>> narrator: tonight, a frontline propublica special... >> with mid-term elections just around the corner. >> narrator: on the eve of the midterms... >> our economy is soaring our jobs are booming. >> narrator: c macgillis examines the growing disparities between our cities. >> people who were making a good middle-css income are now making ten or twelve dollars an hour. >> narrator: once thrivinge places likyton, ohio. >> if you think about where wealth lives, it lives on wall street or in silicon valley. and, you've had no real growth in the underlying economy, there's no one left to buy stuff and these economies collapse. >> narrator: cities that hhie been left , struggling to come back. >> what mas a society move

forward. the idea that one's hard work is rewarded. that one has the ability to rise economically, and socially, and to look to the future with optimism rather than fear. >> narrator: a pbs "chasing the dream" report, tonight on frontline. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to youpbs station from viewers like you. thank you. d by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information is available at macfound.org. f the fondation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. at ford foundation.org. additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in journalism. the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the john and helen glessner family trust. supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and

inspires. and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. support for "left behind america" is provided by wnet through the chasing the dream initiative. with major funding from the jpb fountion and additional funding from the ford foundation. (radio squawking) >> it sounds like tough times in dayton, ohio, when you hear about the thousands of layoffs at... >> we have hit double digits on the unemployment rate now. and this is the highest sinc the early 1980s. >> ...stating that 598 employees will lose their jo when the company pulls out... . >>has become ground zero for america's overdose crisis, killing more people across the country... >> 911, what's the address of your emergency? >> federal and local officers owe involved in cracking don the heroin problem that's growing in dayton. >> ...ohio, where officials say they are on track for 10,000 overdose deaths... >> how big the heroin problem now is... >> the economy's so bad right now, and the job loss in the >> this is a big day for donald

trump, donald trump has won the state of ohio. >> ...is just going to cause an econom, just, destruction to this area. >> but i think it's starting to come back. ♪ : >> macgillfirst came to dayton as a reporter in 2012. i came back several times in early 2016, for an article i was doing on what was happening inth country's politics that year. the city itself would go for hillary clinton. the county it's part of backed donald trump. the first time a republican had

won there in 28 years. i've kept ming back to this area because i think dayton is representative of a whole swath of our country today. we talk a lot about income inequality and the urban- rural divide, but the gaps we're dealing with are also between cities. betweecities that are absorbing an ever greater share of prosperity, and places like this that are being left bind. small and midsize cities that otused to matter a whole lo what our country invented, made and aspired to. they don't seem to matter as as much now. but they do. they are heavily concentrated in our politil battleground states. and are at the heart t of national debate about trade and employment. they are ground zero of a drug epidemic that's on pace to claim anotr six lives before this film is over. so, how did all this happen in a country that is supposedly at

e recovery? ♪ (cars driving by, horn honking) the poverty rate in dayton is 34.5%, whichs nearly three times the poverty rate nationwide and remember, this was the place that just a few decades ago was an epitome of, of w americlth and prosperity and ingenuity. now more than a third of thepe le in this city are living in poverty. ♪ >> dayton is a place that believed in, you work hard, you play by the rules, and good things will come to your family. an,for the past hundred yea you know, until about the great recession, that was continuingap

ton, right? they believed your child could do better. i' i'm a product of the american dream. you know, my parents, my dad worked at general mors, um, he got a good wage. that wage he saved to help send me and my brother to school. my brother is an attorney, i'm the mayor of dayton, right? t >> ♪ wday for picking daisies, and lots of red baoons ♪ >> i don't know if a girl that's 20 years younger than me, her dad's not going to gaid the kind of wage and have the kind of pension my dad had, and soco the cost ollege will be outof each for her. and no, i don't think that she'll get there. ♪ >> macgillis: this assessment of oryton is hard to reconcile with the city's extnary past. it's no exaggeration tsay that dayton was once the epitome of industry and ingenuity in the american heartland. >> dayton, ohio was the silicon valley of its age. it was the center of the most important inventions.

it was the center of aviation. it was the center of automotivee inions. and it was the center of a great many lesser inventions, which collectively brought form to the american 20th ceury. >> orville wright piloted the crude flying machine in the now-classic, 140-foot,t 12-second fiight. >> macgillis: we all know about the wright brothers, of course, who got their start making bicycles in dayton. but they weren't alone. in the early 1900s, dayton was filing more patents per capita than anywhere else in the country. one of the most impoant was the cash register, which revolutionized the retail business and made national cash renster a dominant presence dayton.pi >> look at thet around here. you feel it anywhere you go in thplant. that ncr family spirit is no bunk. >> what happened in dayton was innovation became industry, became general motors, became

