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Folks, especially Northeast Ohio folks, should rethink the somewhat understandable impulse to cheerlead for a gigantic corporation like Goodyear just because the Bad Orange Man made a mean tweet about it.
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Goodyear, for more than two decades, dumped countless tons of toxic waste basically right into the Tuscarawas River in Akron and right on top of an aquifer that was a major source of drinking water for the highly populated working class neighborhoods within a 4-mile radius.
Goodyear’s dumping at this site took place between 1943 to 1966, but nothing was done about it until the early 90s, when EPA testing found that the groundwater was still contaminated with toxic waste.
My mother (born in 1955) grew up in the once-thriving Firestone Park neighborhood just two miles from Goodyear’s toxic waste dump. She's been bedridden with Multiple Sclerosis for nearly 20 years. Her brother, my uncle, (born in '57) died from complications of MS 15 years ago.
Two of their best friends from the neighborhood also have MS, among who knows how many others. This is surely no coincidence.
Which isn’t to mention the way that Goodyear joined countless other corporations in abandoning working class Americans by the millions, further devastating countless neighborhoods like Firestone Park, to exploit cheap labor and weak environmental regulations overseas.
In 2015, Goodyear paid $16 million to settle SEC charges re: “more than $3.2 million in bribes during a four-year period due to inadequate Foreign Corrupt Practices Act compliance controls at its subsidiaries in sub-Saharan Africa.”
https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-38.html
https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2015-38.html
And here's a NYT report from '78 on how “the position of the companies vis-a-vis the workers has radically altered,” and “Akron will never be the same,” due to Goodyear’s union-busting efforts that led it to abandon its manufacturing operations here. https://www.nytimes.com/1978/02/26/archives/goodyears-decision-akrons-loss-at-a-glance-goodyear.html
By 1989, the Times was reporting that Goodyear was “channeling 28 percent of its capital spending, into building or upgrading factories abroad,” a number that’s surely exploded since. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/26/us/spread-of-us-plants-abroad-is-slowing-exports.html
All of which is surely just the tip of the iceberg, but in any event plenty of reason to think twice before you start cheerleading for something just because the Bad Orange Man is against it.
This increasingly pervasive phenomenon where something, however bad otherwise, becomes good just because it’s opposed to Donald Trump in some way is a dangerous one that requires more critical thinking on various fronts.
Imagine being one of the most evil corporations imaginable and knowing you could rally untold support and free advertising to your cause simply by banning MAGA hats or otherwise criticizing the Bad Orange Man?
