Since the beginning of the twentieth century, communities in the Downriver region of the Detroit River have forged an enduring claim to the well-being 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.

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.

“The story of environmentalism and the story of labor have often been told separately. In this compelling book Lisa Fine weaves these stories together in a specific place and space—Downriver Detroit—to show how workers have struggled not just for improved wages and working conditions but also to protect nature. Through recovering the history of the labor movement’s engagement with questions of pollution, toxic waste, and landscape degradation in the Downriver, she reminds us that working-class people are not just workers but also hunters, gardeners, outdoors enthusiasts, and conservationists who often care deeply about the health of both the work and the natural environments within which they live and raise families and who fight tooth and nail to safeguard both.”