The Heartland Center
Thomas M. Gannon, S.J., Director
Clifford A. Grammich, Director of Research
7128 Arizona Ave., Room 204
Hammond, Ind. 46323
(219) 844-7515
(219) 844-7566 fax
E-mail: heartlandC@aol.com

The Calumet region of Northwestern Indiana and Northeastern Illinois where the Calumet River flows into Lake Michigan, known to locals as "duh Region" and to most of the nation as "Gary," is strongly fragmented along racial, social and economic lines. Gary, Ind., is largely black; Hammond, Ind., is working-class white; and a lot of Spanish is spoken in East Chicago, Ill. Social mobility has seen a move southward by the working-class, Polish-American whites who once staffed the region's steel mills, and this factor, with suburbanization of the region's once-rural southern stretches, has turned the Borman Expressway, I-80/94, into a racial divide that many blacks and whites alike feel uncomfortable about crossing.

Exacerbating this mix was the demise of the American steel industry during the 1980s, when in less than four years' time, the region saw the loss of 54 percent of its industrial jobs to downsizing and modernization, as the industry reinvented itself in a more profitable if less humane form that sees only 40 percent of the original labor force actually producing more steel than ever before.

Into this arena in 1987 came three Jesuit priests from the Chicago Province, invited by the Bishop of Gary to set up a center for "outreach and analysis" that would help promote a better understanding of the Catholic church's social teachings. Initially, the priests began by organizing small Christian communities based on principles of liberation theology, but they soon moved to studying the social issues of poverty and its impact on the people of the region, a decision that evolved quickly into research. Since Father Gannon's arrival in 1990, Heartland Center's central focus has been on policy research, based on identifying problems and seeking solutions.

With the mission of "working in solidarity with all segments of society, especially the poor, to construct a more just and human society," Heartland Center publishes solid, comprehensive reports on its research into local and regional social issues, with the goal of "providing the critical and systematic analysis necessary for shaping public policy and effective action for social change."

"We proceeded on the assumption," Gannon said, "that if you don't know what's going on in the region, you can't design programs to address the problems that are really there. We knew there was a poverty problem, but we didn't know its dimensions or how it differed among communities."

The organization already published reports have gone a long way toward filling this information gap. Recent documents have covered "Poverty in Northwest Indiana" (Winter 1993); "Hoosier Poor Support" (a study of welfare issues, borrowing David Elwood's title, Spring 1994); "On Many Edges -- the Hispanic Population of Indiana" (Winter 1996); and "Communities at Risk, Crime in Northwest Indiana" (Spring 1997).

Heartland also helped organize the Northwest Indiana Council on Urban Affairs, a regional coalition; and works with the Regional Round Table for Sustainable Development, developing a regional "Quality of Life Index." Heartland publishes a quarterly newsletter and sponsors frequent workshops; and it also serves as the Office of Peace and Justice for the Diocese of Gary.

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