Roger and Me is a film documenting the lives of factory workers and the town of Flint, Michigan after the GM truck factory closed in 1989. Michael Moore, the film maker and narrator, appears biased and represents one-side. This bias was aided by the lack of availability of CEO Roger Smith, and the deliberate tactical maneuvers of GM to avoid Mr. Moore and any discussion of Flint, MI. The town of Flint existed because of the factories. The biggest employer on Flint was GM and the other businesses were supported by those working in the factories. The factory worker received an exceptionally good wage for the job performed. GM made the business decision to close the factory. This necessary decision was to benefit the company and improve …show more content…
The bottom line was that workers had to be laid off. The business could not be concerned with the human side of this decision. Mr. Moore felt that GM should have cared more. He believed GM should have taken more action to keep Flint a thriving town. Since the town was a factory town, there was few other employers and most of them were dependent on the factory to survive. The cycle began; workers could not find work locally. Most families could not move. If they had some money saved they would have to leave a house behind. The house would not sell and if you owed money on it then you likely would not just walk away. The workers that rented could no longer afford the rent payments. Tenants would stay in the homes until they were evicted for non-payment. The town began to look like slums and areas were simply rubble heaps. Businesses closed up, houses and buildings were vacated and left for …show more content…
The first attempt was to build a large hotel. The slogan “if you build it they will come,” did not come to fruition for Flint. Very few people came. The second attempt was an indoor amusement park, Autoworld. The park was designed to look like the old thriving downtown of Flint. Again, very few came. Like the hotel it was forced to close. The third attempt was more an act of desperation. The City built a new larger jail. Crime had become so ramped the old jail was overcrowded. The new jail was used as a fund raiser the night before it would be occupied by inmates. The jail was treated similar to a hotel and someone could pay to spend the night in a jail cell. The new jail, once in operation, provided a few previous factory workers with a heated indoor room, a warm meal and a decent night’s sleep. Some unemployed workers turned to crime due to what must have seemed like “no other choice.” Like the City, it was acts of desperation. Former workers turned to desperation. They had tried everything else they knew. Some former workers resorted to raising rabbits, selling them for pets, or skinning and dressing them to sell the meat for food and saving the fur to tan later, in hopes of making money. Some were lured into Amway. Amway was/is a pyramid type business. The consultant would sell products and recruit others. The most money was made by having recruits since you also made money
Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project is notorious in the United States for being the most impoverished and crime-ridden public housing development ever established. Originally established as inexpensive housing in the 1940’s, it soon became a vast complex of unsightly concrete low and high-rise apartment structures. Originally touted as a giant step forward in the development of public housing, it quickly changed from a racially and economically diverse housing complex to a predominantly black, extremely poor ghetto. As it was left to rot, so to speak, Cabrini-Green harbored drug dealers, gangs and prostitution. It continued its downward spiral of despair until the mid 1990’s when the Federal Government assumed control the Chicago Housing Authority, the organization responsible for this abomination. Cabrini-Green has slowly been recovering from its dismal state of affairs recently, with developers building mixed-income and subsidized housing. The Chicago Housing Authority has also been demolishing the monolithic concrete high-rise slums, replacing them with public housing aimed at not repeating the mistakes of the past. Fortunately, a new era of public housing has dawned from the mistakes that were made, and the lessons that were learned from the things that went on for half a century in Cabrini-Green.
In 2009, a notice was issued where the city of Flint received $1,763,839 as a share of the Housing and Urban Development,...
People could buy their way out of service. Those who were rich enough could hire substitutes to
Lappin, H. G., & Greene, J. (2006). Are prisons just? In C. Hanrahan (Ed.), Opposing Viewpoints: America’s prisons (pp. 51-98). Detroit: Bonnie Szumski.
The documentary, Roger and Me, by Michael Moore details the account of a town’s collapse after its main job supplier was eradicated. The town of Flint was long supported by a GM manufacturing plant. Multiple generations of families had been employed by this factory which was shut down by General Motors CEO and Chairman, Roger Smith. The effects of this closing can be seen in three major themes in sociology: social class within Flint became very distinct; poverty significantly increased along with its consequences; and the cycle of poverty was very easily identified in the aftermath of this collapse.
