If you don't know anything about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, here is a quick synopsis. In 2014 the City of Flint switched it's water supply from Detroit's water supply to get water from the Flint River. The move was implemented by the emergency manager for Flint, Darnell Earley, who now runs the Detroit public school system. (As an aside, the Detroit schools system has had a series of sickouts from teachers this week to protest inadequate infrastructure and inadequate staffing). Mr.. Earley contends that although he implemented the switch, the decision was made before he began his term as City Manager by Flint's Mayor and the City Council. That decision resulted in a series of issues with the City's drinking water, with the end result being lead contamination of the water and many of the residents of Flint contracting lead poisoning. From what I've read it appears that almost all of the 8,000 children in Flint under the age of 6 years old now have some form of lead poisoning as a result of this decision.
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| Darnell Earley |
According to the Mayo Clinic's website, "even small amounts of lead can cause serious health problems. Children under the age of 6 are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can severely affect mental and physical development. At very high levels, lead poisoning can be fatal." Accordint to the WebMD website, the effects of lead poisoning in children include but are not limited to the following:
Loss of IQ points
Impairments in language fluency or communication
Memory problems
Trouble paying attention
Lack of concentration
Poor fine-motor skills
Difficulty with planning and organization
Difficulty forming abstract concepts
Poor cognitive flexibility (trying something else if the first thing you try doesn't solve a problem).
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| Marc Edwards |
So it's safe to say, that regardless of who is to blame (I'll get to that later), that the city of Flint Michigan has literally poisoned a generation of it's children, and that the consequences of that poisoning will be felt by these children maybe for the rest of their lives. One final caveat. One expert says that the City of Flint could have rectified these issues if they would have been willing to spend an extra $100 per day to have clean water. That's right, $36,500 a year would probably have eliminated 90% of the problem. The city of Flint decided that was too much. Marc Edwards, a professer at Virgina Tech who tested the water in Flint says "There is no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements under federal law that none of this would have happened."
One theory of this blog is that America has come to a point where we hate poor people. Of course not every American hates poor people, but when you are on social media as much as I am you realize that a large segment of our country despises the poor. There appears to be this prevailing opinion that if poor people would just get off their butts and stop being lazy, they would no longer be poor. I won't debate that point in this post, I reference it because I have not one sliver of doubt that the only reason those 8,000 children under age 6 in Flint Michigan will grow up with possibly severe health issues as a result of being poisoned by their government is because they had the misfortune of being born to poor parents. The 2010 Census data showed the average per capita income in Flint, Michigan to be $15,733. My suspicion is had those children lived in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where the per capita income was $104,920 in the 2010 Census, the government would have been willing to spend an extra $100 a day in order not to poison all of Bloomfield Hill's Children.
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| Flint Mayor Dayne Walling and Michigan Governor Ryk Snyder |
The worst part is the government knew this was happening. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder released 274 pages of emails yesterday which show that state, local and federal officials knew that the water had issues. Not only did they fail to inform the public, they did just the opposite. They continued to insist the water was safe. The City made the water switch in April 2014. In October of 2014 General Motors announced that they would stop using the city of Flint water because it was causing corrosion in their engines. If you really want to go in depth about the details of the water crisis and the timeline, the Michigan Live website has a great article, that's not really the purpose of this post.
I often say that the biggest problem in our politics is the inability of Americans to feel empathy for others, the inability to feel that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions, the inability to share someone else's feelings. That's what I'm trying to do now for the people of Flint. I'm trying to imagine how I would feel knowing that the people that I elected to govern me deliberately let my children be poisoned. What would I do? What would I tell my children? How would I feel watching the politicians playing the blame game. What would I think watching my Mayor and my City Council who voted for the switch blame the Emergency Manager and the Governor who appointed him for the problem while they blame the Environmental Protection Agency who in turn points the finger back at the local authorities. How would I feel that my President declined our Governor's request that this be declared a federal disaster? How would I feel that my President appeared at the Detroit Auto Show just 70 miles away yesterday, and while he did offer kind words and thoughts, didn't take a 10 minute helicopter ride to come and see firsthand the damage done to our community?
I've watched almost every Presidential debate. I have heard a lot of talk about the American middle class. I've heard talk about the millionaires and the billionaires. But I've heard very little talk about the American poor. It's almost as if they don't exist. Maybe it's because the poor can't afford lobbyists and can't contribute to campaigns.
Those who know me know that my main concern in the upcoming election is the state sanctioned execution of unarmed black males by law enforcement officers. I know many others whose main concern is ISIL and the threat of terrorist attacks by radical Islamic groups. There are others whose main concern is the economy and/or the income inequality in the nation. But does any of those matter if the government poisons our children? Is a vigilante cop shooting an unarmed kid worse than poisoning 8,000 children? If ISIL had poisoned the water supply of an American City would we then consider it a federal disaster? Does income inequality matter if our kids don't have clean water to drink? How can anyone talk about American Exceptionalism with a straight face when we choose to give our kids poisonous water so we could save $100 a day?
I honestly don't know what I would do if I lived in Flint today. What would you do?
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