delco, became nation cash register. there we 70,000 or 80,000 good-paying union jobs in daytonohio. >> macgillis: when world war ii broke out, dayton's heavy industries retooled for the war effort. rubber, auto parts, airpne gears, propellers-- all indispensable, and all manufactured in dayton. >> general motors had pioneered in applying mass production methods to the manufacture of bombers-- bombers to blast the way for our fighting forces. dayton has a story to tell-- the story of a city at war. >> macgillis: the war effort raised workers' fortunes across the country, and dayton s no exception. >> if you look at the period r fromoughly the 1930s to the h 1970s, you a period of oad-based prosperity. the middle class and those at the bottom saw their incomes rise more quickly than those at

e top. tens, hundreds of millions of americans, over time, became owners of housing for the first time. >> macgillis: sensing opportunity, people were pouring into dayton-- whites from appalachia and blacks from the deep south. >> dayton is crammed, jammed, evy living facility packed this is dayton on a monday night, or a wednesday night. the retail stores are open. the markets are open. the department stores are open. the banks are open. >> mcgillis: by 1960, the cities population reached 262,000. >> and then, sadly, things get ugly fast. in part it because a lot of people were terrified of what this racial integration would mean. >> macgillis: a lot of the new workers that came to dayton were black, coming up as pa of the great migration from the south. and people were not comfortableh heir new neighbors. gh and so, we get the first round of white fli

thd that means a bunch of gs happen, right? one, you're no longer invested in what goes on in theity. so you're consumed, quite rationally, with making surer that all yx dollars help your suburban school district. (dog barking) when you hollow a community out of its lawyers, its doctors, its nurses, its teachers, those who hold communities best together, what you're going to s is terribly predictable. the pathologies of urban life consumed communities. >> macgillis: and many black families who wanted to movebs to the s and other parts of town found the door blocked.al >> banks lit drew lines around neighborhoods to decide which african-americans were going to get loans for which homes. that's what we call redlining. so then an african-american who could afford to buy the home where the great school was, or that was close to a park, or et tera, et cetera, couldn' >> macgillis: in dayton, the result was african-americans being largelclustered in west

dayton, where money and resources steadily declined. u >> west daytonhad middle-class afran-american and white families living side by side, kids who went to school, two-parent homes, a car, you knowthe typical house with the two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. (siren blaring in distance) now we have dilapidad housing. we are losing our spital. we have lost our busins. and that has become the new normal in west dayton. (dogs barking) (talking in background) >> macgillis: mike and willa strickland and their six boys live in west dayton's hilltop hos. >> you know where the top is? >> uh-uh. >> mgillis: it's a public housing complex in a crime-ridden neighborhood. >> before y'all eat, i need youy all to sll prayers. >> lord, thanks for the food,

thank u for nourishing and loving my body. in jesus, mary, all praise. >> macgillis: moving here was their best option, despite working two jobs, but it was a step up from the homeless shelter they were in before. >> the shelter was an experien. it was very different, becau they dealt with the outbreak of like, bedbugs, and something called scabies that i never knew nothing about. and it was just, like, really overwhelming. >> well, at thtime, we just had one income coming into the house, so it was, uh, it was, we could be able to afford it, but it was, like, we couldn't affora to pthing else, you know what i'm saying, and take care k of theids. >> could you turn it up, please? >> no. >> macgillis: wia had just started working in customer service for an insurance company. mike is a line worker at a meat packaging ant. >> my life is different than my parents' life. they was middle-class. they both had good decent jobs, so... my daddy was a... he was a

chemist, and my mom, she was a registered nurse. >> if you already had food, you should have said you had food already before you gavme that. i grew up right here on the west end of town. i moved when i was about eight, so i didn't really kind of grow up my older days here. i moved to atlanta, then i came back when i graduated high school. ♪ when i came back, it's just, ke, nothing was here. >> they just tore everything down and didn't replace it.t now it's juske a ghost town. so the community is considered to be heavy with poverty. veit is no longer attracti for corporate america to invest in. and so people or corporations pull out, without any apology, very intentional, and leave the community desperate. >> acgillis: the business community's exit from west dayton can be seen most starkly in a remarkable statistic: while

an estimated 40% of the city's population lives here, there are no grocery stores to serve them. it's not a problem confined just to dayton. millions of americans live in one of these so-called food deserts. ha>> so essentially what w here in west dayton is no sustainable way to access fresh foods. (birds squawking) this is an abandoned kroger parking lot. the store has been closed now for about 20 years. there is no place to buy a baked potato, there is no place to get a cup of coffee, to have a sip of tea. you can't even buy a salad here. if you want to buy a salad in west dayton, t only place you can get it is a burger king or a mcdonald's. ♪ >> macgillis: as west dayton has been falling behind the rest av dayton, on a larger scale, cities like daytonbeen

