The following article in The Huffington Post, was written by my cousin, Jake Brewer. The article speaks not only to his father, my uncle who has worked for GM for 34 years (and helped start up Saturn), but to the entire nation during this desperate and critical juncture.
An excerpt follows, but please read the article in its entirity. My cousin writes from his heart, while maintaining his passion for a clean energy future. This crisis puts our family in a very difficult position. I have other family members also in quite successful positions in America’s automotive industry. Perhaps Jake said it best, ‘I “support the troops, not the war.”‘
“On November 12, Tom Brewer received an “URGENT call to action…” along with all other General Motors employees in the United States from GM North American President Troy Clarke. The return email address was “grassroots@gm.com.” The urgent task at hand: Call your members of Congress to request that the American auto industry receive a government “loan” of at least $25 billion.
Employees were then directed to a website through which to take action:
As a grassroots clean energy advocate and strategic communications professional, it’s a type of request I know intimately. I’ve written and received countless emails just like it. Two this week. Tom, however, has not.
Tom has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from Evansville University in 1974. At the time, for a Midwestern kid from “stonecutter” Bedford, Indiana, it was kind of like going to work for Google today.
As you can imagine, Tom’s seen a lot happen in the energy and auto industries in the last 34 years, but before this year he never considered that his retirement, his health care, and indeed his professional future would be in such dramatic jeopardy. In fact, without ever changing careers, he once worked for the largest and arguably the most influential corporation in the world; now he’s getting these emails. He never dreamed that he’d need to be calling his congressmen to save the company to which he’s always been loyal, and upon which he and his family’s livelihood has depended. I can speak with such certainty about Tom’s past because I’ve known him for 27 of the 34 years he’s been with General Motors, and we’re very close.
Tom is my dad”
…
“Today my organization is calling on me to mobilize hundreds of thousands of young people to fight in Congress and the halls of politics nationwide for the clean energy future that we MUST achieve for the future of our economy and our climate. This week your organization is calling on you to get on the phones with your congressmen to save the 100 year old auto company to whom you’ve devoted your entire professional life.”