Fresh Air - The Impossible American Dream

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

PBS FRONTLINE documentarians Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes spent 34 years following two working-class families in Milwaukee who lost well-paying manufacturing jobs and then struggled to regain their way of life. The film, hosted by Bill Moyers, is called Two American Families.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Concerns about the economy, inflation, and the cost of living are top issues for voters, and this election year is no different. In a new Frontline documentary, journalist Bill Moyers and his team give an intimate look at the realities of two families from the battleground state of Wisconsin. These families have struggled through six presidential administrations to provide for

their families and stay above the poverty line. Moyers and his team began documenting the lives of the Stanleys and the Newmans in 1991 after the breadwinners of both families lost their well-paying manufacturing jobs. You just got to roll with the punches. You got to do what you got to do. I'm hitting 70 years old now, and it's time for me to have it together. I still believe in hard work, but I will say that I think we are fooling ourselves that we believe that it's only hard work.

There are so many people that are in the same situation, that are struggling the same way. It's like we haven't come very far. The documentary Two American Families, 1991 to 2024, is the fifth installment in a series that began in 92 with updates on the families in 95, 2000, and 2013. We watch the Newmans and the Stanleys as the parents adapt to part-time lower wage work, and we see the children as they grow up and face some of the same struggles as their parents.

Joining me to talk about the series are producers Tom Cusciotto and Kathleen Hughes. Together with Bill Moyers, they've been following these families for 34 years. Tom Cusciotto and Kathleen Hughes, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks. Thanks for having us, Tonya. Well, Kathleen, I want to talk about how this series came to be

because it's pretty remarkable to follow a story for three decades. So in the early 90s, you sought to tell the story of the changing middle class, and that led you to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where you all heard there had been layoffs at a factory there. What did you see during that trip that set the stage for this journey? Well, you know, we'd been doing a lot of research. In fact, Bill Moyers was in conversation with some funders who were talking about the fact that so many people's lives were being upended by layoffs. And the question started to be, you know, what are these

people going to do with their spare time? Are they going to get involved civically? And the question was a little bit off, we thought. And that was because the thinking at the time, again, this was 1991, was that technology was going to make all these lives so much easier. When people got the new job, they'd only be working 30 hours a week. They would have to retrain for them. And it was going to be... It was all going to kind of be smooth. And I actually got this guy called Robert Reich, who was a Harvard professor, on the phone one day. And I was asking him some questions. And he finally said to me, you know, I think you need to sort of stop and think about what's going on. I just put together this book, which

talked about how, over time, I believe our economy is going to be kind of divided. And in two, we're going to have very well off people, and we're going to have a large number of people who have fallen out of the middle class or never make it into the middle class. And we're going to lose our middle. And he said, if I were you, I might check out a city like Cleveland or maybe Milwaukee. And that guy later turned out to be a member of the Clinton administration. But of course, this was still when George H.W. Bush was president. Right. He became the labor secretary.

So Kathy did a lot of research and actually sent me to Milwaukee to meet with a guy at a union where a bunch of laid-off workers from the company Briggs & Stratton were trying to find new jobs, trying to be trained. Briggs & Stratton is an engine company. Probably anyone who's ever mowed a lawn in the United States and looked down at their lawnmower has probably seen that name. And he introduced me to, I spoke to about 80 laid-off workers in groups of about 20 on a single day. I held kind of like a little forum where I would sit in the front of the room and 20 or so laid-off workers would be there. And I would ask them a question that I ask at the beginning of any subject, which is something that the first filmmaker who I worked for taught

me, which is to ask, if your life was going to be on TV tonight, if you were going to turn on PBS and see that story, what would you want to be told? Which is a way of saying, what is your story? So that people like Kathy and I are not imposing our story on people's experience. We're learning what their story is so we can translate that for a national, in this case, television audience. There were a number of people, including Jackie Stanley and Tony Newman, who really struck me as very compelling. They were just people who told their stories in a very interesting way. And they invited me.