falling behind the more prosperous parts of the country, going back decades. >> if you look at thdecline of manufacturing and the decline of areas where it once was vibrant, the real turning point is the late 1970s. starting in the late 1970s,rt corporations s to much more aggressively push back against labor unions. and they did so in part because the economy was becoming a bit more global, so they were able threaten that they woul move production overseas. and so we saw a plummeting of the role of labor unions precisely at the time that inequality was risin (cheering) >> macgillis: and then the reagan era ushered in tax cutsfo the wealthy, and a wave of deregulation. at the same time, shareholders started exerng more influence on the way companies did business. >> you had bankers sitting in new york, corporate executives, boards far away from tse communities, that thought, you know, labor was expendable.

and unfortunately, we have this idea that what's good for wall street is good for everybody else. (tradi bell ringing) wall street was pushing a lot of companies to offload labor costs from their balance sheet, outsource jobs abroad. >> macgillis: in 1993, bill clinton signed nafta, which sped the flight of many auto-parts makers from the dayton area to mexico-- a deal president trump s since been harshly critical of. >> the worst trade deal everma by any country, i think, in the world. >> macgillis: but many economists say that the biggest hit on manufacturing areas came in 2000, wn china was admitted into the world trade organization, which still echoes today in the trade war between the u.s. and china. >> when globization happened, when the loss the dominance of organized labor happened, that wealth was not in just one place.

the wealth here was across a whole community. and when a community sits on that, and that's what they're oueated from, and that goes s ay, that's whyee such a struggle today awe move forward to redefine our economy now. >> macgillis: from 2001 to 2007, the dayton metro area lost almost 23,000 jobs. >> delphi really scaling back their production here in the united states. a lot of tt work is going to mexico and china, so... >> macgillis: to put it another way, nearly 1 in 3 local jobs in manufacturing vanished during that time. and things only got worse from there. >> today, we're anno our plan to, over time, cease production at ford/gm truck assembly plants. >> these gas prices, they're not going down... >> macgillis: in 2008, gm closed its massive dayton operation, citing rising gas prices and plunging sales. >> it sounds like tough times in dayton, ohio... , gm will close the plant for good later this yeo days before christmas.

>> macgillis: was one of the last big auto plants in a town that once had more auto industry jobs than anywhere butit. >> we produced quite a few gm brands-- gmc envoy, the isuzu asnder, saab, buick, oldsmobile. >> basically, it is a shift in stragy. >> macgillis: rodney brickey was one of more than 2,000 gm workers laid off that day. he'd put in years, starting back when his father worked there. >> the insurance was pretty much unbeatable, and the wages were prettyigh. i'd say it probably averaged out around $35 an hour. >> when the plant closed here, economically it was devastating for this area. >> because when you're making that kind of money and something like this closes,it next to impossible to find something that's d compatible with that kin wages.

e unemployment, which now... >> macgillis: but oblems for dayton, and the rest of the country, were about to get worse. >> ...could lose their jobs. major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse and some have failed. >> the numbers of jobs lost,00 19jobs... >> macgillis: the global economy was melting down on its way to the great recession, and it was taking dayton down with it. >> ... that employment rate is worrying... >> it was kind of like a one-two punch. i mean, we had vivid memories of what happened in the 1970 it wasn't that long ago, and itk was, "oh, no, not again." , >> and now to ohere the economic signs are not good. in fact, they're going from badw se. >> macgillis: in 2009 came the hardest hit of all from the company that was more identified with the city than any other:h national cgister. >> ...says it's packing up and moving south. >> the ncr corporation was dayton. it had been here forever. to all of us who lived in daytonwe thought it was going

to be here forever. >> dayton's only fortu company, ncr, is heading out and down south. >> 598 employees will lose their jobs when the company pulls out of here in late september. >> macgillis: the company moved to the atlanta suburbs, where it already had a large operation. the c.e.o. said it had become increasingly hard to recru people to live and work in dayton. >> andaytonians are mad. we're still mad. that took a piece of our soul, and this community has not recovered yet from the loss of ncr. you still hear people talk about ncr leaving the counity. it's a scar. ac >> mllis: it's a story that's been repeated in many small industrial cities, all across the country. >> there's a really fundamental change happening in the economy. if you think about where wealth lives, it basically lives in a couple of places: it lives in financial assets-- so, on wall

street-- or in intellectual property-- so, in silicon valley. it's in a handful of people, a handful of companies, and you've had no real growth in the underlying economy. you've had wage stagnation for 20 years and so, the bottom falls out. there's, there's nobody earning any money. there's no one left to buy stuff, and these econo collapse. (siren blaring in distance) >> we have hit double digits on the unemployment rate now.by >> macgillis010, dayton's unemployment rate topped 12%.t >> worse than economists have been expecting, and this is the highest since the early 1980s. >> macgillis: and while all this was happening in the early years of this decade, city officials began seeing the fst signs of an even bigger disaster. >> federal and local officers are involved in cracking down o throin problem that's growing in dayton. >> macgillis: dayton was hardly the only city being hit with a heroinroblem, but its grip was especially strong here.

