More than a Rally Location: Care, Community, and Social Infrastructure in Butler, Pennsylvania
By Colby King
This presidential campaign cycle has brought national attention to several towns and small cities across the US. From Butte, Nebraska (2020 Census population of 286) where Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz graduated from high school in a class of 25 students, to Springfield, Ohio (2020 Census population of 58,662), which has recently entered national conversation after Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance spread lies about the community’s immigrant population.
Another small city that has become part of the national conversation during this campaign cycle is Butler, Pennsylvania (2020 Census population of 13,502). The Trump campaign held a rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds on July 13, at which a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump, killing Corey Comperatore, a local firefighter, and injuring others. Trump returned to the Butler Farm Show grounds in early October for another rally twelve weeks after the shooting, bringing more attention to Butler.
I want to share more about Butler because every place has more than a single story--and because I’m from Butler.
I grew up in Brady Township, between the city of Butler and the borough of Slippery Rock. I went to school in Slippery Rock, but we went to Butler to see the doctor and to get groceries. My dad grew up in Butler, graduating from Butler High school in 1970, and then, as I described in this ESB piece, he worked as a technician at Armco, later AK-Steel, and now Cleveland-Cliffs Butler Works.
Decades ago, Armco Steel and the Pullman Standard plant (where my grandfather worked in the railyard), together employed upwards of 10,000 people. Today, Pullman is gone, and about 1,100 people remain employed at the steel plant. I have heard a joke that Butler’s economy today is all auto repair and elder care, but that is also an oversimplification of the diverse and caring community of Butler.
In this report, Charlie Wolfson illustrates the town’s rich history and points of pride, from hosting board game conventions, to being the home of the Bantam Jeep. It has problems beyond industrial decline, including segregation and inequality. In 2012, KKK fliers were distributed in two mobile home parks in the area. And of course, reporting around the rallies has explored ongoing partisan political disagreement.
If you took a drive around Butler with my dad, though, he would point to houses all over town and explain which of his coworkers lived where and how they made out in life. As a lifelong union Democrat, he’ll sharply criticize Trump and his campaign. He will also tell you about how he feels his union (his coworkers) worked together to protect jobs and improve their working conditions over his years at the mill, something that UAW Local 3303 is still doing today.
To see to what local labor market data reveal about Butler today, I examined the data using the US Census’s interactive data website. The boundaries for the city of Butler are pretty small, and do not include many surrounding neighborhoods that most residents would consider part of the Butler community. I selected six places – the city of Butler, and neighboring Homeacre-Lyndora and Meadowood. I know that many of my dad’s coworkers lived in the Shanor-Northvue area, so I added that, Oak Hills since it is even closer to the mill, and Meridian, where the farm show grounds are just to the west of. Here is a map of each place I gathered data from:
I looked at employment for all workers 16 years or older in the civilian workforce, and both part and full-time workers. Indeed, service work and care work make up much more of the area’s economy today than manufacturing. Here are a few illustrative data points:
- Looking at Industry categories:
- 12.89% of the area’s workforce is employed in Manufacturing.
- 25.84% is employed in Educational Services, and Health Care and Social Assistance.
- 15.91% of the area’s workforce is employed in Retail.
- If you combine Arts and entertainment with all other service industry categories with both of those, you get about two thirds of the workforce (67.95%).
- Looking at Occupation categories:
- Two categories are representative of the kinds of jobs we imagine when we think of manufacturing work (Natural Resources, Construction, and Maintenance occupations with Production, Transportation, and Material Moving Occupations), and together they represent 23.65% of the area’s workforce.
- In comparison, if you combine the broad Service occupations category with Education, Legal, Community Service, Arts, and Media occupations, you get 29.49% the area’s workforce.
- Looking at more narrow occupation categories, Production occupations (the category in which I think we would find most of the laborers at the steel mill) comprise 6.59% of the area’s jobs. For comparison, that’s almost the same percentage as Food Preparation and Serving Related occupations, which is 6.71%, and Educational Instruction, and Library occupations, which is 6.50%.
The city of Butler is the county seat; It has the county courthouse, the county jail, the Butler area library, the farm show grounds and the fairgrounds, and Butler County Community College are all in the area, too. These are all examples of what sociologist Erik Klinenberg calls social infrastructure, which I have written about previously here. So, while the Butler area has experienced industrial disinvestment and substantial economic shifts, the Butler community, its people, and the social infrastructure support the whole county and the broader region.
My friends who live and work in the Butler community today illustrate the kinds of social infrastructure and care work that characterize Butler today. My friend Eric was a year ahead of me in high school and served as the editor of the school newspaper. He has worked for about a decade as a home health aide, assisting adults with special needs.
My high school classmate Josh is the vice president for student affairs and enrollment management at Butler County Community College, supporting student success and widening opportunities for people in the region. Also, Lee, a classmate (and historically a partisan foil) of mine during our years at nearby Westminster College, today is a pastor who lives on his family farm in Butler. Motivated by the rally shooting, which occurred just across town, he has expressed concern about how Trump has normalized “vitriol” and “acceptable violence,” and has joined in efforts with Evangelicals for Harris. You can see him tend to his cows and chickens and take in some beautiful western PA views and hear him discuss these issues in this video.
So, when I look at the local economy in and around Butler today, both when I’m there in person, and when I’m looking at the data, I see an area that is largely comprised of service workers and care providers. Manufacturing is still a substantial piece of the area’s economy, but many of the people of Butler today are caring for and serving their neighbors, carrying on the sense of community and solidarity that I saw through my dad and his coworkers.
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