Word: east
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last December a task force appointed by Illinois Governor James Thompson declared a financial emergency in East St. Louis and noted, in understatement, "There is growing public concern over the city's ability to provide basic municipal services required to ensure public safety and the welfare of its citizenry." Protested Mayor Officer: "I do all I can with the revenue I have." The task force offered a loan but conditioned it on Officer's accepting a state-approved financial director with total control over city spending. So far Officer has not agreed to that condition, and the municipal crisis deepens...
Antiquated city pumps break down all too regularly, backing up raw sewage into East St. Louis High School and forcing the cancellation of classes. At the Villa Griffin public housing project, a persistent pool of sewage on a playground, dubbed Lake Villa Griffin by angry residents, led to the filing of criminal charges against the city to force sewer repairs. When Mayor Officer failed to appear at a hearing on the matter, a county judge clapped him into jail briefly for contempt...
...wasn't always that bad in East St. Louis. Katherine Dunham, a grande dame of the dance, was able to operate a studio in the city in the late 1960s. Heptathlon gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee recalls a happy childhood there and still returns occasionally from the West Coast to visit friends. But today the hottest ticket in East St. Louis is a ticket out of it. The two high schools produce perennial state champions in football and basketball, putting - a few gifted athletes on the road to college, hoping for stardom in the N.F.L. or N.B.A. For other youngsters...
Over at city hall, Mayor Officer somehow manages to remain determinedly upbeat, citing an ambitious $437 million plan for developing the East St. Louis riverfront that would include a cargo port, recycling center and high- rise apartments overlooking the river and downtown St. Louis. But no work has been done on the project for three years, and the tax-exempt status of the bonds sold to finance it is under review by the Internal Revenue Service. "I'm still optimistic," Officer insists. "We'll haul ourselves up by our bootstraps." But attorney Rex Carr, a lifelong resident of the city...
...came to symbolize everything the West found incomprehensible and baffling about the East: his intense, ascetic spirituality and air of otherworldly detachment; his medieval, theocratic mind-set, which drew its parallels and precedents from the Islamic world of the 7th century; the mystical certitude that he spoke in the name of God, his country and Muslims everywhere...