>>t has us asking how big heroin problem now i the miami valley, and wh can be done to stop it. >> macgillis: the roots of the problem could be traced backnd years, to the f work that had once made daon thrive: hard, physical jobs, repetitive motions, day after day. >> the opioid addiction issue happens in places where people use their bodies to make a living. you have a guy that's, you know, not feeling really well, or aba woman, and, "m really hurts," goes to see their doctor. their doctor gives them what they perceive to be a non-addictive substance. and i think that's where a lot this came from. >> you know, one of the most serious crises facing people... >> the issue of iate addiction in the dayton area is unique. but this particular part of the country was targeted very s avily by pharmaceutical companies, when drke oxycontin first came on the maet. >> macgillis: by 2011 the state

was reporting that od prescriptions had risen 1,0 percent in ohio and many users were getting hooked. ashley sturgill was one of them. she first took opiates for chronic back pain when she was working as a waitress. >> i can remember exactly when i realized that i was an addict. i, uh, was prescribed oxycontin, me and my daughters' father both. and, um, my insurance was cut. so i didn't have any, and i didn't know, i got really, reallyreally sick. and i think it was my mom or my aunt i called and was telling them how sick i was. and, uh, they told me to lay down, and they pretty much knew that i was addicted to them at that point. >> she was eating, what, 30 a day?le >> probably, at. yeah, i have a very high tolerance. >> and that would kill a lot of people. >> and people think because i'm small, that, you know, that's not the case, but i was probably doing triple what other people were doing. and then everything just kind of went downhill from there. >> a dtor who fbi officials say ran a pill mill in dayton

proclaims his innocee. >> macgillis: ashley says she was getting her pills from a doctor willing to write illegal prescriptions, a practice that law enforcement eventually cracked down on. >> ...believe he wrote as many as 40 fake prescriptions per day. (weapons cocking) >> macgillis: but there was an unintended consequence. >> you know, we took the pills away from the addicts, not knowing we had so many addicts. when you do that, you have people with addiction problems. and now they go seek another illegal substance, and that was heroin. >> police were executing several search warrants in the dayton neighborhood, all relating to heroin trafficking. >> macgillis: as drug cartels began moving heroin to dayton, they were helped by a feature that had once been a boon to its manufacturg economy-- the city's location at the so-called crossroads oamerica. >> you have interstate 75 coming straight from the sout borders, then it hits interstate 70, which crosses from new york to chicago. so it's very easy to distribute products across the united f statm dayton, ohio.

>> macgillis: so with the drugs flowing freely into a city that was already reeling from an economic collapse and suffering the despair that came with it, dayton had a full-blown epidemic on its hands. by then, it had taken over ashley's life. >> i knew she was on the pills, and i thought she got clean. but i actually, uh... she would use the bathroom a lot, and lock the door, andrn he water on. one day i picked the lock on lee bathroom door and opened it, and she had a netuck in her arm. that's when i knew for sure.or >>, i get emotional. i hate thinking about it >> i thought i could just throw her out and move on, but i couldn't do that. i love her. i knew we could do it. and we're getting through now. >> sorry.

>> it was a lot of work but, i mean, we did it. she did it. >> sorry, i just hate... that'so h one for me, so... (sniffling) >> macgillis: ashley was one of the lucky ones. she sought treatme for her addiction after discovering she was pregnant. but across dayton, as synthetic opioids like fentanyl had begu entering the market, addicts were dying by the hundreds. er the state of ohio has become ground zero for a's overdose crisis, killing more people across the country thane. ever bef >> 911, what's the address of your emergency? >> my boyfriend is oding.'s and it's bad, please hurry. >> the epicenter is in ohio, where officials say they a on track for 10,000 overdose deaths this year. that is higher than the total for the entire nation in 1990. >> macgillis: most of the victims end up here, in fronof

