Foxconned Author Lawrence Tabak Gives Keynote, Friday, Nov.4
Lawrence Tabak has produced the powerful and resonant, Foxconned, praised as both the definitive autopsy of the Foxconn fiasco and a dire warning to communities and states nationwide. He will be featured as the Keynote Speaker for this year’s Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books at 7 pm Friday, Nov.4, in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha’s Commons Hub. The program is free and open to the public. Tabak will speak and be in conversation with UWM at Waukesha’s History Professor Jonathan Kasmarek.
When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan at the White House in July 2017, they painted a glorious picture of his state’s future. Foxconn, the enormous China-based electronics firm, was promising to bring TV manufacturing back to the United States with a $10 billion investment and 13,000 well-paying jobs. They actually were making America great again, they crowed.
Two years later, the project was in shambles. Ten thousand construction workers were supposed to have been building what Trump had promised would be “the eighth wonder of the world.” Instead, land had been seized, homes had been destroyed, and hundreds of millions of municipal dollars had been committed for just a few hundred jobs—nowhere near enough for Foxconn to earn the incentives Walker had shoveled at them. In Foxconned, journalist Lawrence Tabak details the full story of this utter collapse, which was disturbingly inevitable.
