Rust Belt Resistance: How a Small Community Took On Big Oil and Won by Perry Bush (review)

“By all standard logic of the era—especially by the intentions of British Petroleum (BP), the longtime owner of Lima’s refinery—the sprawling facility on the south edge of town should no longer exist,” writes Perry Bush in the introduction to Rust Belt Resistance, a case study of one Ohio city’s efforts to hold onto its industrial jobs (4). Bush argues that Lima’s recent history is important in an era of expanding corporate power, declining social capital, and the increasing vulnerability of local communities because these city officials defied the odds and their experience “suggest ways to empower such local communities” (227).

Rust Belt Resistance is part history, part investigative journalism. The first three chapters chart the growth of Lima’s industrial economy from the arrival of oil companies in the 1880s through the plant shutdowns of the 1980s. Early local industrialists like Benjamin Faurot were muscled out of the field by John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Though the oil boom was short-lived, Lima’s industrial economy flourished with the addition of refineries, a locomotive works, and defense industries. Bush also mentions Lima’s racial segregation and African American activism in the 1960s and 1970s.

By the early 1990s, Lima had experienced so many plant closings that it seemed as though there was a “standard script” that included union blustering, corporate regret-filled announcements, and journalists recording reactions of devastated workers (91). Behind the scenes, city officials became activists, working to save local jobs. At the center of this narrative is David Berger, who came to Lima to serve as director of a service agency that repaired homes for the poor and who was elected mayor in 1989. Bush attributes Berger’s never-say-die attitude to his passion for social justice, experience as an activist, and political naïveté.

Scholars studying deindustrialization have identified three roles that local officials play: the “bystander,” the “offset,” and the “proactive player” (96). Berger was a proactive player pursuing many strategies. By the time BP announced that its Lima refinery was up for sale in January 1996, he had already witnessed several plant shutdowns. Rust Belt Resistance follows him into numerous negotiations with BP executives, financiers, local bankers, union officials, and oil investors. Surprisingly, the local refinery had wildly exceeded profit projections of BP executives in London, largely because of a culture of continuous improvement and a gain-share plan that paid bonuses to the workers for good ideas. When Berger learned that BP actually intended to shut down the plant rather than sell it to a competitor, the situation seemed hopeless, but Berger’s efforts to advertise the plant’s efficiencies and contact potential buyers ultimately paid off in July 1998, when Clark Oil Corporation announced that it was buying the refinery from BP.

Rust Belt Resistance succeeds as a detailed record of one community’s multiple strategies to hold onto its last industry. Scholars studying capital mobility will find much to analyze here. Yet, Bush admits that local officials were still at the mercy of corporate power and trends in the oil industry. He credits Berger and others with exploiting some of the human dimensions of BP, but it is not entirely clear how their experiences could serve as a blueprint for other communities. His analysis is also weakened by digressions and an unnecessarily detailed chronological narrative. This study remains important in an age when innumerable local communities are struggling to understand how they fit into an increasingly chaotic economic landscape.