We live in a society today filled with crime and fear. We are told not to go out after a certain hour, always move in groups, and even at times advised to carry a weapon on ourselves. There is only one thing that gives us piece of mind in this new and frightening world we live in: the American penal system. We are taught when growing up to believe that all of the bad people in the world are locked up, far out of sight and that we are out of reach of their dangerous grasp. Furthermore, the murderers and rapists we watch on television, we believe once are caught are to be forgotten and never worried about again. We wish on them the most horrible fates and to rot in the caged institution they are forced to call their new home. But, where do we draw the line of cruelty to those who are some of the cruelest people in our country? And what happens when one of this most strict and strongest institution our nation has breaks down? What do we do when this piece of mind, the one thing that lets us sleep at night, suddenly disappears? This is exactly what happened during and in the after effects of the Attica prison riot of 1971. The riot created an incredibly immense shift and change not only in the conditions of prisons, but also in the security we feel as American citizens both in our penal system and American government. The Attica prison riot brought about a much-needed prison reform in terms of safety and conditions for inmates, which was necessary regardless of the social backlash it created and is still felt today.
A common trend was always that wages were not keeping up with the cost of living. Many could not make ends meet and were struggling to simply survive. They started to question the effectiveness of the National Recovery Administration (N.R.A.). It was unfair to them that businesses were still making enormous profits while its employees were forced into poverty. Pushing for a unionization was disowned by factories where they threatened to close their doors if a worker’s union formed. Some thought businesses were crooked and angled themselves to take advantage of the economy to increase their
9 to 5 is a 1980 comedy film starring Jane Fonda as Judy Bernly, Lily Tomlin as Violet Newstead, Dolly Parton as Doralee Rhodes, and Dabney Coleman as the boss Franklin Hart Jr. The film focuses on a department that is being poorly run by a "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss. After finally getting over their differences, the three main ladies develop a friendship, vent to each other, take down their boss and eventually help each other run the company.
In todays society the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This high incarceration rate is due to the growing phenomena known as mass incarceration. This phenomenon has led to massive increase of people being placed in prison and the amount of money being used for these prisons. The book, Race to Incarcerate by Marc Mauer, focuses on mass incarceration as our default social policy because of the weak welfare state in the U.S. In the book Mauer discusses the causes and the problems with this policy.
Overcrowding in our state and federal jails today has become a big issue. Back in the 20th century, prison rates in the U.S were fairly low. During the years later due to economic and political factors, that rate began to rise. According to the Bureau of justice statistics, the amount of people in prison went from 139 per 100,000 inmates to 502 per 100,000 inmates from 1980 to 2009. That is nearly 261%. Over 2.1 million Americans are incarcerated and 7.2 million are either incarcerated or under parole. According to these statistics, the U.S has 25% of the world’s prisoners. (Rick Wilson pg.1) Our prison systems simply have too many people. To try and help fix this problem, there needs to be shorter sentences for smaller crimes. Based on the many people in jail at the moment, funding for prison has dropped tremendously.
Who decides how much someone's life is worth? Is it even morally right to put a price tag on someone's life? I believe that there should never be a price tag for how much someone's life is worth. Every life is unique and cannot simply be replaced. Every life should be treated the same no matter what the circumstance.
... Chicago decided to cut the wages of its workers. Due to Pullman’s monopoly on sleeping cars, the American Railway Union (ARU) was created by Eugene V. Debs. The ARU was ordered not to handle the sleeping cars. Railroad officials saw this boycott as a chance to break up the union. The ARU spread the strike all throughout the country which resulted in the disruptance of US mail. President Cleveland sent in troops to cease the strike with the help of Attorney Olney. The ARU was stopped and Debs was put in jail. The corporation won once again, but this time with the power of the government and its arbitrary power over corporation rule.
The. McMurty, John. A. "Caging the Poor: The Case Against the Prison System." The Case For Penal Abolition? Ed. W. Gordon West and Ruth Morris.
The first issue that I would like to address is the overcrowding issues in prisons. In my opinion, overcrowding issues are the biggest issues in our correctional system that concerns every citizen. Running a prison required money, resources and manpower, with overcrowding issues, the government would have no choice but to increase the number of correctional facilities, privatized prisons and increasing manpower. According to (Levitt, 1996), “The incarceration rate in the United States has more than tripled in the last two decades. At year-end 1994 the United States prison population exceeded one million. Annual government outlays on prisons are roughly $40 billion per year. The rate of imprisonment in the United States is three to four times greater than most European countries.” (p.1). Overcrowding issues are not only affect prisons but the society as a whole as well. The reason is simply because prison population directly refl...
This is a critique of" Roger And Me", a documentary by Michael Moore. This is a film about a city that at one time had a great economy. The working class people lived the American dream. The majority of people in this town worked at the large GM factory. The factory is what gave these people security in their middle working class home life. Life in the city of Flint was good until Roger Smith the CEO of GM decided to close the factory. This destroyed the city. Violent crime became the highest in the nation, businesses went bankrupt, people were evicted from their rented homes. There were no jobs and no opportunity. Life was so bad that Money magazine named Flint the worst place to live in the entire nation. When news of the factory closing first broke, Michael Moore a native of flint decided to search for Roger Smith and bring him to Flint.