Thousands lost their homes in epic fight to build GM's Detroit plant. Now it's closing.

[workinclasszero]

By Kyle Swenson November 27 at 5:46 AM

The once-proud neighborhood was a skeletal wreck. Many of the residents had already bolted, pockets stuffed with fat payouts from the city. Their houses had since been pancaked by wrecking balls. The structures still standing were being picked clean by looters or eaten away by arson. In late spring of 1981, Detroit’s Poletown neighborhood, a working-class grid on the city’s northern lip known as a hub for Polish immigrants and culture, had been reduced to a literal battlefield.

The cause for the deterioration was municipal progress. Auto giant General Motors wanted Poletown’s 465 acres for a brand new plant straddling the line between Detroit and the nearby town of Hamtramck. Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young Jr. was on board, offering to use a new eminent domain law to grab the 1,500 homes and hundreds of businesses. The auto unions were also game. Even the city’s Catholic Archdiocese supported the project, offering to sell off Immaculate Conception Church, the neighborhood parish where mass was still conducted in English and Polish.

But the neighbors were not having it. Led by the Rev. Joseph Karasiewicz, Immaculate Conception’s quiet and humble priest, a loose coalition battled the plant that spring. Defying his own cardinal, Karasiewicz and his allies worked day and night from metal desks in the church basement, searching for a way to save Poletown.

“It’s wrong to cooperate with this type of law in any sort of way,” Karasiewicz told The Washington Post in June 1981. “No one is safe except the man who has the money, to put it bluntly.”

Although today the neighborhood is long gone, the legacy clinging to Poletown has suddenly been reignited following the dramatic news that GM is planning to close five factories and lay off 15,000 workers in North America. The Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant will cease production, putting 1,540 workers in jeopardy, the Detroit Free Press reported.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/27/thousands-lost-their-homes-epic-fight-build-gms-detroit-plant-now-its-closing/

[Sherman A1]

1. Perhaps GM could

level their plant and restore the neighborhood.....

But, of course I'm dreaming that anything like that will ever occur.

[workinclasszero]

2. Yeah dreaming for sure

These companies get away with murder, pay no taxes for 30 years and go out of business in 10 years or whatever.

[Initech]

4. And their CEOs will continue to make 5,000 times what the average worker does.

Because their profit margins jumped a quarter of a point this year, so celebrate!

[workinclasszero]

6. I guess GM's stock jumped up big at the news of all the plant closings

Wall Street always loves to see high wage American jobs dying.

Always.

[sdfernando]

5. Even if GM were to do that....who would be left to buy the houses?

those 1500 out of a job workers?

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Roger and Me redux

[Demsrule86]

7. My son worked at Lordstown (was a new hire a few years ago)...he was laid off

for over a year but was sent to Indiana during the summer thank God...this will devastate Ohio. They probably announced now and not before the election because the SOB Republican elected governor would have lost had it been known...well Ohio, Trump caused the closing of that plant when his tariffs added $1300. per car...now what cars are needed will be made overseas because you can't afford to manufacture here thanks to steel tariffs which are a complete wast of time...as the average steel worker makes $9.00 per hour and it is mostly melting old steel so they are affected as well...so good paying auto jobs go away to be replaced by nothing...fuck you Trump.

[delisen]

8. How to create toxic wastelands-GM Handbook

I walked into a GM showroom in 1989,was treated like a dumb pigeon by a nasty smirking salesman (emphasis on man) who told me what I wanted, while a loudspeaker blasted "Heartbeat of America." I walked out and bought a foreign car.

Entitlement was not a word in wide usage then-but that was what it was.

[Sherman A1]

9. In 2007 I spent a year looking for the best mileage car I could afford

as a commuter. I really wanted to buy an American made vehicle having driven Fords for decades, but there was nothing to be had, so I got a 2008 Toyota Yaris and haven't looked back.

[gratuitous]

10. It's the capitalist cycle of life and death

When the neighborhood was destroyed, GM picked up the land for a song. Now that GM has no further use for the land, they leave a crumbling factory and probably some toxic waste. The government (that is to say, you and me taxpayers) will clean up the land, and sell it to another industrial concern or a developer for cheap, and resume the cycle. We have to have busts so that wealthy people can buy things cheaply.

[msongs]

11. auto unions were also game. supported by archdiocese. and now... nt