Good afternoon. This is not my microphone. Im not used to it. Thank you for joining us for the program who will discuss her book in american story. Im the programming and Outreach Coordinator here at the public library. At this time i would like to ask that you turn off or silence all of your electronic devices. Also, at the end of the program, we will have time for a question and answer and then be available under a skylight to autograph books. We do still have a few available if you are interested in purchasing a book. Also with the qanda, i just want to make sure we are going to be on our best behavior. [laughter] shes here to talk about her book. She is not a politician. And you will get to ask questions like i said you will raise your hand, i will bring you the microphone and please dont Start Talking until i have the microphone right in front of your face. As i said they are 27 they will be available to purchase after the program. They are 27 that can be cash or checks made out to book works. Ms. Goldstein has bookplates that she will be happy to autograph and you can purchase the book from the world or the bookstore in madison. According to ms. Goldstein on the Washington Post website, she has been a staff writer at the Washington Post for more than a quartercentury. Quarter century. Over the years, shes written about social issues including medicare and medicaid. Social security, welfare, housing and the strains placed on the social safety net wide great depression. She also has been a White House Correspondent for the events ranging from the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the columbine shootings to the past for Supreme Court nominations. She was part of a team of Washington Post reporters awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for reporting from the newspaper coverage of 9 11 and the governments response to the attacks and also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting for an investigative series she cowrote with her colleague on the medical treatment of Immigrants Detained by the federal government. From the amazon summary of her book in american story is the intimate account of the following is the closing o of te General MotorsAssembly Plant in gainesville and a larger story of the american middle class. She has spent years immersed in gainesville including lots of time right here where the General Motors plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession two days before christmas, 2008. Her book takes the reader deep into the life of autoworkers, educators, the bankers, politicians and job retainers to show why it is so hard in the 21st century to create a prosperous working class. Most observers record the immediate shock of the vanished jobs but if you stay around long enough to notice what happens next when the community with a cando spirit tries to pick itself up. Please join me in getting a warm welcome to amy goldstein. [applause] thank you for that introduction. And im blown away by how many of you are here. The first thing i want to say is that standing here it feels presumptuous to be here talking about your own story which you have been generous enough to share with me. So, i would really say thank you this has been the biggest work of my career and thank you for help they need to do it. Being here is pretty emotional actually. I arrived as a complete stranger here in 2011 and people in the room today have welcomed me to your living rooms and classrooms and offices and have showed me the files in tha the room righte at the public library, people that helped me understand this community and i cant tell you how humbled i am by the size of the crowd in this room. It means a lot to me. Im also interested to hear your questions and hear your take on what ive learned and what ive written because this is after all how i hear your story and it may not be how you see this race and im looking forward to hearing your thoughts after i speak for a few minutes. And i thought i would read a few pages from the book. It reaches the end of the Assembly Line outside i it is still dark. 15 degrees with 33 inches of snow merely a december record piled up and drifting as a steady wind sweeps across the acres of parking lots. Aluminum wheels and a nice audio system 57,400 for sale in this economy nobody wants to buy a the fancy suv. Standing in front of the shiny black as to be holding a banner the last vehicle off the Assembly Line december 23rd 2008. For the county historical society. As far away as the netherlands with the oldest plant so closing of the Assembly Plant two days before christmas this is the story of what happens next. I thought some of you might be interested in as they worked in washington d. C. Tape coming back soon the big picture way to have those stories that lie at the intersection where of Public Policy to help explain how they are affected by both. So after the janesville Assembly Plant closed died just got a little carried away. [laughter] but more specifically with the Great Recession arriving i was covering a very broad social policy be it and call writing a story that the government had locked away in the detention facilities. So what is interesting now . In changing peoples lives so i started to write for a the Washington Post. One of the southwest florida people signing up for welfare for the first time. Elsewhere includes people who have tumbled from the middle class and though stirred into welfare years after they thought they found permanent work and independence. Nearly 40 to the hundred 12 people and i have to do have to do to get by said tony as she sat in front of the terminal at five plants pregnant. They