Help Payday Stay on the Road to Cover the GM Strike

UAW members picket in Rochester, New York last fall (Zach D. Roberts)

Folks,

Help Us Reach Our Goal

$2,734 / $3,000

Donate Here!

With the General Motors strike entering its fifth week, the national media is largely ignore the struggle.

For three weeks of the strike, Payday has been able to travel over 2,000 miles. We lead the national media and even the New York Times cited our work.

However, in three weeks on the road, taking 4 very expensive last minute plane flights, booking hotel rooms for three weeks, and paying a cameraman $1,000 a week for 2 weeks, we’ve blown through our financial reserves.

So, we need to raise more money to get back on the road.

We wanna get back out on the road and keeping covering this story, but we need your help to do so.

Let me give you an overview of how intense the travel has been: I interrupted my vacation Sunday to fly from NYC to Rochester. We worked in Rochester staying up till 6 am to get out one of the first stories on the scene of the picket line. 

Then, we drove from Rochester to Buffalo, stayed the night. Then we drove to Cleveland, where we helped expose the story of the effects that GM healthcare cut was having on the families of GM strikers 

Then, I flew from Cleveland to Nashville then I drove down to Spring Hill, Tennessee, where I wrote about the unexpected support GM workers found in the South.  While down in Tennessee, I also wrote about how the GM strike was helping unions in the South. 

From Spring Hill, I drove back up to Nashville. Then, took a Greyhound bus to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where I wrote about a festive family crowd at a picket line on Saturday night. 

Then I drove from Bowling Green to Louisville,where I caught a flight to Toledo. In Toledo, I wrote about how transferred Lordstown workers, where lifting the spirit of striking workers.

Then, I took a train to Cleveland, where I have a forthcoming story on how the teachers strikes helped inspire some autoworkers in Ohio. 

In between then, I did dozens of radio interviews, helped make half dozen short videos, and filed other stories on the broader overall status of the strike.

So donate today and pass the hat. 

Help us stay on the road. I’m gonna take a nap, but I’ll have more later

Love and Solidarity, 

Melk

About the Author

Mike Elk
Mike Elk is an Emmy-nominated labor reporter and alumni of the Guardian. In addition to filing nearly 2,000 stories from 46 states, Elk traveled with Lula from Sáo Bernando do Campos all the way to the Oval Office in the White House. Credited by the Washington Post for being the first reporter to track the strike wave systematically, Elk started Payday Report using his NLRB settlement from being illegally fired for union organizing in 2015. He lives in his hometown of Pittsburgh and works frequently in Rio de Janeiro, where he attended college at PUC-Rio. He speaks both Portuguese and Pittsburghese fluently. His email is [email protected]

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