We chatted afterwards. They invited me over to their homes. I met their families, and I asked them if they wanted to be in a documentary. That was the beginning of the very first film we made, which was called Minimum Wages, The New Economy, which did air, as you said, in 1992. And we had no idea at the time we would ever continue with these folks. We just made that one film and then went on our way. Well, the Newmans, they're a working-class family of five when you met them, and the Stanleys, a black family of seven. And in this doc, you go on to explore several themes through their personal experiences, the impact of the economy on the middle class and working class, the challenges of job creation after the divestment of manufacturing, the impact of poverty on relationships, how poverty affects the outcomes of their children, how zip code and race have an impact on outcomes. I want you to set the stage

for us, though, a little bit on what Milwaukee was like before these manufacturing companies left. What were the families' lives like at the height of their working time with these manufacturing plants? When the plants were all running and people were working, I read somewhere that just 11,000 people had decent paying jobs at Briggs & Stratton alone in the 80s. And by decent paying jobs, people were able to buy homes, cars. If moms wanted to stay home with their kids, it was reasonable. You know, there was just a sense of security. There was health care benefits, things like that. And, you know, people were not wildly wealthy, but they had a bottom, so to speak. We call these folks working class often, but they really had a toehold in what we also call the middle class.

They had a little taste of what the American dream was like, a home, a place for your family, a future, a belief that your kids might even do better than you did. And no idea that this big thing called globalization was going to come along and send their jobs to non-union states and to Mexico. And, of course, over the course of decades, send the jobs all over the world from the United States. To orient listeners, when you met these families, it was shortly before Clinton was elected president. So as you mentioned, Tom, it was before the North American Free Trade Agreement, which, among other things, brought the loss of those manufacturing jobs.

They shifted overseas. We start off the doc meeting Tony Newman and his wife, Terry, and their three young children. And Tony had been laid off from Briggs & Stratton. And in this clip I'm about to play, he finally found work at a small engineering factory, a non-union shop, making just over $8 an hour with no benefits. Let's listen. I'm still scared because of being laid off so many times. Some people do call me money hungry because I eat up the overtime. But I've seen how a couple months without income can do to you. I won't feel safe enough until I have like $20,000 in the bank.

Tony was working the night shift, still months behind on the mortgage. He was working an exhausting amount of overtime to try and catch up. The kids are off to school at 8 o'clock in the morning, so I can see them from 7 o'clock when they get up until 8 o'clock when they leave. And then I don't get home until 12 o'clock at night and they're already in bed sleeping. It does bother me not to be able to see the kids as much as I used to. It does bother me a lot. But at this point in time right now,

having money coming in consistently is more important than spending time with my children all the time like I used to. That was Tony Newman, a member of one of two families my guests followed over 34 years as part of the Frontline documentary, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024. And we can hear life happening in that clip there. You know, he's preparing for work, the kids are eating, you're hearing the water running. Bill Moyers, we also hear that, hear him as well. He's the narrator and correspondent of this series. And he has an interesting history in politics. He served as the White House press secretary under Lyndon Johnson's administration. And so he's experienced both the high level political action discussion and also these on the ground kitchen table talks with American families, with people like Tony. surrounding the middle class and the economy evolve over the course of this documentary?

And how did it align with what you saw in the Newmans and the Stanleys and what they were facing over time? Well, there was plenty of optimism, Tanya, when Clinton was elected. Again, as you pointed out, this was before the North American Free Trade Agreement. And the thought was that people had been laid off, but now there was a new administration, there was a new day. And it turned out that that administration really, by passing things like NAFTA, really helped to move even more of these manufacturing jobs out. And it hollowed out the middle class. And Tony Newman and Terry Newman and Jackie Stanley and Claude Stanley, they are really, I think, economically a lost generation. They're the people who, at the beginning of our project in 1991, had lost their foothold in the middle class.

And they were never to gain it back. And as we get to 2024, the Stanleys are retired, the Newmans are in their 60s. It's not like anything anyone is going to do now and in the future is going to change the experience they had of the American dream, which is that it was impossible for them. But it was not for lack of trying. That's for sure. If you heard Tony in that clip, he had gone out and retrained. And first of all, there was a lot of taxpayer dollars put into these retraining programs for these workers. At first, the unions were kind of demanding it, and then it was kind of, it was an effort to try to help people. And all the jobs that Tony was retraining for were lower wage. None of them had the kind of benefit packages that he had earned at Briggs & Stratton. So that was the other thing. And I think it's important, though, to remember that it isn't like people just went and sat on their hands. You know, everybody kept trying.

