Resistance and Resilience in Downriver Detroit

August 12, 2026

Lisa M. Fine

During a cold late-winter day in Michigan, industrial waste and pollution released into the Detroit River by an unknown corporation killed tens of thousands of waterfowl, mostly ducks. Outraged by such corporate irresponsibility and government’s inability to prevent these unfortunate events and punish the polluters, an environmental group decided to act. In a well-staged media event, the group collected over a thousand dead ducks and deposited them on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing. One of the leaders of the group that organized this event claimed that the “ducks would serve to show State officials and the Legislature the need for an amendment to the present conservation law to make more severe pollution penalties.” Photos of the governor tiptoeing through the piles of dead ducks to get into the capitol appeared in local newspapers and conservation journals. If this had taken place after 1970, it would hardly merit our attention; we would all assume that some environmental organization such as the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund, a local student environmental group, or even PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) had staged this protest. But this event took place in March 1948, and the environmental group responsible was the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC), one of the largest sportsmen’s organizations in the United States. The placards over the display of dead ducks read “No Bag Limit for Polluters.”

Occurring during the immediate post–World War II period of explosive industrial growth in the Downriver Detroit industrial corridor, the water pollution came from the dozens of factories producing cars and their parts, steel, chemicals, paper, and energy. These factories regularly spewed smoke into the air and poured effluents into the Detroit River and its tributaries. This event orchestrated by the primarily white, male working-class (though not exclusively), members of the MUCC, and other local sportsmen’s organizations, revealed these groups’ claims to the resources of their region. These working-class sportsmen had not come to the capitol to protest the duck kill in the same way that environmentalists today might protest to save the whales; these protestors wanted to kill some of the ducks themselves. They staged their protest because they believed that to protect the ducks the sportsmen wished to hunt, they needed to protect wildlife habitats and assure their access to unpolluted land and water.

Uncovering stories like this led me to writing Downriver Detroit: The Working Class, the Environment, and the Bonds of Place. This book is my experiment in applying a geographical consciousness to understanding the working class and its identity, consciousness, agency, and resistance.  Challenging the stereotype that workers favor jobs over the environment, this book shows how the working class of Downriver Detroit contributed to creating a more humane and habitable world.  As they did this, they developed and acted on bonds to this unique region. 

In my book, I present four case studies demonstrating stories of working-class agency regarding the environment and the enduring bonds of place. In addition to objections to water pollution throughout the 20^th century, workers in this region lobbied against the building of a nuclear power plant before the No Nukes Movement.  In 1956, Detroit Edison, with the help of the US government and a consortium of corporations, began construction of the Fermi Atomic Power Plant in Lagoona Beach, north of Monroe, Michigan. The first of its kind in the nation, a sodium-cooled breeder reactor, it was to be a showcase of the scientific progress of the United States, a harbinger of nuclear public power plants, and an important piece of US Cold War policy. There was almost universal support for this project, but locals from three unions—the United Automobile Workers, the International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, and the Papermakers and Paperworkers Union—took their case to the Atomic Energy Commission. Their activism resulted in a failed case before the United States Supreme Court in 1961. The workers were right. In October 1966, a decade after the project began, Fermi 1 suffered a “critical event”—an accident that rendered the facility impaired for the rest of its life.  These workers were not objecting to nuclear power per se, they did not want this dangerous plant in their backyard. 

The third case study narrates how working-class sportsmen along with grassroots and environmental organizations worked to keep vanishing vital marshlands free from development throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Their work culminated in the creation of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge at the end of the century, the first international wildlife refuge in North America. Finally, I feature the unique way the workers at McLouth Steel Corporation responded to the threat of deindustrialization and tried to preserve their jobs and communities. These strong unionists who were committed to health and safety in their plant and involved in early efforts to curb air pollution organized to buy their plant under an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), a rare example of workers’ company ownership in U.S. labor history that ultimately did not succeed. 

Downriver endures but is contested terrain around three themes: gateways, refuges, and sacred spaces. Some see economic opportunities related to industry renewing, while others see unique natural resources and communities that need to be preserved. For many, the land and water resources are a destination, while for others, the region is valuable as a gateway, a place to pass through. (see for example, the Detroit Metro Airport and the new Gordie Howe Bridge!)  There are groups that consider parts of Downriver Detroit sacred and work to preserve those spaces. The future is difficult to predict, but what is certain is that the working-class citizens of Downriver Detroit will chart their own futures.

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