Our Towns

- This journey really started back in 2011.

We'd been living in China for about five years

traveling and reporting for "The Atlantic" magazine.

When we came back to the U.S.,

we wanted to look at our own country the same way.

- We're coming back at the end of the recession.

America was still trying to find its balance,

trying to find its way back.

We decided to go out and see what was going on

in small-town or even big-town America.

We were looking for towns

that had some kind of story to tell.

Something had happened to them,

often involving some economic shock.

- Jim put a posting on his blog...

- Saying, "Tell us the story of your town."

Within a week, we got a thousand essays,

people saying...

Not just, "Come to my town,"

but, "Here's the story of my town.

"Here's the passion of my town.

Here's why you have to come and visit my town."

- "Here is why the story of my town

is the American story of this era."

- We thought there must be something going on in America

that so many people wanted to talk about their hometowns.

We had a little plane

that we'd been flying for about 20 years

and thought, "This would be a great way to go to places

where you can only get to easily in a small plane."

We decided to do what we had always done in China.

Go out, get connected with not what you'd find

in the national media, but what we would find

in the daily lives of people in these towns.

- We went to these places before the pandemic,

but what we saw about how towns rise and fall

and fight to recover has a lot to say to our world right now

as we try to create a new future for ourselves.

- When people ask me where I'm from,

I always say I'm from California.

They say, "Well, where?" and I say, "Near Los Angeles."

They say, "Well, where?"

I say, "Well, from the Inland Empire."

And that will stop 'em because the Inland Empire

is a place that people don't know.

Start driving inland from Los Angeles

towards Palm Springs.

You get to the area where

it's much flatter, it's much hotter.

It's sort of just the fringe of the Mojave Desert.

People in Los Angeles or San Francisco would think

that's where the hicks of California live

and just zoom on through

when they see what looks like some sun-blasted hellscape.

I think being from here has really shaped my self-image

as a sense of being from a place

most people have either never heard of

or if they have heard of it, they often look down on it.

I knew growing up how proud people in our town were

of a place everybody else thought of

just as drive-through country or flyover country.

As Deb and I have gone to other parts of the country,

I feel as if, "Yeah, I know what it's like

"here in South Dakota.

I know what it's like here in West Virginia"--

the same pride and awareness of how you're seen.

My own hometown is Redlands,

which is near Riverside, which is growing,

and San Bernardino, which used to be the economic powerhouse

of the Inland Empire.

But San Bernardino was brought down

by a long string of problems and seriously bad luck.

How many cities

have had an interstate highway literally move away from them?

When Jim was growing up,

this was Norton Air Force Base.

At its peak, Norton supported 12,000 jobs

and poured a couple of billion dollars

into the surrounding towns.

The base closed in '94.

Now it's home to a scrapyard for old planes

that will never fly again.

After all its losses,

San Bernardino declared bankruptcy in 2012.

- I've spent most of my life in San Bernardino.

This place was thriving when the base was open.

When the base closed down,

it put us in an economic chokehold.

San Bernardino gets a black eye

because, you know, we had the terrorist shootings.

There's a lot of gang activity.

So this is the neighborhood that we live in.

- This is Project Fighting Chance.

We have five national champions,

a junior Olympic gold medalist.

We're a safe haven. We feed the kids.

We have a chess club. We have a art program.

Can I get a light blue?

- We have our Guitars Not Guns program.

I knew there was a catch.

There's always a catch, buddy.

- They think, "Oh, this is just a boxing gym."

But that's far from the truth.

We are trying to be a part

of fixing what needs to be fixed around here.

- A lot of America's citrus fruits

come from the Inland Empire.

The groves and packing houses

have relied on immigrant workers

and been a source of jobs for them.

- When I grew up in Mexico, we barely could afford shoes.

My dad picked the family up, we traveled to California.

I've been in the citrus business for 45 years.

I started when I was 15 years old.

Now I am the manager at Redlands Foothill Groves

and probably the biggest grower.

The people that work here, 99% are immigrant people.

They do go back to Mexico, like, mainly for Christmas.

But we have employees that have been with us

over 30 years, and that's really hard to find.

I've seen a big change in the last two, three years.

We used to have people waiting in line

to go and pick in the field.

Right now if I need two people by tomorrow,

I'll be lucky to get one if I do.

The lack of labor is forcing us a lot

to look for automatic machines.

I know of one packing house,

they run almost with no people now--

all automatic.

- A huge amount of the stuff we all buy

is made in Asia, shipped through LA,

then brought to the Inland Empire

for distribution to the rest of the country.

Land here is flat and cheap-- perfect for warehouses.

For San Bernardino to get back on its feet,

new jobs for warehouse workers,

delivery people, and truckers are critical.

But those jobs are also

the ones most at risk for being automated.

- We're expecting that the future of automation

will attack specifically those jobs.

Think about self-driving trucks...

the levels of automation in the warehouses,

office, sales jobs, restaurants--

income inequality will worsen.

So, if we don't manage to get an area like San Bernardino

back on its feet, it will be really troublesome,

because then all the other areas

will also get into economic hardship.

And just think about what will happen

if places like Minnesota or Michigan in the winter

see large levels of unemployment

and possibly forced homelessness

for economic reasons.

They're not going to stay in Michigan in January.

They will come south into the sun.

We've seen homelessness

everywhere we've been in the U.S.

It's especially bad in California.

Volunteers in San Bernardino take part in an annual census

to count people experiencing homelessness.

It's a national program called in the Point-in-Time Count.

- Good morning. all: Good morning.

Everybody nice and warm? Ready to hit the streets here?

I cannot thank you enough for what you're doing

so we can help those people that are out there.

Without you counting them,

showing us where they are, who they are,

we can't get the resources to them to help them.

- Hello. Good morning.

- Good morning, sir. - Good morning, sir.

- Be extremely careful. You're waking somebody up.

Maybe you're walking into a camp.

Just like somebody walking into your living room,

that's their little, sacred area.

- Would you mind taking a survey with us?

Sure.

- We have a film crew from HBO here.

Would you mind getting filmed? - No.

And how old are you?

- 63. - Okay.

Did you sleep outdoors last night?

Of course.

I've been homeless 25 years. - Wow.

- I can't be indoors. I don't know how to be indoors.

Do you have any income?

- Retirement. - Disability? Oh, retirement?

How much per month would you say?

300.

- I'm 60 years old. August 21, 1958.

- Oh, okay. Hispanic or Latina?

- Azteca Mexicana, Cherokee Indian,

San Bernardino.

Native American. Okay.

Do you have a spouse or partner who is also homeless

and living with you?

- No. - No?

- I'm by myself. - Mm.

Have you tested positive for HIV?