Friday, May 30th,1980.

Dear Diary,

Today’s news was shattering. Automakers announced come Monday another 267,000 workers will be laid off. Including nine auto and truck assembly plants in Detroit and 17 others, nearly all from Ford. General Motors said 135,000 hourly workers will be laid off, that’s up 15,000 from last week. Ford, Chrysler and American Motors will cut 100,050 jobs. Adding more salt to my wounds, Bethlehem Steel is cutting ten percent of Johnstown’s workforce. We lost Brier Hill Works last year, along with several other mills in the Mahoning Valley. In May, US Steel laid off 15,000 workers. This Sunday, they’re temporarily closing the Braddock Edgar Thomson Works. The day after tomorrow, say goodbye & good luck to two-thousand men? Allegheny Ludlum Steel plans to give 5,000 workers a “plant wide vacation” for a week in July. Jones & Laughlin, Republic Steel, Wheeling-Pittsburgh, National Steel, Inland Steel, McLouth Steel, Crucible Steel, U.S. Steel's Ohio Works, Republic Steel's Haselton Works, and Sharon Steel have all shut down.

Over 40,000 jobs disappeared since that dreadful Black Monday in September 78’ when YS&T laid off five-thousand steelworkers at the Campbell Works plant. Thousands more have permanently lost their livelihoods. Contractors, fuel suppliers, journeymen, manufacturing, mining, railroads, retailers, restaurants, small businesses, trucking and transportation companies have gone bankrupt — jobs vanished forever.

What a nightmare.

I don’t want to pull up roots, but the only work out there are menial $2.85, $3.25 an hour jobs. I can’t feed the kids with that, or fix the furnace, pay for the truck, the house, a new fridge, or vacuum or anything else. I refuse to have my family torn apart. We are not going to live in poverty.   

The wife, sobbing as she readies for bed, rests her head on my shoulder, she asks, "Kevin, what are we going to do?" Well, you, like the other 200,000 wives, will have to get a job, Jeannette will have to drop out of college, we’ll have to go where the money is, we must get out from under this house. Every day, someone is setting theirs on fire to collect insurance money. I’ll talk to my cousin Rick. He knows a professional arson who’ll do it for us. I said. She didn’t want to hear of it.

Like a pack of wolves on a moose, the government, the corporations, the banks, are all gnawing for a pound of my flesh. I don’t have it! And the little I have I am keeping, so you all can go to hell.

As I drift to sleep, I fill with anger, and confusion. I’m wounded, hopelessly weary of seeing my family being carved to the bone. With tear filled eyes, I take my final awakened breath, thinking on how, in just two short years, America has been brought to her knees, bound and gagged, awaiting the executioner's bullet.

Goodnight, God help us all.