mike davis - Libcom

10 HAL ROTHMAN & MIKE DAVIS
perceptible unease in upper circles. Las Vegas is like a huge jumbo jet in
which neither the pilot nor the crew, much less the passengers, have any
idea of where it is ultimately headed or how high and far it can fly.
This translates into something entirely new; discerning, addressing,
and solving the problems of a postindustrial, postmodern city requires
more than the mechanisms chosen by other, more traditional places. The
result is a kind of confusion. The traditions of Nevada and the needs of
Las Vegas’s future stand in stark contrast to each other. While the developers,
builders, and real estate people who benefit from growth reap
the rewards, larger numbers of Las Vegans, new and old, sit in traffic
jams and breathe dust particulate from the torn-up desert. In the most
severe and evident dimension of this phenomenon, Las Vegas is engaged
in an ongoing conflict with the Environmental Protection Agency. The
city cannot conform to national air pollution standards; as long as construction
in the desert continues, dust particulate matter will keep the
city from compliance.
A growing number of blue-collar Las Vegans, both longtime residents
of minority communities and new immigrants of all backgrounds, scrape
for a living on the low-rent fringes of the Strip. Newcomers and some
locals—those least successful at finding suitable jobs in the past—compete
for employment at the edges of the entertainment industry. In many
cases, newcomers, possessing skills more suited to the current market,
displace already marginalized locals. Southern Nevada advertises ambitious
plans for economic diversification, but for the foreseeable future
incoming labor will compete with residents in a struggle for a toehold
on the economic ladder. For every five newcomers who arrive in Las
Vegas, three natives and neonatives leave. For some, the hope of prosperity
in the Las Vegas economy is the biggest roulette wheel of all.
The most poignant symbol of this Darwinian economy has been the
increasingly visible poverty and homelessness in the shadow of the hyperbolic
Stratosphere in an area once called “the Naked City,” after the
showgirls who once sunbathed there in the buff in the afternoons. Here
the forces of economic marginalization and urban redevelopment have
united in a sinister compact to displace some of the Strip’s poorest residents.
There, as Amie Williams chronicles, life is truly a struggle, especially
for the young.
Although African Americans in Las Vegas today hold many distinguished
political and union posts, they still face obstacles that mirror
those elsewhere in the country. The black middle class has fled its old
neighborhood, Westside, for opportunities in the multiracial white