Wise up about the region’s recent history
Moreno Valley and San Bernardino used to have a big Air Force base employment sector due to March Air Force base. Then the Cold War ended and President Clinton, the first post-Cold War president, in recognition of this enacted BRAC, Base Realignment And Closure, because the country didn’t need to maintain so many full capacity military bases in the wake of the end of our decades long struggle for power with Russia. So the Inland Empire, being a politically not-that-powerful region for a few reasons ( as a conservative part of a liberal state, it was unlikely to be a factor in flipping the entire state in a given race) was on the chopping block. We were to help pay for America’s peace dividend: and so, March and Norton Air Force Bases two of the area’s most important economic engines had their operations drastically reduced and even partly privatized in terms of the campus’ use if I’m not mistaken.
So we laugh at San Bernardino and Moreno Valley for being ghetto and poor but these are the harsh realities of society: people don’t want to pay for militarism forever and Bill Clinton was actually trying to reduce the military industrial complex’s massive pervasiveness a bit in a time when that was politically sellable. Sometimes unpopular things are the right thing to do, sometimes the right thing to do has unfortunate consequences. Sometimes smaller pictures suffer in service of the bigger picture. I’m not justifying any particular side of a debate on these issues I’m just saying know the context. Know that it’s more than just “haha so ghetto and poor i could never”.
Tristan "Tanjint Wiggy" Acker is a staff writer for Zus Entertainment, a Jooseboxx and Untapped Hip-Hop contributor, and member of the Inland Empire, California based nerdcore hip-hop group the West Coast Avengers
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