The current film, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024, is very experiential. There's not a lot of narrating. It's just mostly the experience of these families. But in the very first film in 1992, we did do a little narrating. And at the very end of the film, we said the most vexing thing that policymakers were going to have to face was how were Americans going to survive in an economy where it was starting to look like poverty and a paycheck would go hand in hand. I believe that's a direct quote from the film. Your listeners won't be surprised to learn that policymakers and politicians don't take their cues from PBS documentaries.

So no one apparently was listening. But, you know, we could see this coming at that time. When you think about how things have changed over the years, it was pretty obvious to us, not because we're brilliant, but because we were talking to the people who were living it. They were looking out at the future. They were working their tails off at jobs making $6.50, $7.50 an hour, whatever they could make. Terry Newman took a job making $6 something an hour in the kitchen of a school and would get a few hours a week and try to get every hour she could so she could get another six dollars. I mean, think about that.

Night shifts. Night shifts. Tony Newman often would work the overnight shift, which is part of – in the clip you heard, he was working overnight. And when people make, there's one point in Tony's life where he was making 14 bucks an hour. He could make 15 if he worked like from midnight to eight. So he chose to work from midnight to eight, which was really hard on the family relationship. But that dollar, those eight dollars, or maybe it was a little more if there was, you got a bump because you worked the overnight shift. Those dollars mattered to people. The doc spans several economic cycles and political administrations. And Tom, you actually said we could see the time we're in now coming

just by virtue of you following these families. And another clip I'm about to play, it's 1993, and the Stanleys, a family of seven, are watching the inauguration ceremony for Bill Clinton. And one of the sons, Keith, shares his thoughts about the new president, followed by Terry and Tony Newman, who across town are also watching the inauguration. Let's listen. Today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal. I've been there with Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

I'm not saying I don't trust presidents is that you say a lot of stuff to get on top. Even if I was running for something, I say I'd be like I'm everybody get free candy and everything, you know. So you say a lot of stuff to get on top. We inherit an economy that is still the world's strongest, but is weakened by business failures, stagnant wages. I think if they work on jobs first, a lot of people would probably be more energized, you know, give people something to wake up to every morning, you know, a purpose, you know, a purpose, self-respect. Right. And I think that will change a lot of people's attitudes.

That was a clip from the new Frontline documentary, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024. And in it, we heard members of both families talk about their views on the president at the time, Bill Clinton, and his priorities. Kathleen, what types of conversations that you all have with the families about how their lives changed with each administration? It's a good question. I feel like they weren't necessarily following the politics, so to speak, like we were. I think they were really tracking their bottom line the entire time. I mean, I think that clip from Keith is wonderful, Out of the Mouth of Babes. He was a teenager at the time and was already quite cynical.

But I think over time, I felt like they were not buying the rhetoric. And they were waiting to see what would happen and doing their very best to just keep on working and trying to better their situations. Yeah, I don't think Keith as a teenager was cynical so much as he was realistic. I think he had an understanding of how things work. And I think in answer to your question, Tanya, I think over the decades, over the first things when we saw her earlier this year was, we haven't come very far. You know, she's gotten herself into a situation where she finally makes more money. But of course, inflation is very high. And I think, again, that's, you know, their generation, these people in their 60s and 70s now, wages have finally started to go up in recent years, but not fast enough, especially with

inflation, to make a difference in their lives as they look toward retirement, because they've had decades in the low-wage economy. You know, it is, of course, really moving to see the kids grow up on screen, but I didn't expect to be so moved to see the parents age over time. And so you mentioned Terry as she moves through different types of roles, different jobs she takes on just to make ends meet. Also, Jackie Stanley, she's the matriarch of the Stanley family. She candidly shared how time was moving so fast that basically she looked up and now she has gray hair and she's tired, but she doesn't know how to rest. I'm just wondering, did it seem clear to you at any point during the last 30 plus years that Jackie and really all of them would never be stable enough or not be stable enough to afford to retire at this stage in their lives. Like them, we were 30 years younger when we started.

But I think that it became apparent at some point that they didn't have a lot of savings. There was not some kind of funny money set aside. And that it was a big worry. In 2013, Claude Stanley is talking about how he heard something on the radio that you have to have a million dollars to retire. And then he just kind of guffaws. He laughs like, you know, that's not me. So it was always in the back of their minds. And Terry Newman at some point said to us, I think we'll just work till we drop. I don't think they ever thought they would retire comfortably. Interestingly, one of the things that has made, you know, the Stanleys are semi-retired now.