opened it tiptop title in 1986 those years they earned 50,000 but the business fails three years ago when the building boom collapsed. I wrote that story december 2008. The statement your Assembly Plant closed but i did not know that at the time. If you remember all of the job losses were not justin genes fell there were so many kinds of jobs going away that i was pretty focused on this. Over the next couple years i capt. I how they were writing about these bad Economic Times there were stories about the economy and the governments response and if that economic stimulus package that the new president pushed through congress was doing good or not. This was the fighting in congress over policies than more political stories in the midterm elections with a lot of riders were focused on the anxiety of voters i didnt see anybody putting those two things together. Unless you really understand their experiences that their neighbor had lost the doghouse and maybe they would be next. Looking at 2,009 most of those were about the government bailout and of those hominy were about average americans . 5 . This is a huge and important gap that we did not understand what it was like to have worked go way. Trying to do something about this so something fundamentally changing in this country and to find one community in what happened to people and workers and families when all this banished and it could be a microcosm or a metaphor by looking at this experience what was going on all around us i became so obsessed i did something i have never done to take a leave from my a job for the longest piece of work i have ever done. Review of think about it you better choose pretty well as a microcosm how did i end up bin janesville the dollar these other communities . I had no family hear i didnt have the friends but i heard about janesville well was looking for a setting for the Washington Post somebody mentioned there was a community in wisconsin that just lost a big General Motors plant and that that was interesting because a lot of people had worked for General Motors itself so the economic pain had not begin to sink in so i did not, but janesville wintered in my mind softer ride took some time off i kept thinking about various places i could go something just kept telling me that janesville may be the place in and you definitely qualified as losing a lot of jobs. There are different figures and we can see them looking at the bls in 2008 and nine about 9,000 jobs left this county. A lot. Look at the Unemployment Rate and in june 2008 was 5. 4 and in march 2009 a few months after these jobs disappeared on the job loss front you were a winner or loser but i have a sense i wanted to tell the story of what this recession had done so it is important to find a place because they dont want to find myself writing about the accumulation of economic decay to show what one bad economic time did. I wanted to find a place for economic trouble was new in the Assembly Plant was shrinking but it always got a new product that was a very different thing that was very appealing to me no place like everyplace so i thought it would be interesting to write about what those job losses match pretty well the National Pattern of those jobs that went away in the Great Recession those are in the Manufacturing Sector and a lot of those jobs lost pay pretty well but did not take a lot of higher education. More men than women so i thought this was a community with the number of qualities that other people could identify with and also had the since i remember the time i had a view to the video from barack obama at the Assembly Plant and dont space remember him coming in the first time i listen to the video to say the promise of janesville is the promise of america and that gave me goosebumps because they heard that video a couple years after it closed to let this president ial candidate was saying. With those world war effort with artillery shells and of course, of a state that was led by scott walker. So i tried to bring all of a reporting instincts of what might be a good setting. And i will make an exploratory visit to janesville. I keep in july 2011. I have arranged rita couple of people that were part of that first visit. So i first set the meeting with an oldtime reporter who left the newspaper and working as an education consultant it after the World Headquarters were renovated into offices. And we talked for a couple hours in the history of this Community Growing up as a boy in the Assembly Plant in what was happening now and finally he said would you like to see the plant . And to i said of course, i got into the car with a man i had never met before. [laughter] we turned left and there was the plant obviously it was huge i had never seen it before. Of this 1 million square feet closed. And he said something that surprised me i hate to go by this. If you know, him he is a pretty tough cat character calls himself a cynic and i tend to agree. [laughter] but his father had worked at the plant and he remembered how proud his father was of his wages to buy his first chevy. And that there is something here in this community with the relationship between this closed plant and a sense of what life ought to be like. So i kept coming back for a lot of years now i have met in spoken with many people in town and that is rather gratitude comes in. So trying to get people in town those who have various vantage points. Those of iraq the suppliers or teachers or people who did Economic Development i really wanted to a understand how this looked. I was slow to figure out who would be the main people. Its funny you talk about characters i cannot really pick and