Flint remembers GM's glory with parade marking 100th anniversary

[Faygo Kid]

Source: Detroit News

. . . The parade up and down bricked Saginaw Street capped a week of festivities in Flint -- GM's birthplace. Like the company, Flint has suffered from job losses, plant closings and urban decay in recent decades as shifting consumer tastes, global competition, rising energy costs and environmental concerns take a toll on southeast Michigan's auto industry.

Just last week, GM unveiled more drastic plans to downsize, including North American plant closings, white-collar layoffs and the elimination of health insurance for salaried retirees 65 and older. In a major blow, GM shareholders will no longer receive a dividend. The cuts will hurt communities such as Flint, where GM employment peaked at more than 80,000 in the later 1970s, especially hard.

But many of the hundreds of Flint-area residents put aside GM's staggering financial woes and relived the automaker's glorious, innovative past -- from tail fins to America's first sports car, the Corvette, to the muscle-car era and the latest gasoline-electric hybrids. . .

. . . "It is sad to see the condition of GM today. Flint needed a day and parade like this to pump up the community's spirits."

Read more: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080720/AUTO03/807200326

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I have nothing but good things to say about Flint. The sit-down strike gave America its middle class, in so many ways. I sat with Michael Moore in downtown Flint long ago when the first reviews of "Roger and Me" came in from New York. My grandmother moved there after WWII and opened a restaurant, and my uncle lived there many years. I have more, but the bottom line is, I have roots in Flint.

Flint is America. Its strengths and weaknesses. It's not Bush country, and thank God for that.