Striking Flint

Striking Flint is a co-operative game that recreates the 1937 United Auto Workers (UAW) strike in Flint, Michigan.

John du Bois ... recreates a pivotal episode in American Labor History in Striking Flint. The 1937 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan forced General Motors to address the abysmal working and living conditions of their employees, and to recognize the newly-formed United Auto Workers union.

In this cooperative game, players control five committees each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and prerogatives. GM has considerable resources at their disposal, including city authorities, deep pockets, hired thugs, and the sympathies of the press. To force them to make concessions, you’ll need to work together to weather the forces arrayed against you – fending off attempts at eviction, the effects of exhaustion, and the presence of strikebreakers – while occupying factories in the plant complex. Here, the game cleverly subverts the worker placement paradigm: by placing workers, you do not cause actions to take place, but prevent them.

With a deck of events each based on a real headline from contemporary reporting, this game for one to five players is both a compelling co-op gaming experience and a meditation on protest and solidarity – themes that are more resonant and important today than they were nearly eighty years ago.