What does it mean when a community becomes a symbol instead of a place? Gary, Indiana

In this episode, Auto Asphyxiation discusses Gary, Indiana, a predominantly Black city that is still reeling from a hurricane and the community in large swaths still do not have power. There infrastructure is devastated. But it seems like no one cares about the residents as people, no instead, it is almost no media, then the national conversations reduce Gary to a cautionary tale, a symbol of decline, or a backdrop for someone else's argument.

“This is why we need to fund local media.”

No, this is not why we need to fund Todd’s civic corps for minorities; no, that kind of media is not fixing this.

The pain of communities like Gary (and Katrina comes to mind) is inhaled, instrumentalized, and, monetized without a bit of conversation on the structures and institutions that produced that suffering. Black people and where WE live are more than vessels of trauma p0rn.

And we also critique contemporary journalism's inability to consistently cover racialized communities when gentrification, urban revival, or philanthropic success stories are not part of the narrative.

Too many times, coverage follows funders' as they say in the grant word "priorities" (places they want to buy up property or win an election) and "solution-oriented" projects and projects that expose infrastructure failure and hegemony’s overbearing power- well, no money for that.

From climate vulnerability and aging infrastructure to the politics of OVER visibility and representation, this episode argues that communities like Gary deserve more than to be spectacle. The working deserves journalism that treats residents as people rather than symbols of decline, because if we don’t, the reactionaries and fascists are waiting to fill in that gap.