Claude, in the last 10 years of his working life or so, got a job with a public union in Milwaukee. And that gave him a small pension. And I just think it's interesting to note that the life that he was laid off from 35 years ago, which would have guaranteed a stable retirement, that life led to a retirement that really, I think, has only been rescued by the fact that he got into another union job, having been laid off of a union job. It was a public union. It was not like making a ton of money, but it was a little something extra to go with Social Security. And Jackie, in her 70s, is still out there selling real estate because they need more money to retire. So she's still working as hard as she can.

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are Tom Cusciato and Kathleen Hughes, producers of the new frontline documentary, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time, mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. This is Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. If you're already a Fresh Air Plus supporter, you may have heard Terry talking about the first daily national broadcast of the show in 1987. It was still like making a national debut, both to the audience and to program directors, because we weren't on that many stations to start with. Dave Davies talking about his job driving a cab. This is a fascinating city of many diverse neighborhoods.

It was fun to just tool around in a cab all day. Or archival interviews with people like Arthur Miller, Nina Simone, and Audrey Hepburn. Timing you can't rehearse. It's an instinct. Especially comedy. I mean, that's what made Carrie unique. That's why there haven't been a whole lot of Carrie Grants. Are you not a Fresh Air Plus supporter yet? You could be. Subscribe on plus.npr.org or on Apple Podcasts.

How did your relationships with them evolve? You spent a lot of time with these families. It's a good question. I feel like we've gotten to know one another quite well, but we'll go for long stretches of time where we're not in touch. And then someone will suggest, well, maybe we need to go back to Milwaukee. And we call and it's like old home week. How are you? What's going on? They know about our kids. It's friendly.'s kind of, you know, it's friendly. We always, I think, try to keep a certain journalistic distance, you know.

I think one of the things to stress is that we never planned to follow them over any number of years. We finished the first film. We aired it in 1992. Kathy and I then started our own company, and we went up to Boston to see David Fanning, who at the time was the executive producer of Frontline. And we were looking for a project to do together. And David said, what about those families in Milwaukee? What are they up to? And he gave us a little bit of money to go back and shoot. So we went back, Kathy and I, and this was the shoot where Bill

Clinton was inaugurated that year in 1993. And we just shot a little bit with them. So we got back in touch with them. And two years went by. And David got in touch with us again and said, let's get Bill and go back one more time. And let's make a show that will be a five-year look at these people's lives, which we did. And that was very successful. And then a few years later, Kathy and I were in the same sort of blue sky conversation with Bill Moyers and his wife, Judith Moyers. They ran the company together, and they said, what should we do this year?

And Kathy and I said, why don't we go back to Milwaukee? And Bill said, I don't know. And Judith said, oh, we should definitely go back to Milwaukee. She was a great advocate there. And we went back and we made another film. And then, you know, 10 or 12 years after that, with the new executive producer at Frontline, Rainy Aronson, it's another conversation. What should we do? Let's go back there. So our relationship has evolved in a way that has been very organic. It was never planned that we were going to meet them in 1991 and say, hey, can we hang with you for 35 years? It's the exact opposite. I'm thinking about your individual relationships with them, though, and how that allowed us to see their inner worlds over time in a way that I think there's an obvious distance in the beginning. These families are talking to you and they're living their lives, but over time it just becomes

more and more intimate. I noticed how Jackie Stanley, after being laid off from her factory job, she went on to sell real estate. Yes. And throughout the doc, she's so put together. She's so positive, so ambitious. Yes. And by 2024, she's still all of those things. She's still put together, but she seems less certain. She questions her choices.

She's emotional. And I was just wondering, I mean, is that what comes naturally with time? Or do you think her trust in you guys had something to do with her being so forthcoming? I think all documentary filmmakers, if they're good at what they do, develop those kind of relationships. And we've certainly developed one like that with Jackie and Claude and with Tony and Terry. And, you know, you mentioned her real estate, which she has worked so hard at. And another theme of the film is the racism she encountered trying to sell real estate in Milwaukee. Over the years, she would tell us year by year she could not sell in white neighborhoods

and white neighborhoods were the neighborhoods where the bigger commissions were to be had. So not only did she suffer the layoff, not only did the Stanleys suffer everything the Newmans suffered, and I don't mean to diminish the Newmans' experience at all, but they suffered it plus racism. And I think that's an important theme here. Yes. You know, Jackie famously says in one of the scenes, you have to fake it till you make it. And in so many ways, I think that describes Jackie. She is always put together. She always looks gorgeous. Her home is impeccable.

