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Chapter 153 The Angry Rust Belt
Chapter 153 The Angry Rust Belt
After the video went viral online, Leo immediately dialed the number of Erie Mayor Ron Smith.
The phone rang twice before being answered.
"Leo, if you're here to tell me the money hasn't been unfrozen yet, then hang up." Smith's voice sounded agitated. "My office door is practically blocked by union members."
"I'm here to tell you how to get your money back."
Leo leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.
"Ron, do you want your factory to reopen?"
"Nonsense! But I won't go against the state government like you did."
Smith's voice carried a hint of wariness.
"I'm the mayor, and I can't let Erie go against the state administratively; that would only cause more trouble."
"No, Ron, you're mistaken."
Leo sat up straight, his voice becoming clear and strong.
"I did not oppose the state government, nor did I ask you to oppose the state government."
"We are fighting against Aston Monroe."
"You need to distinguish between these two."
"The state government is a huge administrative machine, but Monroe is just one of the politicians in it, and a politician who is running for senator and eager to gain political capital."
"Although his audit order was stamped with the state auditor's seal, it was essentially a political maneuver he carried out to attack his party rivals."
"We are not attacking the authority of the state government; we are only attacking Monroe's abuse of power."
Leo's voice became extremely seductive.
"You can't control the state auditor, but you can control your streets, organize the workers, and tell them the truth."
""
"Tell them it wasn't the state government, it was Aston Monroe who stole their wages."
"We must direct all our anger precisely at him alone."
Smith remained silent for a moment on the other end.
As a seasoned Republican politician, he quickly calculated the benefits in his mind.
If he organizes a protest, that would be against the state government, which would carry administrative risks.
But Monroe is a Democrat, and a Democrat running for Senate.
As a Republican, it's only natural to cause trouble for Democratic candidates.
Even if the state party headquarters found out, they would secretly applaud it.
More importantly, he could use this to portray himself as a local defender fighting against state bureaucrats.
This is a perfect political turnaround.
"Leo," Smith's voice changed, "I'm the mayor, I can't organize an illegal strike, that's against the rules."
“Of course,” Leo laughed. “You can’t organize it, you just can’t stop angry citizens from expressing their demands spontaneously. After all, as elected officials, we must respect the people’s right to assemble as granted by the constitution.”
"I understand." Smith hung up the phone.
Immediately afterwards, Leo called Joe Byers of Scranton.
Same logic, same rhetoric.
For these cities suffering from deindustrialization, anger is like underground gas, ready to explode at the slightest spark.
Leo then handed them matches.
The next morning.
The sky over Pennsylvania remained overcast.
But on the ground, a "wildcat strike" that had not been formally approved by any union quickly swept through the industrial heartland of western Pennsylvania like a virus.
Erie City.
This is Pennsylvania's gateway to the Great Lakes.
The state government has a dedicated administrative office here that handles tax and business permits.
At eight o'clock in the morning, the office director drove to work as usual.
As he turned the corner, he had to slam on the brakes.
The road disappeared, and in front of him appeared a wall made of steel.
More than a dozen heavy trucks lined up one after another, blocking the entrance to the office building completely.
Dozens of steelworkers stood in front of the truck.
They wore oil-stained work clothes and held wrenches, hammers, or simply clenched their fists.
They stood there, physically blocking the building that represented power in Harrisburg.
The office director honked the loudspeaker in an attempt to disperse the crowd.
A tall foreman walked over and knocked on his car window.
The director rolled down the car window, revealing an angry face: "What are you doing? This is illegal obstruction of official duties! I'm calling the police!"
The foreman looked at him with a cold gaze.
"Go ahead and report it; the police are our people too."
The foreman pointed to the truck behind him.
"We're not trying to cause trouble; we just want to know where our wages went?"
"I heard that Lieutenant Governor Monroe has frozen our money. Fine, since we can't get our money, you can forget about working either."
"Tell Harrisburg when the funds will be unfrozen, and then we'll move the car."
"Otherwise, you can just stay here and waste your time with us."
The office director glanced at the angry faces around him, silently rolled up the car window, and reversed away.
He knew these people were serious.
At the same time, Scranton.
Large-scale protests erupted in this old industrial base known as "Electric City".
Mayor Joe Byers happened to be out of town on an inspection tour at that time, leaving the police chief in charge of maintaining order.
The police chief dispatched several police cars to clear the way for the procession, ostensibly to "ensure traffic safety."
A large contingent of construction workers passed through the city center.
They were holding up huge placards.
"We need to work!"
"Monroe = Unemployment!"
"Give us back our money!"
The procession stopped in front of the Democratic campaign office in Scranton.
The workers threw hundreds of worn-out safety helmets into the office yard.
"Aston Monroe!" the lead worker shouted through a megaphone, "While you were drinking red wine in Philadelphia, did you know our children were starving?"
