The Indiana Century Corps | Indiana Century S1E8

Who builds America? The roads, the bridges, the power plants, the rail lines. Who pours the concrete and turns the wrenches? Who shows up every day and does the work that makes everything else possible?

Right now, the answer is complicated. We rely on private contractors, out-of-state crews, a patchwork of trades that varies by region and project. The average age of a skilled trades worker in Indiana is pushing fifty. Major projects get delayed because there aren't enough workers. Small towns can't find electricians or plumbers or heavy equipment operators. The people who know how to build things are retiring, and there's no one behind them.

The Indiana Century Corps is our proposed answer. A civilian builder-operator corps. Not the National Guard. Not the military. A sovereign workforce, owned and operated by the people of Indiana, trained to build and maintain everything we've been talking about.

The ICC has four branches. The Energy Corps, based at Purdue, trains reactor operators, fuel handlers, grid operators. The Connectivity Corps, based at Grissom with a dedicated High-Speed Rail Institute, trains rail operators, track crews, fiber splicers. The Agriculture Corps, based at Vincennes and regional hubs, trains hemp processors, co-op managers, carbon measurement technicians. The Resilience Corps, based at Regional Health Hubs, trains community health workers, Clinic-in-a-Van operators, Animal Corps members.

Every member goes through twelve weeks of boot camp at Grissom. Not military, but disciplined. Safety, teamwork, the builder's mindset. Then eighteen to twenty-four months of A-school. Then assignment to a crew. Then advancement: crew member to journeyman to master to leadership.

Where do the people come from? Young people who need a path. Veterans who need a mission. Displaced workers who need new skills. Rural kids who want to stay home. And the inmate pipeline: non-violent offenders released under cannabis legalization become the first ICC class. They go to Atterbury, live in one set of barracks, repair and update the next set. They learn construction skills from union journeymen. Then they move to Grissom and build the ICC boot camp itself. The next class moves into Atterbury. The cycle continues. People who were written off become builders.

Featured book: A History of America in 10 Strikes by Erik Loomis. A labor history that grounds the ICC in the long struggle for worker dignity. The sanitation workers in Memphis carried signs that said "I Am a Man." That's what the ICC is about. Not just jobs. Dignity. Not just skills. Purpose.

IndianaCentury.org

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Indiana Century Podcast, hosted by Corey Easterday. Episode eight. The Indiana Century Corps. Part one. Who builds? There's a question that does not get asked enough in politics. We're not talking about left versus right, Democrat vs. Republican, not who pays or who benefits or who gets the credit. The question is who builds? Who builds the roads? Who builds the bridges? Who builds the power plants and the rail lines and the broadband networks? Who pours the concrete, pulls the cable, turns the wrenches? Who shows up every day and does the work that makes everything else possible? Right now, the answer is complicated. We rely on private contractors, on out-of-state crews, on a patchwork of trades that vary by region and by project. On a workforce that's aging out faster than new people are coming in. On a system that treats infrastructure as something you hire someone else to build and not something you build yourself. And, let's put it bluntly, it's not working. Look at the numbers. The average age of a skilled trades worker in Indiana is pushing 50. The number of young people entering apprenticeships has been flat for a decade. Major projects get delayed because there aren't enough workers. Small towns can't find electricians or plumbers or heavy equipment operators. The people who know how to build things are retiring and there's no one behind them. This isn't just a labor shortage, it's a capacity crisis. You can't build a high-speed rail line if you don't have people who know how to lay track. You can't operate a fleet of small modular reactors if you don't have reactor operators. You can't run a hemp processing co-op if you don't have people who understand the machinery. You can't staff a rural health hub if you don't have community health workers. All of the pillars we've talked about in this series energy, sovereignty, connectivity revolution, agricultural renaissance, health and compassion, and the funding flywheel, they all depend on one thing that none of them can create by themselves. People, trained people, skilled workers, committed workers, people who see the work not as a job but as a calling, people who take pride in building something that lasts, people who stay in Indiana because this is where the work is, where the purpose is, and where the future is. So here's my question for this episode. What if we built the workforce ourselves? What if