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Lede: An auto worker on the shop floor is writing a book to be published this year about a militant and inspirational event in labor history that has the power to inspire today’s workers. Doug Cunningham has more.

By Doug Cunningham

In the winter of 1937 thousands of Flint, Michigan autoworkers seized a GM factory in a sit-down strike and held it for 44 days against police onslaughts as the National Guard ringed the plant. That bold act of courage and solidarity won recognition for the UAW from the world’s biggest, most powerful corporation. Martha Grevatt works on the shop floor in UAW Local 122. She’s writing a book to be called “In Our Hands Is Placed The Power” about the heroic Flint sit-down strike.

[Grevatt]: “It’s the kind of story that can inspire us fight the companies today as they continue to chip and chip and chip away at everything we’ve fought so hard to achieve. Our class, the working class, has to – we just have to be willing to fight. We have to draw that kind of inspiration from these workers who just put it all on the line. About a week or two before the strike ended the workers that were sitting down sent telegrams to Governor Frank Murphy and they said we are not leaving it and if you intend to shoot us out, our blood is on your hands. But we are not leaving. We’re determined to fight this out to the end.”