the county coroner, dr. kent harshbarger. >> she was 45 years old. and she was found sort of in an abandoned house that's used for drugs regularly. s.i need to get photograph what i see is just the same tragedy, the same story, repeating itself over and over again in that addicted population. but it doesn't exclude anyone-- every racial group, every socioeconomic group, we see in this current crisis. all the internal organs are in e right spot, a little bit of fluid in the chest, the lungsyp rie a little hinflated. the cost is staggeng to any one community, and the smaller mie community, the harder it is to absorb that ecoc crisis that this is creating. there's not enough resources to fix e bridges and the roads, and then you throw in an opioid crisis, and the, the problebecomes insurmountable. i think we're done. the systems being overwhelmed. we have had to bring some of

our equipment that we have alreadfor mass fatality events here to the building. it's a refrigerated trailer,e have two of them. each one of them will hold 18 sets of remains, and we've had to bring them hererom time to time, because our coolers are. fu ♪ >> macgillis: in just the firs six months in 2017, he had seen more fatal overdoses in montgomery country, which includes dayton, than in the entire year before. >> overdoses, they're now the number-one killer of people under the age of 50. more people die from that thansh from car cra... in macgillis: the number of fatalities has s declined, due in part to there being less fentanyl on the street. but the addiction problem is still raging. you can see the devastation at any of the suprt groups that meet virtually every day in the city. this one was called families of addicts. >> f.o.a. is a nonprofit that i

started back in november 2013. i have 11 years of my own recovery from alcohol and other drugs currently, but at the time that i had started this, when i n und out that my daughter was using heroin, itanimal of a different color for me. but what she did is, she educated me more than anyone about at was going on with her. >> macgillis: the night we were there, addts and their families took turns celebrating triumphs that may sound small, but were monumental victories on the road to recovery. >>ere we go. >> there we go. here i come. >> yeah. >> i'm taking one of these, because today marks my 90 ys of being sober. (cheering and applauding) >> i'm going to take one of these, because i jt got out of prison, it's a month on the 20th. i have a job. i've got a car, i've g a phone, i just made it through my first paycheck last night, so i'm super-oud of myself, so... (clis tongue) (applauding)

>> this is for my son, justin. he's going to be ten months clean on the 17th, and we couldn't be prouder of you. (applauding) >> i guess i'm going to take one, and... because i... i'm going to start to take care of myself. >> it's a big step. (applauding) ♪ s >> macgillis: if ynd enough time in dayton, you see that the opioid epidemic spares nobody-- not even newborns. t the city's largest hospital, one out of eve babies in the neonatal i.c.u. is here because ey may be in withdrawal from opiates. there's even a special program designed take care of the overwhelming number of addicted

mothers-toe run by dr. ristopher croom. >> pri to the beginning of this program, there was rely atthing available in this community for tharticular patient population. en you have wf childbearing age in a stressed community where opiates are available and, consequently, you've got opiate-addicted pregnant women. usese women are judged horribly, because they're g drugs, number one, and they're exposing their child. so seeking out help during pregnancy is a hard thing to do. (equipme beeping) >> macgillis: ashley's daughter reagan arrived on new year's day, and spent the first week of her life being monitored for withdrawal. >> i was a little ared of what was gonna happen when she washo born, she was gonna be. you're being such a good girl. the fact that she could go through withdrawals, it breaks

heart. you know you're always-- i'mti going to get eal-- you're gonna have that guilt, you know? because, you know, you're e one, you're the addict, so you feel like you shed this onto your baby, like... but, you know, like i said, you feel horrible. (reagan fuing) >> okay, yes. >> ashley is exceptional for a coup of reasons. number one, she is in recovery. she's had long history of addiction and several attempts at trying to get in recovery, and this is the first time she's been successful at it. you know, th's a huge accomplishment. >> macgillis: in the end, reagam had jud symptoms of withdrawal. but all this medical attention can cost as much a20 times what a regular birth does.e it's just the ways the opioid problem will be a burden on dayton for years, if not generations, to come. >> you know, what's strugglinge' for us is, the ones paying for it-- the taxpayers are paying for the burden, they're

paying for the police services, the fire services. police and fire, they did 3,700 runs in the city of dayton.ge we've ex125,000 needles across the county last year, a 60% increase. (radio squawking) the judicial system has been clogged by folks that come thugh it. and multiply that by 282 people that died last year, that doesn't count the number of people that are addicted. this is an issue that far succeeds just an economic issue. ♪ >> macgillis: as daytos to pick itself up and revitalize its economy, it finds itself in a situation that's become common in cities like this. after all the overdose deaths, the job losses, and people just leaving for opportunities sewhere, the population dayton is barely more than half of what it was at its peak 50 years ago. and even though the number of jobs has returned tohat it was before the recession, employers

are finding there aren't enough qualified workers to fill them. i mean, dayton, you come there, and you know that it was once this city that was this big center of innovation. and you come there now, and what hits you is just the emptiness of it. you have this downtown with these big, beautiful bgs did these gorgeous, 15-, 20-story bank bus and old hotels, and these streets thatso aride-- like boulevards, kind of, and they're just almost completely empty. if you're trying to build yourself, ur numbers back up, quite simply, from a point where you've lost 50% of your population in 50 years, one obvious possible source for that is going to be immigrants andge re. >> last year the city of dayton declared itself as immigrant friendly. so while t trump administration has taken a hard line on immigration, in dayton, some newcomers have been part of the efforts to revitalize.

