Harold Meyerson, August 6, 2013
The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy: a new model for American liberalism?
Take a left as you exit the Long Beach Airport, and you’ll pass three
acres of greenery named “Rosie the Riveter Park.” The park stands at the
southeast corner of what had once been the mammoth Douglas Aircraft
factory, where DC-3s, -4s, -5s, all the way up to -10s, were once
manufactured, and where, during World War II, 43,000 workers, half of
them women, built the B-17 bombers and C-47 transports that flew
missions over Europe and the Pacific.
World War II and then the Cold War remade Long Beach. Federal dollars
funded the Douglas factory, a new naval shipyard, and numerous defense
firms. An entire city—the working-class community of Lakewood, which
borders Long Beach on the north—was built to house the sudden influx of
defense workers. Long Beach became and remains the second-largest city
in Los Angeles County.
No comments:
Post a Comment