we created something that doesn't exist anywhere else in America? A sovereign workforce, owned and operated by the people of Indiana, trained to build and maintain everything we've been talking about? What if we built the Indiana Century Corps? Part two Labor and Dignity Before I tell you what the Indiana Century Corps is, I want to talk about why it matters, not just practically, not just economically, but morally. There's a long history in this country of workers being treated as disposable, replaceable, interchangeable. You need hands, you hire them. You don't need them anymore, you let them go. The work itself doesn't matter. The worker doesn't matter. Only the output matters. That history is told in this episode's featured book A History of America in Ten Strikes by Eric Loomis. This book, published at a time when strikes and labor actions at warehouses, hospitals, and factories are once again front page news, challenges all our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. Labor historian Eric Loomis recounts ten critical strikes from the Lowell Mill Girls Strike in the eighteen thirties to Justice for Janitors in nineteen ninety, in chapters that are self-contained enough to be used on their own in union trainings or reading groups, and adds an appendix detailing the 150 most important strikes in American history. These labor uprisings don't just reflect their times, but our own, where American workers are still fighting for basic rights like a livable minimum wage. We can draw lessons from the victories and defeats of the past by studying our history, told here from the boots up. In this book, Loomis tells the story of American labor through ten pivotal moments when workers stood up and said, We matter, we deserve dignity, we deserve a share of what we build. The textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1830s, where young women working 14 hour days organized for better conditions. The railroad strike of 1877, which started in West Virginia and spread across the country, shutting down the economy and forcing the nation to confront the power of organized workers. The Pullman Strike of 1894, where workers in a company town fought back against wage cuts and high rents, and Eugene Debs led a boycott that paralyzed rail traffic nationwide. The Triangle Fire of 1911, where one hundred and forty six garment workers died because the factory doors were locked, mostly young immigrant women, and their deaths sparked a revolution in workplace safety. The Flint sit down strike of nineteen thirty six, where auto workers occupied General Motors plants for forty four days, refusing to leave, defending the machines with their bodies, and winning recognition for the United Auto Workers. The Memphis sanitation strike of nineteen sixty eight, where black workers marched for better pay and safer conditions, carrying signs that simply said I am a man. That was the point. They were demanding to be seen as human beings. Dr. King was in Memphis supporting them when he was killed. But there's one strike in Loomis's book that doesn't look like the others. One moment when workers didn't walk off the job, they walked off the plantation. During the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people in the South did something remarkable. They freed themselves. They withdrew their labor from the Confederacy. They walked toward Union lines, toward freedom, toward a future they could build themselves. Loomis calls this the greatest strike in American history, not because it fit the usual pattern, but because it transformed the country. Those self emancipated workers forced Lincoln's hand. They turned the war to preserve the Union into a war to end slavery. They built their own freedom by refusing to accept the role they'd been given. Here's what Loomis understands that a lot of people miss. Work isn't just about money. It's about dignity. It's about being able to look at what you've done and feel pride. It's about knowing that your labor matters, that you're contributing to something bigger than yourself. When workers are treated as disposable, they lose that. They lose themselves. The strikes Loomis describes weren't just about wages or hours. They were about respect, about being treated as human beings, about having some control over your own life. The enslaved people who walked toward Union lines weren't just seeking physical freedom. They were seeking the dignity of owning their own labor, of building their own lives, of being seen as people instead of property. That's what we've lost in so much of America, not just jobs or skills, but the sense that the work that you do matters, that you're part of something, that what you build will outlast you. The Indiana Century Corps is an attempt to get that back, not by romanticizing the past, but by building something new, a workforce that's trained to a standard, treated with respect, and given work that matters. Work that builds the future of Indiana, work that your kids will see and use. Work that you can point to and say, I did that. That's dignity. That's what Loomis's book