the ahiska turks are ethnic turks from the former soviet union who came to the u.s. as refugees over a decade ago. roughly 12,000 of themettled in dayton, including islom shakhbandarov. >> back in 2007, when i moved to dayton, people was running away from this community.st et was dirty. basically, part of dayton was dying. but i discover the life in the u.s. could be different if we move here due to the cost of living here and affordability of real estate. >> macgillis: so when you came here, you saw the city in a completely different way. >> yes, i see the opportunity, because it was almost pty, and there was room to fill it. ter six months, i was already a daytonian. >> macgillis: he and some other iska turks went into business together. starting with a single used truck, they built a transportation company cled american power, which now has

over 30 employees. >> this place was basically non-functioning for five or six years before we get it. there was a minor warehouse-- smhl, but that was pretty m it. >> you got it for a good >> yes, we did. we always do. >> it's now been a year since the immigrant-friendly plan was adopted here, and... >> the ahia turks have served, like, as school board ermbers, as community leads. ey have taken an old recreation site that actually was closed and created it asth r own community site. they have started businesses in the community and have taken over entire neighborhoods of the city of dayton, and made them vibrant communities once again. >> these houses, these houses les abandoned. majority of peopho live, like these two houses, they both was abandoned. it was abandoned neighborhood. we bought houses f $5,000, $6,000. there are houses that i bought for $2,000.

you know, it's... nobody wants... it's the burden in the city. and my community see that as an oppornity. >> macgillis: and like so many suessful daytonians before him, islom has already moved out of the city center and into the suburbs. >> it's the first time i ever buila house from the ground, and i believe the other house is gonna be much better. we're gonna build many, many, many, many, many more. >> macgillis: the ahiska turks ppe not the only foreigners who have foundtunity here. >> the language of economic velopment in the america heartland is changing. >> macgillis: cho tak wong, a self-made chinese billionaire, runs one of the larges companies in the world. his newest and biggest factory is in dayton, making g the american market. he and his translator agreed to a rare interview at his office here.wa whit necessary for a chinese company to come in to

build up our supply chain for auto glass? (speaking chinese): >> the factory floor is bustling again at this manufacturing plant in moraine, ohio. >> macgillis: the cation of his new factory couldn't have mpen more symbolic-- the ety gm plant, now fuyao glass america. >> it's the largest chinese ryinvestment in ohio's his and in the top ten chinese sinvestment in the unitedtates. a company that invests over $600 milon into your community, into a project, that employs over 2,300 people within three, three-and-a-half years, that's a pretty big deal. >> macgillis: among the new employees were a lot of formerke

gm wor. >> i was actually a litt bit excited that at least somebody was trying to bring some jobs back into the area. you know, that's why i went ahead and applied early.ly i was actun the third group hired into the plant. both gm and fuyao, i actually started in the same part of the plant, in the same corne >> macgillis: but the starting wages wereifferent than what he was used to at gm. >> you started out at $12 an hour. after 90 days, you got a raise e to $12.84. >> macgillis: arting pay has since gone up to $15 an hour, but that's still barely enough to keep a family above the poverty level. will american workers need to get used to lower manufacturing pay than they had back ten, 20, 30 years ago? (speaking chinese): an

>>acturing is not what it used to be. we used to think of d,manufacturing as these g stable, middle-class jobs. but because of the decimation of the industrial heartland, essentially now those who are building manufacturing companies in former industrial areas are doing so on a totally new model, a model that's built on much, much lower pay, and much weaker benefits and job security. (music playing over speakers)in

>> macgillisecember, fuyao's employees gathered on the factory floor for the company's holiday dinner. it was a more festive occasion than 2008, when gm shuttered this factory two days before christmas. ♪ down by the river that runs thugh the heart of the cit the scene is much more somber. st. vincent de paul's is one of the dozens of charitable food pantri serving the dayton area. >> i got 49. a lot lower than i t it was going to be. usually, it just flow down to about 70 or 80. (chuckles) >> macgillis: last year, they reve out free groceries mo than 31,000 times. >> getting desperate, the whole crowd running up... >> yeah, you never know what's going here-- 49? >> number 39, your foois ready. please meet your shopper at the door. number 39.

