The auto industry has been a titanic force in southeast Michigan, shaping and re-shaping life over the past century. The ongoing struggle for control over the industry and the wealth it has produced has had huge consequences for the people of Detroit and Michigan as a whole. Competition between profits and shareholders on the one side and workers and communities on the other has become a defining feature of our region and of the industry. While the big three have "modernized" and now again enjoy vast profits, their resurgence has become increasingly disconnected from the people who helped build the industry. Through the auto industry and its workers, a way of life was built, and now the same industry has become instrumental in destroying that way of life. Without solidarity and resistance, the workers will be consumed and abandoned by the very system and industry they serve.
