JANESVILLE, WI - FEBRUARY 18:
At the Eagle Inn Family Restaurant, waitress Sarah Wohlust checks in on a regular customer, John Wunderlin, who worked as a supervisor for 25 of his 39 years at the Janesville GM Assembly Plant. "I was really disappointed when they closed down because I thought we was putting out a good product," Wunderlin said.
The decommissioned Janesville GM Assembly Plant covers 4,800,000 square feet on the southern end of town, and since production ceased in 2008, the surrounding neighborhood has struggled to bounce back.
Amy Goldstein excerpt:
Janesville, Wisconsin, lies three fourths of the way from Chicago to Madison along Interstate 90’s path across America from coast to coast. It is a county seat of 63,000, built along a bend in the Rock River. It is the hometown of House Speaker Paul Ryan. It is an old United Auto Workers town in a state led by a new generation of conservative, Gov. Scott Walker (R). It is a Democratic town still, though the economic blow that befell Janesville is the kind of reversal of fortune that drove many working class Americans to support Donald Trump for president.
(Photo by Alyssa Schukar for The Washington Post)
