The city's only places to eat are the kind that measure customers by the millions. So many businesses have left that when the president stopped by on his poverty tour, the best example of a positive economic growth that the city could come up with was a new Walgreen's. The unemployment rate is more than 10 percent, twice the national average. President Clinton, with an entourage that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson and several cabinet members, promised that East St. Louis would not be forgotten. But while his brief visit has yielded little concrete change, residents overwhelmingly vote Democratic, all the time.
Few people have anything but praise for the president's gestures toward their city.
We live in this city because we believe in it. The stigma is something we're trying to get away from. Told that the city looks grim, Mr. Lewis and other residents talk about how much it has improved from 10 years ago. The police cars did not have working radios and the fire engines would not run. Trash was piled high in the streets because the city had no money to hire haulers.