Update: Please see the comments in response to this post. 
Filmmaker Michael Moore often talks about how his hometown Flint, Michigan has been devastated by the corporate outsourcing of jobs. We were in the vicinity and decided to drive through and see for ourselves. We spent over an hour driving though the south, east, and north parts of the city and then downtown. Here are some typical scenes that we saw. Except for the downtown which has been revitalized much of the city looks like a junk yard.
#1 by Matt Bach at July 20th, 2009
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Hello, I appreciate you mentioning Flint, Michigan, in your recent post. There’s no question we have our share of eye sores in the Flint area, but we also have many more beautiful properties than we have boarded up ones. I would hope next time you’re in Flint you would take time to see the revitalization and new business and construction taking place in downtown Flint and then post photos of some of that work. I’d be happy to send you numerous photos of the Flint area showing how we are a community that isn’t all doom and gloom. You may say because I’m from the Flint visitors bureau that I have to say these things. But don’t take my word for it. Go to facebook.com/flint.michigan to see photos of our community and hear from the many residents who are proud of what we have and what we are trying to become.
Thanks for your time.
Matt Bach
Public Relations Manager
Flint Area Convention and Visitors Bureau
(810) 232-3288
mbach@flint.travel
#2 by Michael Kelly at July 20th, 2009
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This is pretty selective sampling of pictures. I live in Flint and it is a nice place to live with many beautiful neighborhoods and features.
I could probably find 20 crappy locations in Malibu or Newport to picture if that were my goal.
I’m not oblivious to the challenging transition Flint is going through but we’re just a decade ahead of the country. Things are getting betters in Flint every day.
#3 by Douglas at July 20th, 2009
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Matt and Michael:
First off, I salute you for defending your city; that is admirable. More people should take pride in where they live regardless of where that may be. And no, Matt, I don’t think you are just saying what you have to say. I have known people in your position who would not take the time to speak up.
However, though I mean no disrespect, I stand by the photos as representative of conditions in Flint. They were not faked or retouched. Those photos are not “selective.” We spent over an hour driving though Flint and that is what we saw. We could have taken photos of worse.
I should have made clearer in my blog entry that I understand that the city government of Flint and its residents are not to blame for the economic problems that have befallen the city. As Michael Moore has shown more poignantly and eloquently than I could, Flint, like many cities in the United States have been victimized by corporations that put profits over people and betrayed the communities who supported them for so many years. I agree with Michael that Flint was just ahead of the rest of the country in that. Flint and its residents have nothing to be ashamed of.
Perhaps I also could have made a stronger political point about how what has happened to Flint is what has happened and is happening to far too many U.S. communities. Since Reagan, the trend in this country has been to allow and even encourage corporations to act in ways that are detrimental to U.S. communities. Thom Hartmann http://www.thomhartmann.com/ can speak more full fully and eloquently on that subject. Only if we start to care about the state of our communities – and ALL of them, not just our own – can we begin to reverse this nearly three-decade decline in our country. It is in that spirit that I drew attention on our blog to conditions in Flint. I can understand if you took umbrage at my post and I apologize for any distress I may have caused.
I should also mention that Paula and I had lunch in downtown Flint at Bailiwick Pub & Grill which was one of the best meals we have had on our (so far) 49-day trip.
That said – In response to the comments that we could take similar photos in any city in America, I have to disagree. We have been in 21 states and two Canadian provinces in our trip so far and other than Newark, New Jersey I have not seen neighborhoods in as bad of a shape than the ones in Flint. I am sorry but that is a fact. A few blocks of redevelopment downtown and a nice neighborhood on the west side doesn’t erase the eye sores elsewhere in Flint.
If I have raised some indignation over these photos of Flint then good. Perhaps, residents of Flint could work for economic justice and equality in their city. That would be more productive than writing to complain about some photos .
Respectfully,
Douglas Giles
#4 by Lindsay at July 20th, 2009
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I went to school in Flint & there are some gorgeous areas there–especially around the cultural center. The former mayor lives in a beautiful neighborhood in Flint where we used to go and check out all the Christmas displays. There are some really nice neighborhoods there and the downtown area is really coming along. I love the Pavilion myself.