is really about, the long struggle of American workers to be seen as people and not just hands. The ICC is the next chapter. Part three. What is the Indiana Century Corps? So what is the Indiana Century Corps? Let me lay it out. The ICC is a civilian builder operator corps, different from the National Guard, different from the military, different from a regular state agency. It's a workforce, a training pipeline, and a culture all in one. The mission is to build, operate, and maintain the infrastructure of the Indiana Century, the energy systems, the rail lines, the fiber network, the agricultural processing facilities, the rural health infrastructure, everything we've been talking about in this series. The ICC would have four main branches mirroring the pillars of the Indiana Century. First is the Energy Corps, based at Purdue University, reactor operators, fuel handlers, maintenance technicians, grid operators, the people who run the small modular reactors and manage the fuel cycle, trained to Navy nuclear standards, the highest in the world. Second is the Connectivity Corps, based at Grissom Air Reserve Base with a dedicated high speed rail institute, rail operators, track maintenance crews, signal technicians, fiber splicers, and logistics coordinators, the people who run the trains and maintain the network. Third is the Agricultural Corps based at Vincens University and at regional processing hubs around the state, hemp processors, co op managers, carbon measurement technicians, and equipment operators, the people who turn farm products into manufactured goods and keep that value in Indiana. And fourth, the Resilience Corps, based at regional health hubs around the state, community health workers, clinic in a van operators, animal corps members, emergency responders, the people who deliver care to every corner of Indiana. Every member of the ICC goes through the same foundation. Twelve weeks at Grissom Air Reserve Base, a boot camp, but not military boot camp, it's a civilian boot camp. We have a common set of standards for safety, discipline, teamwork, and the builder's mindset. Everyone learns the same basics, the same values, the same expectations. Then they go to their A school, their advanced training for eighteen to twenty four months, depending on the track. After training, they're assigned to a crew. They work under journeyman, learn on the job, build real projects. Over time, they advance. Crew member to journeyman to master to leadership. The people who start on the ground can end up running the whole operation. That's the point. Now, here's the thing that makes this different from any other training program. The ICC isn't just about skills, it's about identity. It's about being a part of something bigger than yourself. It's about the pride that comes from building something that lasts, something your kids and grandkids will use, something that makes Indiana stronger. The labor history Loomis writes about is full of that pride. The textile workers who knew they were making cloth that clothed the country, the railroad workers who knew they were building the continent together. The auto workers who knew they were building the machines that moved America. They had dignity because their work had meaning. That is what we are building. Not just a workforce, a community making machine, a place where people from every corner of Indiana, from every background, from every walk of life can come together and build something together. Part four. So where do we find people to fill the ICC? The short answer is everywhere. Young people, start with high school graduates, kids who aren't sure what's next, kids who don't want a four-year degree, but don't want to be stuck in dead end jobs either. Kids who want to learn a trade, earn a living, and do something meaningful. The ICC gives them a path, paid training from day one, a credential that means something, a career ladder that goes somewhere, and no debt. Indiana has about sixty thousand high school graduates every year. Maybe half go to college, the other half, some go straight to work, some bounce between jobs, some get stuck. The ICC offers them a third option join the corps, learn a skill, build a career. Next are veterans. Military veterans already have the discipline, the training, the sense of mission. They just need a place to apply it. The ICC is a natural fit. Veterans who operated nuclear reactors in the Navy, direct pipeline to the Energy Corps, veterans who managed logistics, connectivity corps, veterans who served as medics, resilience corps. The ICC can be the place where veterans continue their service, this time to Indiana. We can use displaced workers. Indiana's economy is changing. Coal plants are closing. Old industries are fading. Workers who spent twenty years in one line of work suddenly need a new one. The ICC can be that new one. Retrain a coal plant operator to run a small modular reactor. Retrain an auto worker to maintain rail lines. Retrain a factory worker to process hemp. The skills they have, discipline, safety culture, mechanical aptitude, those