And we don't have any of this in the movie right now, but she will walk around the house and say, look, I got this at a tag sale for five cents and it's beautiful. She's so proud of how she economizes. That is so much her personality. I think that we just know her well enough when we see her that, you know, she's going to be Jackie. I was just wondering, I mean, everyone, and I use hustler in the best way. Everyone was a hustler in that they were always finding a way to get work. But they were always one step away from real calamity. Can you talk a little bit more about the challenges of them being able to hold on to their homes and also survive when they're doing jobs that don't provide health care? It's miraculous, really, when you think about it. Jackie talks about robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's really financing while, you know, being terrified.

She talks about robbing Peter to pay Paul in the context of having to go deeply into debt on her Discover card to keep her son Keith in college. I mean, when you think about what the interest rates are, people talk about high interest rates now, and they're talking about like a 7% mortgage. But, you know, in the 90s, you could be paying 20-some percent interest on a credit card, and they were paying that interest so that their son wouldn't be tossed out of college. I mean, it really was one of the four films in the series is called Living on the Edge, and they were constantly living on the edge. I would say to this day.

Tony Newman, as we heard in that clip earlier, he was very focused at the start of this process with getting the family's finances on track. Actually, when he had taken that job to work the overnight shift, they were several months behind on their mortgage. I'm not giving anything away by saying this, but what is remarkable is that 34 years later, looking back at his life, he realizes there are so many more important things than money. And I can't stop thinking about that because he made that sacrifice to forego a big chunk of being around his kids throughout their childhood in order to make ends meet. And his wife also made sacrifices, deciding not to work because she could see that her kids needed her at home. So while he says money isn't as important as time

with family, did he have any other choice? You know, it feels like there was no other way out for both of these families. I think you're right. And we let Tony say that because that's how he's feeling now. But I think it really resonates when you see the whole story and you feel for Tony because you know that he had to spend lots of time not being there. You know, there's a scene in one of the films where he can't go to Boy Scouts with his boys. And that was one of his favorite things to do. And Terry had to step in for him. And there's many, many instances where he just wasn't there. So it's true. And now I think as he's getting older and he's working on his own, on his own hours, he can find time. But now his children are full grown. And he's in his 60s right now. What types of work is he doing?

He's very skilled at all kinds of, you know, handyman jobs. He calls them handyman, but he can do carpentry. He can sort of, you know, build anything. Tom has kind of a joke with our editor that there's always power tools in Tony's scene because he's always operating machines. And so now he literally works on his own and does work for different people on a freelance basis. It does feel like every time Tony says something, we hear vroom right afterwards. We filmed, we don't actually say this in the film,

but you see Tony working in 2024, and he's building a humidor inside a smoke shop, building the entire thing from scratch himself. I mean, as Kathy said, he is a very skilled worker, and he has the kind of skills that, you know, when he was entering the job market in the 1980s, would have put a person in a very good position to earn a middle-class living, and that no longer do. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are Tom Cusciato and Kathleen Hughes, producers of the new frontline documentary, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024, hosted by Bill Moyers. The documentary is the fifth

installment in a series that follows the lives of two families from Milwaukee who struggled over three decades to stay afloat after the breadwinners in each family are laid off from well-paying manufacturing jobs. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. One of the things we just see naturally through following these families

is the impact of all of this on their relationships with each other. And in the case of Tony and Terry, there was strain from the start in their marriage. Can you say more about that? I mean, Tony told Bill Moyers in 1991 that he really felt like he should be taking care of his family. And it was a real strain on him personally. I think he felt like I am not living up to my obligation in this marriage. And, you know, he was thinking about divorce even when we met them. And I think it was because he felt so bad. And Terry always felt like, hey, if we get divorced, you're going to have to pay for us anyway. So I don't know what you're talking about.

