Janesville

Janesville

Amy Goldstein’s American story, “Janesville,” makes use of ethnographic conversation, which connects the accurate systematic account of people and traditions with their habits, customs, patterns, and mutual differences. The criterion helps the audience get a first-hand understanding of the effects the General Motors company had on the people of Janesville, Wisconsin, when it came to its closure. Amy Goldstein’s story gives elaborate step-by-step details, which are an ethnography with pieces of profound information that defines not only disturbing concerns of the United States economy but also offers a detailed understanding and costs of the end product of the economic and social turbulence on a personal level. The author, Amy Goldstein, describes the struggles of the three families, Vaughns, Whiteakers, Wopat, who share the same struggles in that community after the closure of the General Motors plant. These families hold on to their American dreams in a postindustrial economy. The essay will focus on one of the families profiled, Wopat, and Mary Willmer, community manager from a local bank, who helped the community through the plant closing.

Matt Wopat, a thirty-seven-year-old man from Janesville, Wisconsin, had been working in the General Motors Plant for 13 years before the company closed in 2008. Matt Wopat was married to one wife and three kids. The world of work looked so strange in his eyes outside of General Motors plant. Matt Wopat’s family were among the many employees who worked in the GM plant; his father, Marv Wopat worked there for forty years, Matt Wopat’s sister, Darcy Wopat, also worked there. “General Motors were not unusual” (Goldstein, 21), Matt Wopat describes. A middle-class town in Janesville comprised up to sixty-three thousand people. But General Motors plant hired only a handful of labors from the middle-class, up to forty-eight hundred workers. The other social class, the second class, and the third class workers in the General Motors plant were scarce. It puzzled him that he was not sure of what he supposed to do (Posca).

Since work and career coaching is among the limited costs that Republicans and Democrats can approve, the institutions set aside some considerable money that will take place for these kinds of support in residences like Janesville. Matt Wopat, at the Rock County Job Center, gets a job test called JobFit. This job trial evaluated his mental and physical skills, cooperation, and math skills. The results showed that Matt Wopat should be a nurse, a database developer, or a podiatrist. Matt Wopat later takes these results to a Blackhawk Technical College (Goldstein, 23). For Matt Wopat, he believed that he would land his dream job in Alliant Energy, one of the power company since he saw an opportunity. Many old workers were all preparing to go for their retirements. He was a manageable young man, responsible, and knowledgeable, who was very cautious in everything he did, and this gave him a chance to sign for the electric-power distribution program. But after nine-month into the program, he noticed that the older linemen had deferred their retirement. Before leaving General Motors plant, Matt Wopat had the right to apply for any work at the General Motors’ branches. Matt started walking to work, Indiana at Fort Wayne, a distance of 270 miles to Chevy Silverados, a General Motors’ plant assembling. Matt is forced to share a room with fellow GM travelers. Several jobs at Janesville pay as less as 14 dollars an hour, but GM plant pays up to 28 dollars for every hour worked. For seven years, Matt had been commuting to work, and this helped him save money for his family.

All workers who lost their work at the GM plant wanted to tell stories. They had lost hope that they could only wish away. They had dreams of better lives, but all had been crushed to the soil. For these families, it was hard for them to accept poverty. One social-studies teacher, Deri Wahlet, notices that “some of her students will strange, sad Christmasses” (Goldstein, 31). The students were newly poor, and they were only trying to hide it (Rothman). The teacher decided to stock one of the empty closet with enough donated toiletries, food, and clothing. For her, this was a move to help, discreetly, the kids who had never in their lifetime thought of themselves as poor and needy.

Hope sometimes works as a prized product, of course, with some concrete users. A community manager from a local bank, Mary Willmer, comes up with Forward Janesville, a business association that targets to rebrand Janeville as a center of “high-tech manufacturing” (Rothman). The business association, the Forward Janesville, issues magazines that include encouraging articles such as, “Thirty-three Reasons to Be Optimistic About the Future of Janesville, Rock County, and Wisconsin” (Rothman). It was a strategy that was meant to self-fulfill employees positively, because of several challenges such as inequality and loss of faith in Janesville. Mary Willmer and some of the leaders she had recruited are protected from the concerns of the shutting down of GM. “The only way this campaign could succeed is if we get our arms around the whole country” (Goldstein, 34). But their hopefulness irritates those people who were in grief. At the end of it all, Mary Willmer and her team still brings Dollar General distribution center to Janesville and try to persuade a medical isotopes manufacturer to bring its headquarters in Janesville. She believed that the jobs she was trying to create couldn’t make up for all the losses General Motors plant had done, but creating some is a sincere win.