>> t majority of people who come to our pantry work. we actually have a significant llmber that come here; the give me a ticket, and they'll say, "i have to be at work at 10:00," or "i have to be work at 9:30, please me sure i get my food." people who are coming are people who will probably never recover from the great recession. we have families watering down soup, and moms trying to figure out how to make a box of mac .d cheese last for two da y are you tired? you're being reaod. >> we visit homes with non foode cupboard at all, there is nothing. >> number 46, your food ready. please meet your shopper at the door. >> i cannot overstate the change that happened in 2008 and from there on, it was a game-changer for us. people who have never needed help came to us, and they continueo. and we still see the, the impact from that event. jobs have come bk, but it's not the kind of jobs we lost. people who were making a good,ss middle-cncome are now making ten or $12 an hour.

people lost half of eir pension. people did everything they were supposed to do, and it didn't work. >> you're bagging up here today? >> yes, ma'am. >> okay, you can head this way. all i've seen is the need increase, increase, and increase. i mean, we used to serve 1 families. we're now serving 350 and up. all i see is the need going up and up and up. >> 350, your food is... >> hey! >> thank you. okay. wow, okay, hold on.jo >> a lot of th here in dayton are minimum wage, no benefits. so by the time they provide all liat to their family, groceries are the last on th, and so they need to come here. >> cupcake!h, >> yook, they have cupcakes right here. look at that. >> i don't like to see kidse coming hwith their parents. it just,t really bothers me. it bothers me to seehildren here, because i know they'll be here 20 years from now with their kids. f >> 336, yod is ready.

please meet your shopper at the door. >> macgillis: taylor hardy visits food pantries like this a couple of times a month. ♪ ♪ she works full-time, but says that even with $230 in food stamps every month, needs charities like st. vincent's to help feed her family. >> will you get me the, um, red sauce out? >> mm-hmm. >> macgillis: taylor was working as a nursing assistant. her boyfriend, andrew,we waherizing houses. both earned a bit more than $13 an hour, but neither had any savings. >> we make $2,300 a nth and we pay $300 for each car, so that's hi00. >> we've got rent, is about $675. >> $675, so there's $1,300. >> (fussing) >> sit right there, mommy's almost done-- here, here, i'm going to make you a taco.el our gas antric, that's

$300, easy. and then we pay for diapers-- we can't forget that-- for daycare and home. that's usually about $70 every two weeks. here you go, go sit, go take it and sit. >> for both of us, rghly $40 a week for gas for the cars. >> the cost of living is outrageous. i think i have five dollars in my bank account right now.it it's sad really sad that i work all these hours and i miss the time with my kids anmy family to make nothing. >> we're barely just making it. >> come on, let's go. eat. >> the poverty level iby the federal government. and the poverty level for a family of four is $24,300. and when we stop and think about a family of four for $24,300, to that being the poverty level, that's nowheret

near wmebody would need to actually survive in today'ss. doll >> working-class wages have essentially been flat orfo declininthree decades. and we know that upward mobility, the chancehat someone will move up the income ladder, has stagnated. you know, what makes aty move forward confidently into the future is this sense o personal optimism, the idea that one's hard work is warded. that one has the ability, if they seize thepportunities before them, to rise economically and socially, and to look to the future with optimism rather than fear. (birds squawking) >> macgillis: but there is very little sense of optimism among hthe lunchtime crowd at tse of bread soup kitchen. across dayton, wages have dropped an estimated 19% fromhe what twere before the recession. and the work is very different, too. >> right now, i work at

el greco's up on salem avenue. eastaurant work, and that's really out of mye there. i used to be a diesel mechanic by trade. $8.50-an-hour job is not very much money, you know, so... i got rent i got to pay, $100 a week. >> i worin a plastic factory. we process recycled plastics and tlt it into a form, like l black pellets that can be molded into useful obcts by others. so we sell the pellets to other companies, who in turn use these pellets to mold objects. >> we come he to eat, so the kids can eat at home. you know, becaus you know, we're struggling.it >> it is whas, you know. you got to make, you got to make do with what you got, so... really, you got to have faith in yourself. ♪

