56 year old Detroit man walks about 21 miles per day to get to work...

[heliumclinton]

You said this is a scam and it rubs you the wrong way. Please provide proof or stop talking out your ***.

You provide proof that is real Bruh...see how it works both ways?...

Yeah you're childish, you have no reason to go against what the article says besides just being miserable. If someone wants to walk to work to make a living that doesn't make them a idiot. If someone wants to give another person $20 to help them with something that doesn't make them a idiot either. Get over yourself and stop being so cynical about life that **** ain't healthy for you.

 

[D.Josey]

You said this is a scam and it rubs you the wrong way. Please provide proof or stop talking out your ***.

You provide proof that is real Bruh...see how it works both ways?...

You going too hard in this thread.

On another note, how do we even know that gofundme bread is going to the guy?

 

[benny bugatti]

This dude could flip burgers for $8.25 an hour at Mickey D's up the street but chooses to do this????

I could see it for 6 months, maybe a year, but 10 years??? Either the story is made up or he's mentally handicapped.

 

[heliumclinton]

This dude could flip burgers for $8.25 an hour at Mickey D's up the street but chooses to do this????

I could see it for 6 months, maybe a year, but 10 years??? Either the story is made up or he's mentally handicapped.

or maybe they aren't hiring a 56 year at Mickey D's down the block

 

[ksteezy]

You going too hard in this thread.

On another note, how do we even know that gofundme bread is going to the guy?

Is probably not, if the story is even true, I wouldn't be surprised if the dude is unaware of 100k having been raised in his name....ima just sip my tea Tho...this is the silliest thing I've seen, I'm over here picturing this man walking in the middle of the night in 17 degree weather, just Diddy boppin

 

[urbetterthenme]

Yall quick to yell scam. Is it that shocking that there are people out there who live a honest life? Granted it his way of living may appear slightly foolish, but he  has lived an honest path towards his job and I got to commend that.

Miss we with the "its fake stuff"

I applaud this guy and now that he has a car I hope all goes well for the guy.

 

[mr marcus]

by now if the story was "fake" it would have gotten exposed....ain't no brother getting away with a lie like this without them doing their background check

 

[urbetterthenme]

NT: where we find a way to make everything positive, negative.

Some of you dudes are too much man.

Seriously man. Its disgusting.

 

[tr1ll]

NT: where we find a way to make everything positive, negative.


Some of you dudes are too much man.

Seriously man. Its disgusting.

A man cant ask question b?

 

[blastercombo]

Again, calculate the calories burned vs the amount taken in. Walking 22 miles and running 22 miles essentially burn that SAME amount of calories. The difference of course is the amount of time taken to do so. Factor in the the obvious sleep depervation and dude has to

1. Be eating literally constantly
2. Have the MONEY to afford all the food he's eatting
3. Sleeping at work

Or my choices

4. Super human
5. 2nd coming of Jesus

 

[urbetterthenme]

A man cant ask question b?

Its just the folks here saying its fake with no substance. Like I said, I think there are other ways he couldve gotten to work, but I aint gonna yell fake cause something is foolish. He's clearly barely making ends(10 a hour aint nothing... even in Detroit) and one of yall said he needed to use his refund money(you dont know how much he gets back, you don't even know if he owes the IRS). Not many jobs out there for black men and especially old black men so this dude is holding on to his job and he is always at his job.

Yall can say at you want, but I'm glad dude bout to get a car and extra side money.

 

[jjs07]

NT playing supersleuth, but nothing to the contrary has come up with his story. Until I read otherwise, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It was probably glossed over, but I think a lot of you should give @Rexanglorum's post from a few pages back a read.

 

[krazy88s]

NT playing supersleuth, but nothing to the contrary has come up with his story. Until I read otherwise, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It was probably glossed over, but I think a lot of you should give @Rexanglorum's post from a few pages back a read.

I read it, but I'm assuming most didn't and prolly won't. They just want the quick results as whether the story is true or not it seems.

 

[superblytrife]

 
by now if the story was "fake" it would have gotten exposed....ain't no brother getting away with a lie like this without them doing their background check

Yep.  

 

A man cant ask question b?

Its just the folks here saying its fake with no substance. Like I said, I think there are other ways he couldve gotten to work, but I aint gonna yell fake cause something is foolish. He's clearly barely making ends(10 a hour aint nothing... even in Detroit) and one of yall said he needed to use his refund money(you dont know how much he gets back, you don't even know if he owes the IRS). Not many jobs out there for black men and especially old black men so this dude is holding on to his job and he is always at his job.

Yall can say at you want, but I'm glad dude bout to get a car and extra side money.

You're spot on.  There could be a grip of scenarios in this dude's life that we just aren't hearing about.  What we see on TV or read on the internet isn't all there is to the story, but I thought people would be smart enough to understand that.  Guess not.  