#5 by Pam Howe at July 20th, 2009
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Thank you for your post on Flint MI. If I am looking at these right, these are from the north end of Flint, an area that had a lot of workers from GM as well as a lot of businesses that depended on those people and the plants in the area to survive. As GM has become less of a presence in Flint, we have been affected by the loss of jobs but also by the loss of our landscapes. Factories stand in mute witness to Flint’s former history as a manufacturing capitol. Worse yet are the empty plots of cement that stretch for hundreds of acres where factories once stood. That being said, there are still beautiful places and people in Flint. Not all of Flint looks like these four pictures. I have linked to some of the pictures of a vibrant Flint, full of people laughing and enjoying what makes Flint great now like The Cultural Center, colleges and universities. Next time you are in Flint, stop by the Flint Institute of Music and I will show you an active symphony and school teaching over 3,500 students from across mid-Michigan music, dance and theatre. Flint is not there yet, but it is on its way.
http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/?ref=sb#/pages/Music-in-the-Parks-FlintMI/102079334514?v=photos&viewas=1424584125
http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/?ref=sb#/pages/Flint-Institute-of-Music/66709320132?v=photos&viewas=1424584125&ref=ts
or visit our website http://www.flintinstituteofmusic.org
#6 by Douglas at July 20th, 2009
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Lindsay and Pam: Thank you for your comments and links. Please see my earlier reply to Matt and Michael.
Peace,
Douglas
#7 by JD at April 13th, 2010
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Matt & Michael. Your viewpoints are somewhat interesting, but very typical of people who do not understand Flint and do not understand what keeps an economy thriving. I lived in Flint the first 21 years of my life. Could have went to work for GM but didn’t want to be a zombie with no skills. I left while the going was good.
Simply put…the unions are the main reason for the loss of jobs. Years of mismanagement didn’t help either. From a business standpoint, GM needed to move away from the spoiled union workers (my friends and relatives included) and their contracts that made it impossible to compete with the Japanese. Why do you think that the now government owned GM has not moved jobs back to Flint? Sometimes you screw yourself. There are many people, myself included that have not asked for a raise in pay so as not to put yourself in a position of being over paid for your position.
We people from Flint love what that town was. It makes us very sad to see it go down hill. There are still a lot of nice places around Flint, but not the areas where a lot of us grew up within the actual city limits.
Wish you could have driven through back in the day.
#8 by Douglas at April 18th, 2010
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Spoiled union workers??? Yeah, how dare they ask for a living wage! Seriously, I always marvel when people resent a union worker making $25 an hour but not executives and CEOs making millions a year.
#9 by Michigan at August 23rd, 2010
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I couldn’t agree with you more. The city government here in Flint doesn’t understand it, unfortunately.
#10 by sean at August 23rd, 2010
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@ Douglas – Both the unions and the corporations worked hand and hand to bring down Flint and the American automotive industry. their hands are both covered in the blood of communities like Flint. Most of the union guys made more like $30-$40 per hour by the early 80′s which is way to much for unskilled, non post secondary workers to make. During the 50′s and 60′s the workers had done quite well for themselves allowing them to belong to middle class America and enjoying a level of luxury not seen anywhere else in the world for unskilled laborers. It was in the 70′s that the unions started to get out of control, drunk on their own power and corrupted by it. The unions worked against high production quotas and set up a system so that hard work meant nothing, raises and promotions were based on sonority and those who were incompetent and lazy could not be fired. In the late 70′s, production in Japan and Germany where 3-4 times higher then in Michigan while GM, Chrysler and Ford paid 30% higher wages. It is a well known that organized crime is and was entrenched in the unions by this time, ensuring that tens of millions of dollars a yearwas squeezed out of the Detroit Automakers every year that didn’t even find its way to the workers. The Unions not only helped to bring down the demise of the workers but also ensured that the area would remain an economic wasteland. Once GM and Chrysler left, the reason Toyota, Honda or none of the other car companies moved into the area, nor any other industry for that matter, was because there isn’t a single buisness man in the world who would want to deal with the union BS that was present in Michigan during the late 80′s. By 1981-1983 before the mass exodus started, you had the unions threatening strikes on the car companies or the part subsidiaries just to flex their muscle. By this time, a guy who had worked at GM for 25 years putting bolts into frames was making between 50-60$ an hour with 6 weeks holidays, a full pension and full health insurance for his family. On the flip side, the Corporate greed was enough to make anyone sick and even while being gouged by the unions, GM’s CEOs and executives certainly damaged the company through greed, bad investing and poor planning. They certainly owed more to the communities that had enveloped around them then they demonstrated and how they failed to see that by destroying the blue color middle class they were destroying their primary consumers is beyond me. This issue like so many in life is one in which there are no good guys and no bad guys and it isn’t simply black and white like many like to paint it out to be.