Carrying the Weight of What We Build

On International Workers’ Day

International Workers’ Day has never fully taken hold in the United States in the same way it has across much of the world, where the labor movement marks it with large-scale labor marches and demonstrations. I became aware of it during the May Day Parade in Polish Hill, a community in Pittsburgh, PA, when living there years ago.

There was always something slightly chaotic and beautiful about it. There are handmade floats, people in costumes that make no sense until they do, and music that is at once joyful and defiant. You can show up unsure what you are walking into and leave feeling like you have been part of something that mattered.

It’s not polished or institutional, but people showing up to mark something they believe is worth remembering. This year, the theme is Stay Bright, the Storm is Here: Prep the Soil, Light the Path. It feels right, because the questions behind May Day haven’t gone anywhere. They are still with us, embedded in how work and development unfold across the country. At their core, they ask: how do we make work dignified, safe, and in service of the people doing it, not just the capital behind it? Those questions come into sharper focus when decisions about industry and investment become unavoidable. And right now, those moments are happening more often.

What We Are Building Right Now

Across the country, communities are being asked to absorb a new wave of development: battery plants, data centers, solar fields, and large-scale energy infrastructure. The case for these projects is often framed around jobs and national priorities, tied to supply chains and a broader shift in how the economy functions. They are not wrong in principle, and a broad, resilient economy depends on this kind of investment. But the jobs argument is rarely unpacked, and the following questions are often left unclear: What kinds of jobs are being created, and who has access to them? Are they stable, safe, and family-sustaining, and what is required of workers to take them on, including the skills, working conditions, and risks involved? Every one of these projects lands in a specific place, and it is the people in that place, especially workers, who are asked to absorb and adjust to what follows.

The conversation around these developments expands quickly. Residents show up to public meetings and interviews with a level of specificity not found in any report. They talk about where water actually sits after a storm, how traffic backs up at certain times of day, and how land has been used for decades, regardless of its zoning. They are describing lived experience. At a certain point, the question shifts and moves beyond whether a project meets the requirements and into something harder to define. Does this actually fit here, and who gets to decide what “fit” means?

What We Count and What We Don’t

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Because the weight of what we build does not disappear, it settles somewhere.

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Economic development tends to answer that question with numbers–jobs created, capital investment, and regional growth. Those metrics matter, but they do not always tell you who carries the impact.

While the benefits of a project often extend outward, the effects stay local, and people carry them in very specific ways: longer commutes, higher utility demand, and changes to air, water, and land that shape daily life. The people who take on the most risk and make the greatest adjustments to their routines have the least control over the outcome of a project. We also know these changes and adjustments appear unevenly. The same communities that have absorbed past rounds of investment and disinvestment are often asked to absorb more. That gap between what we measure and what people experience is where tension starts, and it is also where history has the most to teach us.

What History Already Told Us

I kept coming back to that imbalance, so I reached out to Dr. Lou Martin, a labor historian at Chatham University who studies working-class communities in Appalachia, particularly in coal and industrial regions. He did not hesitate when I asked about how workers understood the burden.

The work itself, he said, was rarely the issue. It was everything around it: unpredictable hours, inconsistent wages, and a lack of control over schedules and conditions. When certain industries later became associated with stability, it was because those conditions improved, not because the work changed.

That reframes much of how we talk about “bringing jobs” to a community. Jobs are not neutral. The conditions around them are the result of human decisions by employers, policymakers, and investors that determine whether workers have reliable income, predictable schedules, a sense of control, or experience ongoing strain.

He also pointed to something that feels uncomfortably familiar. Communities often tolerate long-term environmental or health risks when those risks are gradual. Immediate disruptions get attention. Slower, cumulative changes are harder to organize around, even when they matter more over time.

Place Carries Memory

What Dr. Martin’s work makes clear is that industries do not just create jobs. They shape entire places. In Appalachia, coal shaped housing, infrastructure, and social life. Entire communities were built around it, and even as the industry declined, its imprint remained. That history does not disappear when a new project is proposed. It sits underneath the conversation.

At Fourth Economy, we see this constantly. Communities carry history, capacity, and, in many cases, accumulated burden from past decisions that were never fully resolved.

Where We Keep Getting It Wrong

There is a pattern in how we approach economic development: when investment shows up, we feel pressure to move quickly, to attract it, reduce costs, offer incentives, and get the deal done, but that urgency keeps the focus on the project itself rather than what it asks of the people and places it lands in. 

The regions growing in more stable ways are doing more than closing deals; they are preparing for them by investing in workforce, infrastructure, housing, and the conditions that shape daily life, and by thinking about what happens before a project arrives and long after it is announced. They are remediating past harms–cleaning up contaminated ecosystems, implementing public health interventions, providing social services to affected residents–while they pursue new economic opportunities.

Where this breaks down most clearly is during periods of transition, when leaders encourage new industries while older ones decline without a plan for the people or places tied to them. We have seen this play out across manufacturing and coal communities, where job losses, environmental damage, and long-term health impacts didn’t disappear but instead concentrated and lingered. That is what makes this moment more complicated than it is often framed; the shift toward new energy systems and advanced industries is necessary, but it is happening in places that already carry the weight of past decisions. 

Often, the easiest path forward is to site projects on public land, even though public land is a shared resource that has long-term value for a community. This is not just a technical decision about developing a new industry; it is a question of stewardship and what other long-term uses the land could support. The real challenge is not a lack of information but how we simultaneously weigh economic returns, environmental change, and lived experience, especially for the people most directly affected. Therefore, the starting point has to shift toward more direct questions: what has this community already absorbed, and what is it being asked to carry now?

Back to May Day

May Day is never just a celebration; it is a reminder. Work shapes lives, but it also shapes places. What we build and how we build it leave a mark that people notice.

If you are in Pittsburgh, the parade is still happening. It always will, in some form or another—this year, on May 2 at noon.

If you are in Erie, PA, there is another way to step into that conversation. On Friday, May 1 at 6:00 PM, the Erie Research Team is hosting an event at St. Paul’s Cathedral focused on worker ownership and cooperative development. It is part of International Workers’ Day, but more than that, it is about exploring what it means to build systems in which control, benefit, and responsibility are shared. Fourth Economy is proud to support it. If you are nearby, come.

And if you are working through these questions in your own community, reach out to us: Fourth Economy | Connect with Our Team

This is the work we do every day. Not just helping places grow, but helping them do it in a way that accounts for what they have carried and what they are being asked to hold next. Because the weight of what we build does not disappear, it settles somewhere.