>> i think our unemployment rate is better th it has been in a long time. the issue in dayton is not how many people are employed or how many people are unemployed. it's, what kind of jobs do the have? is >> macgione of the other things you realize when you talk to people at these soup kitchens and food bks, people with the jobs, is just how humble the work has become in dayton. now you have all these jobs that are no longer abo inventing new things, but instead about the logistics of handling and packaging and moving things that are made elsewhere. take dayton corrugated, who have been making boxes 4 hereyears. last year, they spent nearly a million dollars on new equipment just to keep up with demand-- but most of that new demand is

from companies making products outside dayton. >> we are making more boxes now than we ever have. when the ression came along, everybody just kind of slowed down. we just kind of hunkered down and tried to make profit, to stay in business ourselves. as the economy is comingack, now we can expand. ac >>llis: the starting pay here is $13 an hour, and, like otr employers, he's struggled to fill jobs. >> people are a big problem now. you know, we've got a lot of really good people here, and it's hard to get more. the drugroblem is a real issue for companies like us. because it's really hard t find good, qualified workers. ♪ >>acgillis: as you go arou dayton today, you see this tension between the economic and social damage and the

determinatioto rebuild. there are small bunesses cropping up in old industrial buildings; a new black chamber of commerce is meeting in a downtown coffee shop... (talking in background) >> macgiis: ...and young inventors are designing their prototypes, like the wright brothers did here over a century ago. >> dayton is not unique in the problems that we are facing. that is mmon among urban communities all across the united states. but what is unique is that dayton is still small enough to right some of these wrongs. we're not a new york city, we're not a chicago. we're dayton, ohio. so this is the community campaign, that's where we are today. this is how you change communities. >> macgillis: in a nearly em corner of the city earlier this summer, a group of residents were trying fix one ofheir

most urgent problems-- the lack of grocery stores in westy dayton--ising money for a community-owned co-op.et >> ggs, how's everybody doing? you're good? i know, we're hot.th e's some water over here if anybody needs some water before we take out. there was about five or six of us that had the wild idea, ell, if we're living in a food desert, what if you openeda uprocery store?" nobody had ever done it before, and everybody kind of looked at us like we're crazy. (talking in background) we had so many people join in the last two months, or last month, that we're at 1,500 members right now, you know? and so it's, like, we got a lot of momentum. everywhere i go, people are asking and talking about the market. ♪ >> macgillis: the market will be called "m city," an old nickname from dayton's better days. >> to me, it's about, like, how to get resources that are leaving the community to be reinvested inside of our counity. and the notion that we're not waiting for others to do it,we bue doing it ourselves.

♪ >> macgiis: this question of what you do about places like dayton, places whose glory days have passed, is really tricky one for this country, because we've really never been good about figuring out what to do with the places that are no longer on the cuttg edge. the places that are no longer the, the hubs of innovation. we've never done that; we've never fe the need to do that. we just... we move on to the next thing, move on to the next place. but the gaps between places ve gotten so big these days that the disparities at either end of the spectm are increasingly affecting us all. so we can't just move on from these cities and expect that they'll fix themselves.th r fates are wrapped up in big decisions being made about our nations economy and politics. a the citi a landscape of opportunity. or at leasthey should be, in a country that likes to pride itself on picking up andng starver.

♪ >> go to pbs.org/frontline forth more odecline of rust belt cities. >> there's nobody earning any money. there's no one left to buy stuff and these economies collapse. >> and follow alec mcgillis' reporting on the issue at propublica. >> and you come there now and what hits you is just the emptiness of it. >> check out more stin the wnet chasing the dream initiative addressing poverty and opportunity in america. connect to the frontline community on facebook, twitter or pbs.org/frontline. >> he gripped my arm. >> and he started to massage my shoulders. >> in a forcef way. >> stories with uncanny similarities. >> he came back. >> in a robe. >> just like, an open robe. >> if you were in his movi you had a shot at an academy award. >> he used these non-disclosure agreements.>> t was a show of power....

>> i think a lot of people turned a blind eye. >> ...ancontrol. >> i think his career is over, pet you know, who knows? anything can h >> frontline is made possible by ntributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support is provided by the , hn d. and catherine t. macarthur foundatimmitted to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. re information is available at macfound.org. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. at ford foundation.org. additional support is provided by the abrams foundati, committed to excellence in journalism. the park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awarenessa of criissues. the john and helen glessner family trust. suppting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires.nt and by the fne journalism fund, with major support from

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you're watching pbs. ♪ ♪ hold, hold on hold on to me ♪ 'cause i'm a little unsteady ♪e >> what's tuation there? >> how do you explain that? >> are you ready for this world that we are facing today? ♪

- [carlos] former news anchor, gretchen carlson, has bech excelling since dhood. from a young violin prodigy, to being crowned miss america-- - [announcer] miss america is-- - [carlos] to becomini a nationally recd face on fox news. - he looks at me for that. from the very inception of her tv career, she was faced with one traumatizing encounter after another. so, what compelled this brilliant and accomplished woman to fighta ack by launching historic legal battle against one he most powerful men in media, turning her into a symbol of progress for millions women? - sexual harasexent is not about it's about power and about what somebody does to you to try and take away your power. - [carlos] and what gave her the courage to turn this potentially career-endg event into her moment to break big?