Maybe dude has no family to ask for help, owes thousands to the IRS, doesn't make enough to live/eat AND save $$ (this is highly plausible, but most NTers don't know anything about REAL poverty), can't afford car insurance even if he did have a car and on and on and on.  The possibilities are endless.

But nope.  It sounds ridiculous and doesn't make any sense so it must be a scam.  

 

[storm2006]

Brother Mouzone and I read the Atlantic. There is a pretty thorough article about the guy and the transportation system in his community.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/james-robertson-detroit-daily-commute/385098/

Short version is that he makes very little money and he cannot afford to move or to get any kind of a decent car. He lives in the City of the Detroit and his workplace is two towns over in the suburbs. The city of Detroit has public transportation and so does the town in which he works. The biggest problem is that he has to walk through the town that sits in between where he lives and where he works.

That town has no public transportation and the reason is because voters decided not to participate in the regional mass transit system. The official reason why the voters rejected the plan was because they did not want to pay higher taxes but many believe that they rejected mass transit so as to make it very difficult for black people from adjacent Detroit to get there.






Poor people increasingly live and/or work in the suburbs. We do not have a very good system of dealing with problems on a metro area level. Big city, State and in some places county governments, may have problems but they are cohesive governing unit. Poverty and lack of transportation and outright predatory law enforcement are all very hard problems to manage at these multi-city and multi-county levels.

 

[jjs07]

The Atlantic article was a GREAT read and really gives a lot of insight as to how bad things are in/around Detroit. Things aren't as simple as people think when they say "get another job," "buy a bike," etc....

David A. Graham Feb 2 2015, 5:12 PM ET

Steven Senne/AP

America needs more people like James Robertson. Every place needs more people like James Robertson. But that doesn't mean his story isn't disturbing.

The 56-year-old Detroiter was the subject of a profile in the Free Press over the weekend. He walks 21 miles every day, part of a 23-mile commute from his home in the city to his factory job in Rochester Hills, a suburb. He's been doing it five days every week, ever since his old Honda bit the dust. His route takes him through rough neighborhoods and he leaves work well in the middle of the night. This being Detroit, he also reckons with snow drifts and sub-freezing temperatures regularly during the winter.

But Robertson is impressively upbeat about it:

"I sleep a lot on the weekend, yes I do," he says, sounding a little amazed at his schedule. He also catches zzz's on his bus rides. Whatever it takes to get to his job, Robertson does it.

"I can't imagine not working," he says.

There are some fringe benefits. Robertson's boss' wife feeds him delicious home-cooked Southern meals. Still: pretty grueling.

The reaction has been appropriately positive. Robertson was already something of a role model for his co-workers, and readers responded to the story generously, donating $70,000 and counting to help him get a new car. That's great for Robertson. But this isn't a feel-good story—it's a story about policy failures, structural economic obstacles, and about what it takes to keep working despite those challenges. Robertson is no doubt deserving, but it'll take larger changes to help other people who face similar struggles.

Transportation

Let's start with the obvious problem here: lack of mass-transit options. Robertson used to drive to his job, but his 1988 Accord gave out 10 years ago. In car-obsessed Motor City, that's bad news. Robertson's $10.55 per hour pay is more than a buck-fifty higher than the living wage in Wayne County, but it's still not enough for him to get a new car and insure and maintain it. The Freep's Bill Laitner reports:

Robertson's 23-mile commute from home takes four hours. It's so time-consuming because he must traverse the no-bus land of rolling Rochester Hills. It's one of scores of tri-county communities (nearly 40 in Oakland County alone) where voters opted not to pay the SMART transit millage. So it has no fixed-route bus service.

Once he gets to Troy and Detroit, Robertson is back in bus country. But even there, the bus schedules are thin in a region that is relentlessly auto-centric.

Detroit has never been big on mass transit—car companies helped hasten the demise of streetcars—but it's gotten worse over the last five years. Even as the city shrinks and people struggle, there are fewer options for transportation. But with unemployment rates inside the city at nearly 25 percent, workers have to leave the city limits for work. The Detroit area overall has a much rosier 7 percent unemployment rate. (A transportation official told the paper that Robertson might qualify for a special service for low-income workers.)

From The Atlantic article posted above...

 

[tr1ll]

Which brings me back to my original question?

Instead of getting him a car, why dont they push to get this man a raise or promotion so he can buy his own car or bike?

How does the saying go? "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him out to fish and he'll eat forever.."

 

[urbetterthenme]

Which brings me back to my original question?

Unless they plan on giving him a 15 dollar raise, not much will happen bruh.

 

[703 hwy]

He getting da hemi or nah

 

[sreggie101]

 
How the hell is it legal to employ someone if it makes them sleep 2 hours a day? That's beyond unhealthy.

he works 8 hours a day like everyone else

not the companies problem he chooses to walk to work for some reason 

what he does on his own time is his problem

This

100k in less than a day. :x

THIS is what's important here. I couldn't care less if the story is a lie or not. Dude just banked.

