I understand business reasons for a company making the tough decisions to close plants, to change product lines, to optimize profitability. But the executives who make these decisions cannot be cavalier about asking/ expecting communities to have an entire area destroyed to accommodate a manufacturing plant, only to have these executives shut it down later without a second thought.
There is such a thing a corporate greed going amok, and this story of what happened to a Detroit neighborhood Poletown in the 1980s, details the cruelty of corporation taking unfair advantage of neighborhoods.
Then there are the Detroit City politicians who for short term election wins were willing to give into all the demands of GM so that they could brag about bringing good jobs to the area but at what cost.
In the 1980s, the entire area called Poletown was seized by local government, away from homeowners and small business with longstanding roots to the area, to make room for a GM factory with the promise of bringing jobs to the area. Over the protests of the local citizens, GM managed to leverage their relationship with the city officials to flatten the vibrant neighborhood and then to plop its factory in its place.
This “job creating” factory for GM ultimately resulted in the huge seizure of taxpayer property in the form a $50 billion dollar cash bailout. But GM was able to build a factory at a lower cost and in a better area with the blessing of their government partners.
The only ones that suffered were the people who’d had their property forcibly taken from them.
Here’s the rest of the story…
On November 27, 2018, NPR published the following report, “Before GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck Plant, There Was The Poletown Neighborhood”
General Motors’
“General Motors’ is slated to close. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with former Detroit Free Press reporter Bill McGraw about the historic Poletown neighborhood it was built in.”
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
“One of the factories where GM is ending production is the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. It straddles the border of Detroit and the city of Hamtramck, and it has a complicated history with both, a history that goes back to the early ’80s, when General Motors wanted to build a plant and settled on a densely populated, working-class neighborhood. That neighborhood was bulldozed. As Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said yesterday, we moved thousands of people out, hundreds of businesses, six churches and a hospital to create that assembly plant. He called the decision to shut it three decades later extremely disappointing. Duggan was quoted in the Detroit Free Press.”
“And to pick up the story, we are joined by a former reporter for the paper, Bill McGraw. Bill McGraw, welcome.”
BILL MCGRAW: Thank you.
KELLY: “So this neighborhood that was bulldozed was called Poletown. Tell me a little bit more about it, what it looked like back around, say, 1980.”
MCGRAW: “Well, the neighborhood was about 2 1/2 miles northeast of downtown. It was an old industrial neighborhood. And by the early 1980s, it was about half African-American and half white. And most of the whites were first-in-generation Poles. But there were also Albanians, people from the former Yugoslavia and Yemenis. And frankly, it was a pretty unusual neighborhood, for Detroit at that time, in its diversity. It was a declining neighborhood – there’s no doubt about that – because it was both a working-class neighborhood and kind of a working-poor neighborhood.”
KELLY: “Now, the people who lived there in Poletown were not happy about this, to put it mildly. This huge fight breaks out between the city and the neighborhood residents, which I gather peaked in the summer of 1981 with a sit-in at a church. What happened?”
MCGRAW: “Well, the protests were emotional, dramatic, and there were many of them. And so by the summer of 1981, they were at Immaculate Conception Church, which became sort of the headquarters for the protests. The image that was broadcast at that time were elderly Polish ladies in sensible shoes. There was 12 or 13 of them in the church doing a sit-in. And the police showed up at 5:30 in the morning. They escorted the ladies to a paddy wagon. And almost before the women were released from the police station, the bulldozers had moved in…”
MCGRAW: …”To knock over the church, which the city had paid the archdiocese $1.2 million for.”
KELLY: “How has it turned out from an employment point of view? I mean, did the plant fulfill the promise that it was going to bring a lot of jobs to Detroit – and good jobs to Detroit?”
MCGRAW: “There were good jobs. There was never as many jobs as was promised at the outset. Over the years, the workforce declined, and that was one of the complaints. It never really fulfilled the predictions of both GM and the city.”
KELLY: “Yeah. I was just reading in your old paper, in the Free Press that there are something like 1,500 people currently employed at the plant.”
MCGRAW: “Right. And they also said that it was going to do a lot for the declining neighborhood, and that did not happen. What is left of the neighborhood now, it’s a very poor neighborhood. And the main street in that area, Shane Street, is basically inert when, even in the ’80s, it still was filled with restaurants and stores mainly catering to the Polish clientele.”
KELLY: “Are there any lessons here for other neighborhoods, other cities that make sacrifices for a big company that wants to roll into town and says it’s going to promise jobs?”
MCGRAW: “Well, if there are lessons, they haven’t been learned in Detroit and many other cities if you look at the Amazon drama. There is a lot of development going on in downtown Detroit and Midtown Detroit these days. The city continues to offer breaks of many sorts to people who want to build in it.”
KELLY: “So I quoted Mayor Duggan, just his reaction to the news of GM saying it’s going to shut the plant. He called it extremely disappointing. What’s just an average man on the street saying in Detroit?”
MCGRAW: “You know, the auto industry is such a volatile industry. And over the years, there’s been so many ups and downs. Aside from the people who might be losing their jobs, I think, as usual, Detroiters are a little bit apprehensive but kind of taking this as it comes.”
KELLY: “Bill McGraw – he used to be a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, and he edited a book on the city’s history called “The Detroit Almanac.”
Gronda Morin 
Another capitalism Ponzi scheme… and the sheeplets will never, ever clue in their entire ‘system’ is a gambling casino, the corporations are “the House” which always wins, their governments are the House’s heavies and the people are the addicted players. Welcome to Detroit, and they’re all “Detroits”.
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Gronda, GM is not without a history which includes some bad decision-making. US car companies made lesser quality cars in the 1970s, GM included, inviting their customers to buy foreign made cars. They gave away a generation or two of car buyers.
They also had a chance to dominate the electric car business having the EV1 pilot where they leased cars to users. Even with the Board questioning the move, they stopped the pilot, collected the cars (even when the users offered to buy them) and shredded them. GM wanted them off the streets. Management decided to build Hummers instead.
There are more examples, but GM has a right to make their own decisions, but that does not mean they will be good ones or altruistic ones. Keith
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It would seem that they are up to the same thinking once again as they close down more factories and devote their energies to SUVs and Trucks while abandoning non-profitable(at least big profits) small cars. I guess as long as gas prices stay relatively low, it’ll work for a while.
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