Thirty miles east of Chicago, a city remains in the dark. As of Monday, Aug. 24, more than 7,000 residents of Gary, Indiana, are without electricity. The outage followed severe storms, which began on Aug. 11 and caused deadly floods in the state that have killed at least seven people.

For two weeks, the people of Gary have been forced to weather the late summer heat without electricity. Many residents have taken to social media to express the direness of this situation.

But what happened in Gary wasn’t just Mother Nature’s doing. Gary residents didn’t just experience a freak weather event. They were victims of layers upon layers of systemic failures that left a vulnerable population to fend for themselves for far too long.

Black people make up nearly 80% of the city's population. One third of the city lives in poverty. Marginalized groups being failed by systems in the wake of a natural disaster is no strange occurrence in America, but as our country's cracks widen, tragedies like these seem more and more inevitable – even intentional.

For more than 50 years, Gary has borne the........

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