Demolition Means Progress
Demolition Means Progress

Author: Andrew R. Highsmith

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-12-30

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 022641955X

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Flint, Michigan, is widely seen as Detroit s Detroit: the perfect embodiment of a ruined industrial economy and a shattered American dream. In this deeply researched book, Andrew Highsmith gives us the first full-scale history of Flint, showing that the Vehicle City has always seen demolition as a tool of progress. During the 1930s, officials hoped to renew the city by remaking its public schools into racially segregated community centers. After the war, federal officials and developers sought to strengthen the region by building subdivisions in Flint s segregated suburbs, while GM executives and municipal officials demolished urban factories and rebuilt them outside the city. City leaders later launched a plan to replace black neighborhoods with a freeway and new factories. Each of these campaigns, Highsmith argues, yielded an ever more impoverished city and a more racially divided metropolis. By intertwining histories of racial segregation, mass suburbanization, and industrial decline, Highsmith gives us a deeply unsettling look at urban-industrial America."

The Poisoned City
The Poisoned City

Author: Anna Clark

Publisher: Metropolitan Books

Published: 2018-07-10

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1250125154

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When the people of Flint, Michigan, turned on their faucets in April 2014, the water pouring out was poisoned with lead and other toxins. Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint, mostly poor and African American, were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives. It took eighteen months of activism by city residents and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. By that time, twelve people had died and Flint’s children had suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster has only just begun. In the first full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.

Midnight in Vehicle City
Midnight in Vehicle City

Author: Edward McClelland

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0807039683

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Winner of the 2021 Midland Authors Book Award in History In a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of “the strike heard around the world” is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights. The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company’s wealth. The causes for which the strikers sat down—collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages—enjoyed a half century of success. But now, the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since before the New Deal. Journalist and historian Edward McClelland brings the action-packed events of the strike back to life—through the voices of those who lived it. In vivid play-by-plays, McClelland narrates the dramatic scenes including of the takeovers of GM plants; violent showdowns between picketers and the police; Michigan governor Frank Murphy’s activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women’s Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins. The epic tale of the strike and its lasting legacy shows why the middle class is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and will guide our understanding of what we will lose if we don’t revive it.

Flint Fights Back
Flint Fights Back

Author: Benjamin J. Pauli

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-05-14

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0262039850

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An account of the Flint water crisis shows that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water is part of a broader struggle for democracy. When Flint, Michigan, changed its source of municipal water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, Flint residents were repeatedly assured that the water was of the highest quality. At the switchover ceremony, the mayor and other officials performed a celebratory toast, declaring “Here's to Flint!” and downing glasses of freshly treated water. But as we now know, the water coming out of residents' taps harbored a variety of contaminants, including high levels of lead. In Flint Fights Back, Benjamin Pauli examines the water crisis and the political activism that it inspired, arguing that Flint's struggle for safe and affordable water was part of a broader struggle for democracy. Pauli connects Flint's water activism with the ongoing movement protesting the state of Michigan's policy of replacing elected officials in financially troubled cities like Flint and Detroit with appointed “emergency managers.” Pauli distinguishes the political narrative of the water crisis from the historical and technical narratives, showing that Flint activists' emphasis on democracy helped them to overcome some of the limitations of standard environmental justice frameworks. He discusses the pro-democracy (anti–emergency manager) movement and traces the rise of the “water warriors”; describes the uncompromising activist culture that developed out of the experience of being dismissed and disparaged by officials; and examines the interplay of activism and scientific expertise. Finally, he explores efforts by activists to expand the struggle for water justice and to organize newly mobilized residents into a movement for a radically democratic Flint.

What the Eyes Don't See
What the Eyes Don't See

Author: Mona Hanna-Attisha

Publisher: One World

Published: 2018-06-19

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0399590846

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The dramatic story of the Flint water crisis, by a relentless physician who stood up to power. “Stirring . . . [a] blueprint for all those who believe . . . that ‘the world . . . should be full of people raising their voices.’”—The New York Times “Revealing, with the gripping intrigue of a Grisham thriller.” —O: The Oprah Magazine Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water—and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don’t See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself—an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family’s activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice. What the Eyes Don’t See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their—and all of our—children. Praise for What the Eyes Don’t See “It is one thing to point out a problem. It is another thing altogether to step up and work to fix it. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a true American hero.”—Erin Brockovich “A clarion call to live a life of purpose.”—The Washington Post “Gripping . . . entertaining . . . Her book has power precisely because she takes the events she recounts so personally. . . . Moral outrage present on every page.”—The New York Times Book Review “Personal and emotional. . . She vividly describes the effects of lead poisoning on her young patients. . . . She is at her best when recounting the detective work she undertook after a tip-off about lead levels from a friend. . . . ‛Flint will not be defined by this crisis,’ vows Ms. Hanna-Attisha.”—The Economist “Flint is a public health disaster. But it was Dr. Mona, this caring, tough pediatrican turned detective, who cracked the case.”—Rachel Maddow

Nobody
Nobody

Author: Marc Lamont Hill

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-07-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1501124943

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An "analysis of deeper meaning behind the string of deaths of unarmed citizens like Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, providing ... [commentary] on the intersection of race and class in America today"--

Hidden History of Flint
Hidden History of Flint

Author: Gary Flinn

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1625858418

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"Beneath Flint's auto history lies a buried past. Local Civil War hero Franklin Thompson was actually Sarah Edmonds in disguise. Thread Lake's Lakeside Amusement Park offered seaplane rides and a giant roller coaster partly built over the water before closing in 1931. Smith-Bridgman's, the largest department store in town, reigned supreme for more than a century at the same location. And the city's most prolific inventor, Lloyd Copeman, created the electric stove, flexible ice cube tray and automatic toaster. Gary Flinn showcases the obscure and surprising elements of the Vehicle City's past, including how the 2014 water crisis was a half century in the making."-- Page [4] of cover.