Downriver Detroit: The Working Class, the Environment, and the Bonds of Place (Working Class in American History) - Softcover

Lisa Fine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252089081 ISBN 13: 9780252089084

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2026

Synopsis

Protecting communities and nature in an industrial region. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, communities in the Downriver region of the Detroit River have forged an enduring claim to the wellbeing of waterways that are central to where they live, work, and play. Lisa M. Fine examines important moments in the ongoing efforts of the area's citizens to create a humane and habitable environment. Her analysis shows how people preserved wetlands and the river by working through sportsmen's organizations, appealing to state agencies, and forming grassroots movements. Fueled by enduring connections to place, local unions fought a proposed nuclear power plant in the 1950s. Years later, steel workers facing the steamroller of deindustrialization tried to preserve their communities by purchasing their own company. The ties that bind gave a unique character to activism in the Downriver region, challenging stereotypes of working-class attitudes toward the environment. A creative merger of labor and environmental history, Downriver Detroit shows that working people have a right to live in and protect the places they love.

About this title

About the Author

Lisa M. Fine is a professor of history at Michigan State University. She is the author of The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A., and coeditor of the Norton fiftieth anniversary edition of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252089081
• ISBN 13: 9780252089084
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264