translate. The ICC gives them a place to land. We can work with rural and small town Indiana. Young people leave rural Indiana because there's nothing there. No jobs, no future, no reasons to stay. The ICC puts infrastructure in those towns, rail stations, health hubs, processing co-ops, fiber networks, and those facilities need people to run them. Rural kids can stay rural. They don't have to move to Indy or leave the state. They can build a career where they grew up. Next is the inmate pipeline. This is where it gets interesting. Indiana has about twenty five thousand people in prison. Many of them are nonviolent offenders. Many of them will get out someday. Many of them want a different life when they do get out. But they face barriers, no skills, no connections, no one willing to hire them. Recidivism is high in Indiana. The cycle repeats. Now, here's where cannabis legalization comes in. When we legalize cannabis, and we will, as part of the funding flywheel, thousands of nonviolent offenders will be eligible for release. People serving time for possession, for distribution, for offenses that won't be crimes anymore. They will get out with nothing, no skills, no savings, no plan. That's a recipe for going straight back into prison for another reason. The ICC offers a different path, pre-release recruitment. While they're still inside, they learn about the corps, they sign up, they commit. Then, when they're released, they don't just hit the street, they go to Atterbury. Part 5. Building while learning. Let me walk you through how this works, because it's the most practical, most elegant part of this whole plan. Atterbury, south of Indianapolis, has military barracks. Old buildings, some are in decent shape, some that need work. They're sitting there, owned by the state or federal government, not being used for much. The first ICC class comes from the population of nonviolent offenders released under cannabis legalization. Maybe a hundred people to start. They go to Atterbury. They live in one set of barracks. Their job? Repair and update the next set. Just think about that for a second. They are learning construction skills by actually doing construction. Framing, drywall, electrical, plumbing, roofing, all the trades. They're working alongside union journeymen who come in as instructors and supervisors. The unions provide the expertise. The corps members provide the labor. Everyone learns. They finish one building. They move to the next. By the time they've been in Atterbury for six months or a year, they've learned real skills. They've done real work. They've got something to show for it. And they've got a record, not of incarceration, but of production. They can point at buildings and say I helped build that. Now, here's the next step. When they graduate from Atterbury, they don't go back home. They go to Grissom, Air Reserve Base, because Grissom is where the ICC boot camp is going to be. But right now, Grissom doesn't have the facilities to house and train hundreds of recruits. So the first Atterbury class goes to Grissom. Their job is to build the ICC boot camp. They build the barracks, they build the classrooms, they build all of the training facilities. They build the place where the next generation of corps members will be formed. And while they're building it, they keep learning. More advanced skills, more responsibility, more leadership. Meanwhile, the next class moves into Atterbury. They live in the buildings the first class repaired. They start repairing the next set. The cycle continues. Over time, Atterbury gets fully renovated. Grissom gets fully built out. The core members get fully trained. And when regular boot camp finally opens at Grissom, it's been built by the people who will be its first graduates. They're not just students, they're founders. They can look at every building on that campus and say, I built that. That's dignity. That's pride. That's the opposite of the disposability that Loomis writes about. These aren't people the system threw away. They're people who will build our future system. Part seven. Clear about that. The Atterbury model depends on union journeymen coming in as instructors. Not just teaching from a book, but working alongside core members, showing them how it's done, passing on the skills that take years to develop. That's what unions are good at apprenticeship, mentorship, standards, and quality. The unions get something too, a pipeline of new members, young people, veterans, displaced workers, even former inmates, all trained to a standard, all ready to work, all connected to the trades. The unions have been saying for years that they need more apprentices. The ICC delivers them. And here's the thing about the labor history Loomis writes about. Unions weren't just about wages, they were about dignity, about workers having a voice, about making sure that the people who did the work got a share of what they built. That's exactly what the ICC is about. So we're not competing with unions, we are partnering with them. They provide the expertise, we provide the recruits. They