But I think that it's a lot of things that happen and probably happen more to men, where you feel like if you grow up feeling like you should be the breadwinner, that that was really just powerfully depressing for him. And I think even then, I think he would have said some things are more important than money. But money can take away some of the anxiety that people live with. And that anxiety was 24-7 for Tony at that time. And I think it really did play havoc with their marriage. And the marriage didn't last. Whereas the Stanleys, again, not to give away too much, but it's a bit of a love story,

besides being a story about the economy. Again, nothing we ever set out to do. We didn't know if the families would stay together or what would happen in their lives. But it is an interesting, turns out to be an interesting look, just two families, how the economy helped to tear one of them apart. And I think the economy in some ways helped to keep the others together because they decided that they were going to struggle together, Claude and Jackie Stanley, and they have done so for all the decades we've known them. Yes. One of the things about both Tony and Claude, the work that they do and they have done all throughout their lives is so physical. Did you guys talk about the impacts on their bodies? I'm thinking in particularly with Claude, after he lost his factory job, he went on to do several things, and they were all very physical in nature. At one time, even later in his life, he worked as a garbage man. And this is like as he's entering his 50s

and 60s. What did you all see and notice about the changes in the toll on their bodies and their health? Terry is the one, Terry Newman, is the one who speaks the most about the toll that the many physical jobs she has had has taken on her body. She gets up in the morning and it's all aches and pains until she warms up and she's in her 60s and still doing a very physical job. It's been very hard on Claude Stanley. He happens to be one of those people who just looks great all the time. So you could look at Claude and you could say, well, this hasn't taken too much of a toll on Claude, but it absolutely did. He's had some health problems. He's had some illnesses. And it was backbreaking work being in his 60s and picking up big, as you will see in the film, pails of

garbage and hoisting them into the back of the truck in winter Wisconsin weather. I mean, that's tough. And Jackie does speak about how privately Claude would say to her, I don't know how long I can keep doing this. And he did keep doing it until he hit just about 70 years old. I want to talk a little bit about the outcomes of the children. One of the Stanley children, Keith, made it clear that he has postponed having his own children until he can ensure that they experience no financial hardship. I want to play a clip about more of that. Let's listen. I'm inspired by my parents, but that's also made me make a lot of tough decisions

where I said, I'm not going to make those decisions because I don't want that to affect my life. Look for the blue, don't look for the brown. One of the decisions Keith made is to hold off on getting married and having kids. I want to make sure I can control my destiny, and that's including not having children at a certain age. I would love to say I want to bring in I can control my destiny, and that's including not having children at a certain age. I would love to say I want to bring in a child in the world, but until I have myself together, I'm confident and believe that I have myself together.

And people say there's no perfect time to have a kid. I know that. But there's been too many struggles I saw. That was Keith Stanley in the new frontline documentary, American Families, 1991 to 2024. When I hear Keith speak, I hear him trying to break this generational cycle of poverty. Did you notice any generational differences in how the children viewed the American dream and their economic prospects compared to their parents? Well, I think Keith in particular was someone who did has started to devote himself to improving the lives of people who live in communities where they're struggling. He's also spent, we know, time helping out his siblings who do have children.

So he's a caregiver in that sense. I think that the way he was raised and what he saw made him want to try and make some change professionally as a professional. And I think it's interesting that Keith, if you just look at Keith Stanley's story in isolation, you could easily come to the conclusion that, see, all it takes is hard work. Go to school, educate yourself, work hard, and you will make it. And Keith himself made it a point to say to us that that is not the whole story. Even if he was able to succeed that way, that he knows all kinds of people who've worked very, very hard and still lost their homes and their cars in the 2008 crash and still aren't

making it. And that depending on how you're born, who you're born to, what kind of family wealth there is, what kind of generational wealth there is, there's a lot more to it than working hard. And I think it's fair to say that he does not want his story to suggest to people that, oh, if you just work hard, you could make it. Overall, are the outcomes of the Stanleys and the Newmans' children better than their parents? That's a good question. Certainly not better than their parents when their parents had well-paying union jobs, no. Are they better in the sense that in recent years, wages have started to come up? I would say most of them probably are to a certain degree.

One of them, one of Keith's sisters has a good job, but she has enormous educational debt that she had to go into to do it. One of the Newman's sons is working in a warehouse and making $20-some an hour, but he can't. He would love to buy a house, but he can't because as his wages went up, so did house prices and so did mortgage rates. So maybe a little better. But, you know, like in the case of the Newmans, you're talking about a little better than Terry losing her house and being homeless. So, yeah, a little better than that.

