decided on this one that I would dig a little deeper.

“Wait, how do transgender people affect your life in any way at all?”

“They are all over. They are all over the mainstream media. It’s all we hear about now.”

I added a note to my ever-growing list of political lessons gleaned from living in this small town. The clever right wing pundits who had recently made all things transgender their new target for attack had scored a double victory. Not only did it serve up a fresh subject of outrage to boost their viewership, it also left those viewers with the impression that it was transgender people making all the noise rather than their attackers.

Soon afterwards my conversation companion moved on amicably and I turned my attention back to my family, my drink, and the band.

It wasn’t long after that when another man spotted me, this time from the other side of the bar. He was big, built like one of the trucks out back. His hair was close cropped and he had a long bushy brown beard. His look at me was intense and he was heading quickly in my direction through the crowd. He came so close to my face that he didn’t have to raise his voice by much for me to hear him over a loud Rolling Stones cover. He leaned in, grabbed my hand and told me, “I love everything you write man.”  Then he walked on without any further introduction or comment.

Much has been written in recent years about the dividing of America into sheltered enclaves of the like-minded. Liberals live with liberals in the big cities along the coasts and in affluent suburbs. Conservatives have hunkered down with conservatives in the small towns and wide open rural spaces in between. We increasingly live our lives in comfortable echo chambers of political and social compatibility, not only in the media we consume but in the neighbors who surround us. 

I do not have that problem.

Lockport and its Lessons for the Nation

Lockport is emblematic of many other small towns across America today, including those that have helped create the movement for Donald Trump’s brand of conservative populism. It was born from the digging of the Erie Canal, which still meanders through its city center. In the 1900s it became a prosperous industrial haven, home to a General Motors plant that employed more than ten thousand people with well-paid union jobs and a pension. Then, as in many other places, sudden acts of downsizing made the jobs disappear and took the city’s economy down with it.

The book draws on the author’s experiences as the resident liberal opinion columnist in the city’s 200-year-old daily newspaper, the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal and from the lessons that perch has offered about what makes communities like these what they are today. Shultz has written nationally about these experiences before, in both the New York Times and the New York Review.

Contents

Prologue

Why a deeper understanding of small town and rural life is so urgent in this time.

Chapter 1: The Town and The Writer

The story of Lockport, New York and how this small town that sits astride the Erie Canal in far northwest NY is emblematic of so many other small towns and rural communities across the nation that have given the new conservative populism its engine. And the story of the strange newcomer who used a weekly opinion column and Facebook to prod local debate and see through his own blind spots.

Chapter 2: Spy Cameras in the Schools

Concern about school safety has become a national priority. In Lockport that concern turned students into lab rats in a first-in-the-nation experiment with facial recognition surveillance in the schools. The story of how that expensive, small town surveillance project sparked a national debate and a state law banning systems like these across New York. This effort and the author’s role in it were featured in the New York Times.

Chapter 3: Black in Lockport

In 2019 Lockport became one more community in America where a Black man died in the hands of local police, setting off a wave of local protest. Drawn from deep interviews in the community, the chapter looks at what race means in a small and mostly white, conservative community. It is also the story of community reaction when the author published a front page series in the daily newspaper, “Black in Lockport.”

Chapter 4: A Rural Rebellion Against Renewable Energy

New York, like the nation as a whole, has ambitious plans to increase renewable electricity to combat climate change, in particular increasing solar and wind power. But to accomplish that, those wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines need to go somewhere and a lot of those ‘somewheres’ are in rural communities that want no part of it. A close up look at the rural rebellion against renewable power and what is needed to prevent a massive backlash. 

Chapter 5: A Fortress of Old School Corruption

Western New York is home to public corruption of the old school kind, where backroom money and favors function as the currency of political power. No where is that more blatant than in the publicly-owned gambling operation, Western Regional Off-Track Betting. A close-up look at how a Republican boss and network of political operatives took control of public agency and benefits from its taxpayer-funded perks and privileges. It is also the story of how whistleblowers and journalists uncovered the scandal.  

Chapter 6: Conversations with My Neighbors

Lockport and the nation as seen through the eyes of a collection of very different people who live here – the young car salesman who voted for both Donald Trump and Barack Obama, the third generation CEO of a local plastics business, a mayor, a newspaper editor, a Vietnam veteran who serves on his rural town council, the punk rocker who became an organic farmer, and others.  A set of in-depth conversations with people who all live in the same place but who look at both it and the nation in very different ways.

Chapter 7: What Have I Learned? 

After seven years of writing, listening and living in this small town, what have I learned? The big picture lessons about how small towns are misunderstood and how we might do a better job of speaking to each other across the great American divide.