The city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, population 21,000, is famous for two things: (1) a series of disastrous floods including one in 1889 that claimed the lives of 2,209 people and became the worst such disaster in American history to that time, and (2) the spectacular collapse of the U.S. steel industry, which caused the city to become the third-fastest-shrinking city in the country.
In response to the ongoing second disaster, an unelected group called Vision Together 2025 has cooked up a plan to import into the area an unnamed number of Afghan “refugees” currently being housed at U.S. military bases. Although unemployment has been perenially high in Johnstown since the closing of the steel mills in the 1970s (it reached a peak of 19.3 percent in April 2020 and hovers around 7 percent today), Vision Together 2025 believes that “legally vetted immigrants, like our ancestors . . .are willing and ready to make a difference in the community. They will be productive citizens with honorable jobs like our ancestors.”
Yet circumstances argue otherwise. Almost 40 percent of the city’s population lives below the poverty line. From 2015 to 2019, the average income in the city was under $17,000. The average value of homes was less than $40,000, and less than half of people older than 15 were working. Vision Together has not revealed how many Afghans they hope to attract but adding any to the mix will almost certainly exacerbate existing problems.
Most of the populace and some of the elected officials understand this. In spite of Vision Together’s defensive assurances, based largely on the “we’re all immigrants” myth, they are not happy. State Senator Wayne Langerholc, for example, told The Tribune-Democrat:
I’m pretty sure Vision 2025 hasn’t bothered to reach out to any of the elected officials or any of the potential impacted entities for that, but that’s nothing new with kind of the way that they do some operations. There have been other times when officials haven’t been in the loop for things that they’ve tried to do or plans that they had. They’re not the elected officials. They’re not the policymakers. We’re the elected officials.
State Representative Frank Burns said that local residents contacting him were “adamantly opposed” and “angry” about the plan.
They’re Vision Together 2025. They added the word “Together.” I can guarantee you the people of this community don’t feel the togetherness. They had no say in this at all. Their vision is not our vision. It’s not the public’s vision.
Vision Together 2025 is the creation of the Remaking Cities Institute, an egghead think tank at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture that specializes in dreaming up utopian plans for real people in places like Johnstown.
For more, see Breitbart News.