You know, and we can't write the future for them. We don't know what's going to happen to them or to the American economy. And we are not cynical about their futures. But we just know what a hard ride it has been for both families. Where did Terry end up after she lost her home? Terry had retrained, just like so many American workers have been told to do over the decades. And she is a very sensitive person, and she likes elderly people, and she thought being a home health aide would be a great career for her. And she went and got a certificate in home health care and wound up working for a family with a disabled teenager. But what she discovered was that that career path did not pay very well.

Once again, no benefits, hourly pay, so on and so forth. So she just couldn't make it. So she wound up leaving that behind and going back to working in warehouses where she got paid more, lifting heavy crates, moving material from one place to another. Kind of much more manual labor. And I think for the most part, working the night shift all these years in order to keep her pay a little higher. And so that did allow her to find an apartment on the outskirts of Milwaukee that she could afford. And she furnished it with some furniture she'd put in storage.

And she, too, does a lot of rummaging and finding, you know, bargains. She happened to tell me, I know, that her couch in her living room cost her about 15 bucks. And so she's got a roof over her head. But she does get worried. The rent is going up, you know, everywhere the rent is going up. And apparently also around Milwaukee. And Tony was able to buy himself a trailer in a trailer park. And because he's a handyman, he figured he could fix it up real good.

Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guests are Tom Cusciotto and Kathleen Hughes, producers of the new frontline documentary, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024, hosted by Bill Moyers. The documentary is the fifth installment in a series that follows the lives of two families from Milwaukee who struggled over three decades to stay afloat after the breadwinners in each family are laid off from well-paying manufacturing jobs. We'll continue our conversation after a short

break. This is Fresh Air. I thought it was interesting early on you were saying, you know, we were able to call this moment just by following these families, but, you know, legislators, politicians don't look to frontline to find the answers. I can't figure out why. But should they? Do you think there are some things that politicians maybe should be considering in looking at the lives of these families over 34 years? Yeah, I think anyone would look at these people and say they are the ones that need to be looked at the most because they are the ones who don't have the dream. You know, as wages have gone up, as inflation has gone up, inflation has hurt the people in their class more than anybody else.

If you have plenty of money, you don't like paying more at the Whole Foods for your asparagus, but you can. For anyone who's either on a fixed income or working paycheck to paycheck, it doesn't help for your wages to go up if prices are going up at something near the same rate. And of course, it's different in every community and different with every person. And as Tom had said earlier, you know, we're starting to see a resurgence in unions and there's some energy out there to try and figure out ways to improve the lives of working Americans. The Biden administration is talking about it a lot. And it's probably the first time you've seen a president, you know,

show up at a union hall like President Biden did. But, you know, it's just a little bit in the time span that we've been looking at these lives. It's maybe the beginning of something, but we have no idea if it will last. You know, and the other thing that has happened since the time we started working on this project in 1991 to today is over time, there's just a lot more guns and gunfire in society. I remember going to film at the church in 1991, where the Newmans attend, the Roman Catholic Church, and then returning to film there again in 2012. And in the doors in the front, it said, absolutely no firearms. And I was like, wow, in 1991, they actually didn't need to say that because nobody was going to bring in firearms. And I think that the gun situation has made things harder for both the Newmans and the Stanleys. The oldest...

In what ways? Well, the oldest Newman son has actually left Milwaukee because he's literally tired of the gunfire. In the Stanley's neighborhood, where, as Kathy has said, Jackie and Claude Stanley keep an immaculate house, their kids are worried about it being a dangerous neighborhood, and they wish their parents could afford to move somewhere else. It's just something that has become part of the consciousness, and it's not just Milwaukee. It's cities all over America, and it's not just the Newman's and Stanley's.

It's people all over America. But that's been an added anxiety to their lives as they've struggled with the economy. They've had to struggle with safety as well. Tom Cachado and Kathleen Hughes, thank you so much. Thank you, Tanya, for having us. Thank you. Tom Cachado and Kathleen Hughes are producers of the new frontline documentary, Two American Families, 1991 to 2024. On tomorrow's show, for decades, Shalom Oslander has written with humor about what it's like to grow up in a dysfunctional household within an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in the Catskills. Now in middle age, Oslander explores the weight of trying to shed those feelings

in a new memoir titled Fe. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salad, Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. This message comes from NPR sponsor Grammarly. I'm Tanya Mosley. a secure AI writing partner that understands your business and can transform it through better communication. Join 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly with their words and their data.

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