provide the standards, we provide the mission. Together, we build the workforce Indiana needs. Part 8. How we pay for it. So how do we pay for the ICC? Let me walk you through the funding model. First is the 1% surcharge. Every ICC built project includes a 1% surcharge that goes directly to ICC training and operations. When we build a reactor, 1% funds the next generation of reactor operators. When we build a rail line, 1% funds the next generation of rail workers. When we build a health hub, 1% funds the next generation of community health workers. The projects pay for the workforce that builds them. Second is federal grants. The federal government already spends billions on workforce development. The departments of labor, education, energy, transportation, and agriculture. They all have programs that fund exactly this kind of thing. We apply, we compete, we win. That's our tax money, so we should be using it. Third is employer partnerships. Private companies will need ICC graduates. They will pay for access. This isn't poaching, this is partnerships. Companies sponsor training slots, they fund scholarships, they hire graduates at scale. The ICC becomes a pipeline for the entire Indiana economy, not just state projects. Next is the Bank of Indiana. The state owned bank provides patient capital for startup costs, low interest loans that get repaid as the ICC scales and revenue starts coming in. We aren't relying on Wall Street money. We are using Hoosier money for Hoosier workers. Fifth is host community fees. Remember the host community fees from the last couple of episodes? Four to five dollars per megawatt hour from every reactor. Part of that flows to ICC training in the host county. Local kids get trained for local jobs. The community that hosts the infrastructure also hosts the workforce. Next is cannabis revenue. Yes, some of the cannabis revenue that funds the Bank of Indiana and the Future Fund also helps seed the ICC. It's all connected. The same legalization that frees nonviolent offenders also helps pay for their training. The point is we don't need a giant tax increase. We need to be smart about how we use the money that's already flowing. The one percent surcharge alone spread across decades of projects funds the ICC indefinitely. Federal grants cover the startup. Employer partnerships cover expansion. Once the Bank of Indiana is set up, it can help cover the gaps. And cannabis revenue helps launch the entire thing. Here's the thing about investing in people. It pays back. Every ICC graduate earns wages, pays taxes, contributes to the economy. They are not a cost, they are an asset. The more we invest in them, the more that they will produce. Part nine Objections and Responses Let me walk through the objections I hear most about the ICC. Objection one, this is just government overreach. Let private industry train its own workers. Private industry isn't training enough workers. That's why we have shortages. That's why projects get delayed. That's why kids leave the state. Private companies train for their own needs, not for the long-term health of the workforce or for Indiana. The ICC trains for Indiana. There is a difference. Objection two, it'll cost too much. The one percent surcharge means the projects pay for the workforce. Federal grants cover startup, employer partnerships cover expansion. The cost is spread across decades and shared by everyone who benefits. The cost of not training enough workers is higher. Delayed projects, missed opportunities, young people leaving. Objection three, why not just expand existing apprenticeship programs? We should. Apprenticeships are great, but they're fragmented, underfunded, and not connected to a larger mission. The ICC connects training to actual projects. People train on what they will actually build. They are part of something bigger than a single trade, and that is important. Objection four. What about unions? Won't this compete with them? Unions are partners, not competitors. They are providing the instructors. They are setting the standards. Their members are teaching the next generation. The ICC feeds into union apprenticeships, not around them. The labor history Loomis writes about shows what happens when workers have power. Unions built that power. The ICC strengthens it. Objection five. This is just a jobs program. We don't need another jobs program. This isn't make work. This is real work on real projects that need to get done. The jobs exist. The workers don't. The ICC creates the workers. That's not a jobs program. It is workforce development across the state for decades. Objection six. What about the inmate pipeline? You're giving criminals good jobs? We're planning on giving people who made mistakes a chance to do something different. Recidivism costs Indiana millions every year. It destroys families and communities. A job and a purpose is the best anti recidivism program there is. And the alternative letting them out with nothing costs more in every way. The sanitation workers in Memphis were fighting to be seen as men. People coming out of prison are