If its a lie then it is worse.if he blows all this money on a car he's an idiot. If he doesn't buy anything to make his life easier he is an idiot.

Too elaborate to be a lie, 10 yes is too long to dedicate to the scam. But I agree dude could've done with a moped or something

 

[dropten]

Meh

View media item 1383248View media item 1383247

Dude needs to get a bike

 

[SplinterMatic319]

dawg 2 hours of sleep M-F for the last 10 years? yea ok

 

[Mark Antony]

You guys just won't understand until you live in an area where the jobs just aren't there, and your life (wife/kids) are already in full effect.

 

[Mark Antony]

Brother Mouzone and I read the Atlantic. There is a pretty thorough article about the guy and the transportation system in his community.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/james-robertson-detroit-daily-commute/385098/

Short version is that he makes very little money and he cannot afford to move or to get any kind of a decent car. He lives in the City of the Detroit and his workplace is two towns over in the suburbs. The city of Detroit has public transportation and so does the town in which he works. The biggest problem is that he has to walk through the town that sits in between where he lives and where he works.

That town has no public transportation and the reason is because voters decided not to participate in the regional mass transit system. The official reason why the voters rejected the plan was because they did not want to pay higher taxes but many believe that they rejected mass transit so as to make it very difficult for black people from adjacent Detroit to get there.






Poor people increasingly live and/or work in the suburbs. We do not have a very good system of dealing with problems on a metro area level. Big city, State and in some places county governments, may have problems but they are cohesive governing unit. Poverty and lack of transportation and outright predatory law enforcement are all very hard problems to manage at these multi-city and multi-county levels.

The Atlantic article was a GREAT read and really gives a lot of insight as to how bad things are in/around Detroit. Things aren't as simple as people think when they say "get another job," "buy a bike," etc....

David A. Graham Feb 2 2015, 5:12 PM ET

Steven Senne/AP

America needs more people like James Robertson. Every place needs more people like James Robertson. But that doesn't mean his story isn't disturbing.

The 56-year-old Detroiter was the subject of a profile in the Free Press over the weekend. He walks 21 miles every day, part of a 23-mile commute from his home in the city to his factory job in Rochester Hills, a suburb. He's been doing it five days every week, ever since his old Honda bit the dust. His route takes him through rough neighborhoods and he leaves work well in the middle of the night. This being Detroit, he also reckons with snow drifts and sub-freezing temperatures regularly during the winter.

But Robertson is impressively upbeat about it:

"I sleep a lot on the weekend, yes I do," he says, sounding a little amazed at his schedule. He also catches zzz's on his bus rides. Whatever it takes to get to his job, Robertson does it.

"I can't imagine not working," he says.

There are some fringe benefits. Robertson's boss' wife feeds him delicious home-cooked Southern meals. Still: pretty grueling.

The reaction has been appropriately positive. Robertson was already something of a role model for his co-workers, and readers responded to the story generously, donating $70,000 and counting to help him get a new car. That's great for Robertson. But this isn't a feel-good story—it's a story about policy failures, structural economic obstacles, and about what it takes to keep working despite those challenges. Robertson is no doubt deserving, but it'll take larger changes to help other people who face similar struggles.

Transportation

Let's start with the obvious problem here: lack of mass-transit options. Robertson used to drive to his job, but his 1988 Accord gave out 10 years ago. In car-obsessed Motor City, that's bad news. Robertson's $10.55 per hour pay is more than a buck-fifty higher than the living wage in Wayne County, but it's still not enough for him to get a new car and insure and maintain it. The Freep's Bill Laitner reports:

Robertson's 23-mile commute from home takes four hours. It's so time-consuming because he must traverse the no-bus land of rolling Rochester Hills. It's one of scores of tri-county communities (nearly 40 in Oakland County alone) where voters opted not to pay the SMART transit millage. So it has no fixed-route bus service.

Once he gets to Troy and Detroit, Robertson is back in bus country. But even there, the bus schedules are thin in a region that is relentlessly auto-centric.

Detroit has never been big on mass transit—car companies helped hasten the demise of streetcars—but it's gotten worse over the last five years. Even as the city shrinks and people struggle, there are fewer options for transportation. But with unemployment rates inside the city at nearly 25 percent, workers have to leave the city limits for work. The Detroit area overall has a much rosier 7 percent unemployment rate. (A transportation official told the paper that Robertson might qualify for a special service for low-income workers.)

From The Atlantic article posted above...

Good stuff. Dudes are pathetic with their small world view.

 

[tr1ll]

Any D town NTer seen him walking?

Im mean 10 years, someone had to have seen him.