Willow Run and the Story of General Motors - Charlie LeDuff w/video

[Bozita]

video at the link:
http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/dpp/news/local/willow-run-and-the-story-of-general-motors

Willow Run and the Story of General Motors
Off the Chain with Charlie LeDuff

Updated: Thursday, 23 Dec 2010, 3:47 PM EST
Published : Thursday, 23 Dec 2010, 2:56 PM EST

Charlie LeDuff, Fox 2 News

YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, MI - A short history of General Motors: The company filed bankruptcy last year and was split in two. The good assets were funneled into The New GM. I am told that company is doing well. It traded this week at $34 a share.

Then there is the Bad GM, the part peeled away from the company like a snake’s skin. Its irrelevant factories boarded up. Its machinery sold off and shipped overseas. Meanwhile, the American towns and the people those factories once employed are left to themselves.

Bad GM stock was selling for 8 cents a share this week.

I went to a Bad GM town -- Ypsilanti Township -- where on Thursday they closed the doors of the Willow Run plant forever.

Play the video to hear from some of the former plant workers>

Willow Run was one of the most important factories of them all, a place that actually made the American Empire possible.

Completed in 1941 and stretching over five million acres, the plant belonged to Ford Motor Co. and it was the place where they made the B-24 Liberator bombers that helped win World War II.

Rosie the Riveter -– the iconic wartime working woman dressed in denim and a headscarf and flexing her muscle -– worked here. So did 42,000 others.

For the record, her real name was Rosie Will Monroe. They even made a folk song about her. ( http://www.archive.org/details/RosieTheRiveter )

In 1953, GM bought the grounds and cranked out Chevrolets and 82 million transmissions that drove the world.

More than 14,000 people worked here during the 70’s and 1,400 before the Dow’s collapse in 2008.

And after Thursday quitting time, there was no one.

more...

[safeinOhio]

1. ...and two finger off my left hand.

I use to drive past the Ypsi plant every day on my way to work at Ford. For all my Brothers and Sisters that worked on the line during the 70s, a little song you may remember. Enjoy.

http://www.motorcityrock.com/misc/audio/RougePlantBlues.mp3

[sarcasmo]

2. My hometown of Saginaw Michigan was destroyed by GM as well.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. Why not board up the Arsenal Of Democracy? Democracy itself isn't what it used to be.

and if memory serves, there were plans for Willow Run Airport to be used for planes hauling packages/cargo to help take the strain off Metro