"You keep talking about doing this for Pennsylvania, but you're just a vampire!"
And in the eye of the storm, in Pittsburgh.
Frank Kowalski demonstrated the dynamism he displayed as an old-school union leader.
Instead of organizing a large-scale march, he chose a more visually impactful approach.
10:00 AM.
A huge dump truck drove into Pittsburgh’s East Side.
There is a charming red brick building there, which is Aston Monroe's campaign branch in Pittsburgh, specifically used to reach out to local middle-class voters.
The truck reversed, its rear facing the entrance of the small building.
"Splash!"
With a loud dumping sound, several tons of rusty scrap iron poured out of the truck bed.
Those were scrap steel bars, sheet metal, and broken pipes brought from the demolition site.
The spiky and rusty trash instantly piled up into a small mountain, completely blocking the campaign office door.
Several staff members in business attire ran out upon hearing the noise, only to be stunned by the scene before them.
Frank jumped out of the truck cab.
He placed a wooden sign on top of the pile of scrap metal.
The wooden sign bore a large, red-painted inscription: "This is the future you've given us."
Frank dusted off his hands and grinned at the terrified staff.
"Give your boss a message."
"If he doesn't get our factory up and running, we'll bring all the garbage from Pittsburgh here."
"Let him see what the city looks like after his audit."
These three protests simultaneously entered the public discourse in Pennsylvania.
But the bleeding wounds were not limited to these three.
The anger spread along the interstate highways, burning like wildfire to every corner of the league's territory.
In Johnstown, in Altuna, in Newcastle, in Bethlehem —
Wherever the Regional Economic Cooperation Memorandum was signed, it broke out.
Seven cities, seven powder kegs of anger, were detonated at the same time.
The media has gone mad.
Pennsylvania’s local television stations had never seen such a unified scene. This synchronized protest, which crossed geographical boundaries and industries, thrilled the entire news industry.
The broadcast van's satellite signals crisscrossed the skies across the state, even alerting media outlets in Philadelphia and Washington.
The directors were frantically switching between cameras because there was news everywhere, and breaking news everywhere.
The television screen was divided into a nine-square grid.
The top left corner shows a street in Erie blocked by heavy trucks, the middle corner shows a yard in Scranton filled with discarded hard hats, and the bottom right corner shows a mountain of scrap metal in Pittsburgh.
The other cells show protest sites in other cities.
The cinematography is extremely impactful.
This was a statewide class uprising; the Rust Belt was making its voice heard.
The reporters held microphones to the mouths of the angry workers.
"My name is Mike, and I have three children." An Erie steelworker, his eyes red-rimmed, spoke to the camera. "The factory shut down because the state said this order was against regulations. Against regulations? Is it against regulations to buy bread for my children? Is it against regulations for me to want to work?"
"My wife was sick and needed money for surgery." Another driver from Scranton showed his bank card. "The money was transferred from Pittsburgh, but the lieutenant governor wouldn't let me touch it. He said he wanted to audit it. After he finished the audit, my wife died."
These scenes are so realistic.
Rough skin, clothes stained with oil, and the desperate look in one's eyes when cornered are things that no public relations team can fake.
Aston Monroe's carefully crafted image began to crumble in that instant.
On the GG sign in Philadelphia, he is the elite who wears a bespoke suit, has a wise look in his eyes, and talks about a green future.
But in these television images, he became the bureaucrat sitting in the tower in Harrisburg, coldly cutting off workers' livelihoods and starving ordinary people for the sake of political struggle.
Public opinion began to shift dramatically.
People only see one thing from these news reports:
Leo Wallace is creating.
Aston Monroe is creating unemployment.
Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys?
In this economic downturn, this is a moral judgment that can be made without thinking.
Noon.
Leo sat in the mayor's office, watching the television news on the wall.
The image is frozen on the wooden sign that Frank has stuck in the pile of scrap metal.
"This is the future you've given us."
Leo read the line.
He picked up the phone beside him and dialed Sarah's number.
"Let's begin the second wave of the offensive."
Leo gave the order.
"Release the video we filmed at the hospital, the story of the father with the broken leg and his son with the broken leg."
"The title is 'The Cost of the Monroe Audit'."
"I want everyone in Pennsylvania to see what Monroe's compliance audit has actually brought to Pennsylvania."
Leo hung up the phone.
He walked to the window and looked at the sky outside.
He knew that Monroe must be furious in his Harrisburg office right now.
The lieutenant governor, who had been hiding behind the scenes and thought he could use the rules to destroy them, was finally dragged into the quagmire.
Now, everyone's in the mud.
It all comes down to who can hold their breath longer and who can tolerate more filth.
Leo is very confident about this.
Because he originally crawled out of the mud.
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