:03:01
My dad worked on the assembly line at
GM's AC Spark Plug in Flint for 33 years.
:03:07
In fact, as I grew older, I discovered
my entire family had worked for GM:
:03:10
Grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters,
aunts, uncles, cousins. Everyone but me.
:03:16
My uncle Laverne
was in the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike.
:03:19
Just hours before the year's end in 1936...
:03:22
he and thousands of other GM workers
took over the Flint factories...
:03:25
and barricaded themselves inside,
refusing to budge for 44 days.
:03:30
The National Guard was called in,
and the eyes of the world were on Flint.
:03:34
On February 11, 1937,
General Motors gave in...
:03:38
and the UAW was born.
:03:41
The GM employee
has made great advances.
:03:44
It is our wish that he continue to prosper.
:03:47
Most of our employees,
even those who at times cause problems...
:03:50
are conscientious
and hardworking men and women.
:03:53
Men and women to whose imagination,
ingenuity, energy and dedication...
:03:58
our country owes
its industrial leadership in the world.
:04:01
That all sounded fine and good,
but the assembly line wasn't for me.
:04:04
My heroes were the Flint people
who'd escaped the life in the factory...
:04:08
and got out of Flint,
like the guys in Grand Funk Railroad...
:04:11
Casey Kasem, the women who married
Zubin Mehta and Don Knotts...
:04:16
and perhaps Flint's
most famous native son, Bob Eubanks...
:04:19
host of TV's hit show
The Newlywed Game.
:04:22
I figured if Bob Eubanks
could make it out of here, so could I.
:04:28
After 10 years of editing my own paper
in Flint...
:04:30
a California millionaire
asked me to be the editor...
:04:33
of his muckraking magazine
in San Francisco.
:04:36
It didn't take me long
to figure out what to do.
:04:38
The final issue of the Michigan Voice
is being printed.
:04:41
Ten years after he began it, Michael Moore
is moving to San Francisco.
:04:47
What would you do?
I mean, this was San Francisco.
:04:54
But San Francisco was on
the other side of the world from Flint.
:04:57
Everyone there had a job,
yet no one seemed to be working.