ALSO SEE: The Man Who Killed Vincent Chin

The Sad Story of the Brutal and Unnecessary Death of Vincent Chin

By Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page

30 June 17

35 years ago this week Vincent Chin of Detroit was killed, a victim of a heated time when unemployed white auto workers blamed their situation on an Asian invasion of car sales. In the midst of this setting, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat. The killer's sentence was overturned and he was fined a few thousand dollars and released. At the time I was the only journalist he agreed to speak to. For over three decades I have spoken to and reported on the people of my part of the country who have seen their lives upended without ever understanding that their real enemy were the forces of capitalism -- the auto companies, the banks, and Wall Street -- which upended their lives and ruined whatever dreams they had. They were encouraged to blame the foreigners and the immigrants, and they eagerly took the bait. It pleased the rich, and now, all these years later, in the era of an immigrant-hating leader who got 63 million votes, I am reminded of the great words from Frederick Douglas: "They divided each in order to conquer both."

The following story I wrote in the summer of 1987 for the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine (back when daily papers all over the country had Sunday magazines). It's an example of the writing I used to do before I was a filmmaker. Six months before filing this story I had started working on my first film (which would become "Roger & Me", a satirical saga of how greed ignited the destruction of my hometown of Flint, Michigan).

But first, the sad story of the brutal and unnecessary death of Vincent Chin...

'The Man Who Killed Vincent Chin'
https://web.archive.org/web/20120624020434/https://michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/man-who-killed-vincent-chin-michael-moore