that were the choices they make. So i arrived 2011 which was two 1 2 years after the Assembly Plant was shut down and i would need to go back in time from the moment that the announcement happened so we have to find people to talk to ago a couple years what life had been like and i also have the sense needed to understand the history of the community with spent a lot of time because i wanted to understand what the past of janesville had been and where the pride in the work had come from. And with those identities to understand what it felt like. Ira did a lot of historical work. So when the plant closed many people were in denial that it was for real. I kept running into people who said just wait it is a matter of time. Does that seem familiar . Because the Assembly Plant started to make tractors in 1919 and chevy is on 1923 on valentines day. When one product with the way another showed up. Novi figured it would not not happen again. People made choices what choice do they make with those best choices are gone . Battle lot of people realized it would take a while to settle into what they were going to do. The Little People we wrap the heart, it could have been many of you but i had to pick some someone to tell you about those that i chose that was really great. One of the older families in town with three generations of people on the executive committee of uaw local 95 and that was rule interested in the role of the union when all the jobs went away. I got to know both mike and barb and the shop chairman and she went back to blackhawk and did very well. And decided to go into Human Resources management. But he had to decide going into management and they said people from the union side. The that is a thoughtful transition and then to say at a quarter century and it also urges retiring a few weeks before and i talk to them about what it was like to have a big return trip party so he thought he would try to go into utility work in just before he was to finish he began to think hard if the job would be waiting and like a lot of people was very financially responsible. Does you know those working with General Motors and that they had transfer light so that was one of the gender disputes from for wayne but to this day he leaves monday morning and comes home friday night so then he wakes up three morning seven the weekend janesville. But then you start working one job then you start working to. In his family did not want to lead janesville or move to another part of the country so finally deciding that was not dead could buyout but had six months of Health Insurance and now was important at the time. That bill and neighbor Highschool Seniors telling me what life would be like. And working five parttime jobs. Other kids in town doing the same thing they had a response of zero negative response ability they were not bringing enough money but in the one graduates already in the three years and is he coming a social worker in will be an engineer. Theyre doing great and there were trying as hard as they could to make a go of it. But i didnt want this just to be about the workers but what happens to a community in which to all other people do if there is more need for her then happening in this community before . The is as the founder of and then to get food and toiletries. But said she had sunbury to but unmarried with local Economic Developments. It is still going and it was trying very hard so i tried to get their perspective of what they thought they should be doing. Somebody else i got to know which was ground zero for where people went so that tommy lot about what kind of options were available and how people try to find people find jobs. So i thought that was valuable to see who comes in if they know how of work anymore and how hard it is to get yourself back on your feet. Will also write about a woman who was a his she is founder of project 1469 to try to raise money to have been accompanied homeless kids but i was moved by telling me in the Deloitte School system just talking that there were homeless teenagers could not believe it. That is not fair in rigid this is not the place. So she is exposed cut him was the head of the cochair for the task force that the neck of murder trial appointed and that was very interested wanted it takes to pool resources add a bad Economic Times to persuade General Motors that this was the plant when it would start manufacturing so i think it is fair to say everybody from the governor on down had it chance but it did not work out. I got to know about that in sharing his back to so i was those that some of you know, or do not know the one to have these closeups to the individuals to be the best they can that loss the part of its work. I also wanted to find a way so i am a nerdy journalist. And i did a couple of statistical things. And with the state Workforce Development board and that the data from the college with a Statistical Analysis with those economists in with those sobering patterns and what their pay was back in 2007 before the recession and the people who had gone back to school that nobody was doing as well. So it isnt that nobody did well but on balance they did not get good jobs or could pay in there are some of those eliminations about why that was and what kind of jobs you need in the community what turns out to be beneficial and black hawk was doing a great job with a couple thousand factory workers huge numbers of people go back to school imagine you worked in a factory for a long time you might not have been a great student to start with but you dont know what will be next that is scary for a lot of people to do so really to try ingenious ways with comput