fighting to be seen as something other than their worst mistake. The ICC can help that. Objection seven won't people resent hiring former inmates? Maybe some will, but when they see the work these corps members do, when they see buildings rebuilt, facilities constructed, infrastructure built by people who learned their skills while incarcerated, attitudes change. Nothing changes minds like competence. Nothing builds trust like results. Part ten. More than a job. Here's the thing that we need to understand. The ICC is about culture, about identity, about being part of something. Think about the workers Loomis describes in his book the Lowell Mill Girls, the Railroad workers, the Pullman Strikers, the Flint sit down strikers, the sanitation workers in Memphis. They didn't just have jobs, they had a sense of themselves. They knew they were part of something bigger. The Lowell girls knew they were making cloth that clothed the entire country. The railroad workers knew they were building the continent together. The auto workers knew they were building the machines that moved America. The sanitation workers knew they were keeping their city clean, doing work that had to be done, work that others looked down on, but couldn't live without. That's dignity. Knowing that your work matters, knowing that you're contributing, knowing that what you do is seen and valued. Now, imagine that feeling for someone who came out of prison. Someone who spent years locked up, told they were worthless, told they'd never amount to anything, and then they're standing in front of a building that they built, a barracks where recruits sleep, a classroom where corps members will learn, a facility that will train thousands of Hoosiers for decades, and they can say I built that. That is not just a job. That is redemption, that's transformation, that's the opposite of the cycle that keeps people trapped. The ICC is an attempt to get that back for everyone, not just for the kids who need a path or the veterans who need a mission, for the people who've been written off as well. Because they are Hoosiers too, and Hoosiers build things. That culture doesn't happen by accident. It has to be built. It starts at Atterbury with people learning to build while they build it. It continues at Chrisom with people building the place that will form the next generation. It passes from the first class to the second, from the second to the third, from the founders to the millions who come after. The ICC isn't just a workforce. It's a community making machine. People from different backgrounds, different parts of the state, different life circumstances come together and build something together. They learn to trust each other. They learn to depend on each other. They learn that they're part of something bigger than themselves. That's what's been missing for a long time. The ICC gives it back. Here's where we are. All of the pillars we've talked about in this series energy, connectivity, agriculture, health, funding, they all depend on one thing. People. Trained people, skilled people, committed people, people who see this work not as a job but as a calling. The Indiana Century Corps is how we get those people, not by waiting for the market to produce them, but by building them ourselves. Young people who need a path, veterans who need a mission, displaced workers who need a new skill, rural kids who want to stay at home and work where they grew up, and people coming out of prison who need a second chance. All of them, together, building the next century of Indiana. The Atterbury model is the key. It turns a problem into a solution. It turns incarceration into construction. It turns people who were written off into people who build. And when they're done, they don't just have a certificate, they have a legacy. The history Loomis tells is a history of workers fighting for dignity. The ICC is dignity built into the system from the start. Not something you have to strike for, something you're given because you matter. 1% surcharge on every project, federal grants, employee partnerships, Bank of Indiana, cannabis revenue. The funding is there. The work is there. The need is there. All that is missing is the will. Next week in episode 9, how we pay for it. The deep dive on the funding flywheel. How it all fits together, how the math works, and how we build something that pays for itself. But before we get there, I want you to think about something. The kid in the library parking lot from Episode 7, the farmer who can't get data, the small town that lost its main street, the grandparent who hasn't seen their grandkids in forever. The worker whose plant just closed. The veteran looking for purpose. The person sitting in a cell right now, wondering if there's any way out. They are all waiting. Waiting for someone to build something. Waiting for someone to give them a chance. Waiting for someone to show them a way forward. We can be that someone. Not by waiting, but by building. This is the Indiana Century Podcast. And remember, sovereignty isn't given, it's built in the middle of the way.