Fair warning: there’s no synchro here.
I first became aware of Rachel Maddow when she used to be a guest on the Keith Olberman show on MSNBC. Then one night she substituted for Keith when he was out of town and I was impressed by her grasp of issues, her clarity, her humor, and her admitted nervousness about hosting the show.
By the time she anchored her own show on MSNBC, I knew she was a Rhodes scholar who held a PhD from Oxford, that she is the first openly gay woman with her own news show, and that she is a true Aries. This woman is outrageously intelligent, a consummate communicator, and totally fearless. She was also one of the first news people to bring national attention to the disaster in Flint, Michigan, a city of 100,000, where drinking water has been poisoned by lead. Tonight, she held a town hall in Flint that was so powerful it wouldn’t surprise me if Governor Rick Snyder comes under federal investigation, as he should.
The situation in Flint has been like this since 2014, when the Republican governor cut a billion bucks in taxes for the rich and decided to save millions by switching Flint’s drinking water from Lake Huron – a glacial lake, with pure water – to the Flint River. This river is so polluted that it corroded the lead in the water pipes. For nearly two years, the residents have been drinking and bathing in this lead poisoned water. This means that children, the elderly, pets, and everyone else has lead in their brains. In young children with developing brains and nervous systems, this can be catastrophic.
In October 2015, Snyder finally acknowledged that the water wasn’t safe to drink. He apologized. Really? An apology is all he has to offer? And yet to date, not a single lead pipe has been removed in this city. Donated bottled water has been pouring into Flint, but how many bottles of water does it take to bathe? As of today – January 27 – the governor has no plan to remove the lead pipes and replace them.
Rachel interviewed a local pediatrician who has been tending to these young kids, a master plumber who gave estimates on what it would cost to replace all these lead pipes, a professor, an engineer, an activist, and residents of the city.
The master plumber said that he could galvanize a thousand plumbers to Flint to get to work on this problem and they could have the job done in a lot less time than the 15 years Snyder said. More, like, well, months. The pediatrician tried to remain upbeat, but you could tell she’s deeply concerned about the developmental issues these children face. The activist said straight out that Snyder needs to resign and be imprisoned. The mayor has met several times with Snyder and come away profoundly disappointed – and angry.
It’s clear that the problem began when Snyder fired all the elected officials in Flint and appointed an emergency manager for the city who would make all the decisions. In otherords, he suspended democracy. He silenced the people, of whom more than 40 percent live below the poverty threshold and sixty percent are black. They aren’t part of his voting constituency. They don’t count.
Listening to Rachel’s show, I was reminded of Frank Herbert’s classic book, Dune, where water is the most precious commodity. But that was fiction. What’s happening in Flint is real life. You turn on the faucet in your kitchen and brown, smelly water pours out. Your kids break out in rashes. Their hair falls out. Pregnant women may give birth to deformed children. The elderly with compromised immune systems can‘t fight off the toxicity. Here’s what the Mayo clinic has to say about lead poisoning.
Snyder knowingly poisoned the water supply of a city of 100,000 so he could save money. If he were a foreign leader, the U.S. military would invade his country, topple his dictatorship, and probably send in Navy SEALS to take him out. But so far, Snyder hasn’t been investigated, impeached, or indicted. My hope is that as a result of Rachel’s town hall show in Flint, that will quickly change.
It’s unconscionable that in the supposedly richest country on the planet, a city of 100,000 is without clean water. Here’s the Rachel Maddow website where you can read the latest news about Flint. While you read it, imagine how you would feel if this fiasco had happened whee you live. Imagine turning on a faucet and only filthy, toxic water pours out. You can’t drink the stuff or bathe in it. Now what?
This is a tragedy, and an appalling loss of the ethics and democracy that I grew up with. Perhaps an even greater tragedy is the acceptance of it, the acceptance of the demise of virtually everything this country was founded on.
I have no doubt anymore that there is a sustained, well-organized, well-funded, war on the American people. We are being dumbed down with flouride, GMOs, pesticides, prescription drugs. We are indebting our children for YEARS just to get a higher education, blaming teachers for not being able to teach stressed out and traumatized children, shipping all well-paying jobs out of the US, spending over 60% of OUR taxes on creating more war in order to pillage all nation-states that have something they want to exploit.
Greed is what it’s all about. Multi-national corporations have decided it is time to cull the herd in America.
In Flint, it sure smacks of deliberate intent.
And almost always with those least able to defend themselves.
A few years ago I turned on my kitchen faucet and brown, awful-smelling water flowed out. Florida is known for the sulfur and iron content in its water and in its wells, but the water is crystal clear and does go through city filtration systems. It maintains the sulfur odor, however. It isn’t unusual to have that odor, and many visitors bring or purchase bottled water during their stay. The moment I saw brown water coming out into my sink, I immediately phoned our utility company and learned that a large underground main pipe had ruptured; the company was working on it, and I was told there was a warning moving across the bottom of TV screens telling people in the area to NOT DRINK, BATHE, OR COOK with the water until further notice. The message is always called a “BOIL WATER NOTICE”, but often they don’t even say boil the water when something like this occurs. They warn the public to not use it, period, until notice that it is safe. (I had not had my TV on.) On our Island, we receive monthly notifications in the mail informing us of the quality of our water, what the levels of each mineral is, and what steps are being taken to keep the water as pure as possible, and the dates the chemicals are added to purify whatever is required.
This situation in Flint is dire. Would the people there not have instantly begun to contact their water company when the color, etc., appeared, and would they have not continued to use it??Surely they did these things? Surely the families did not allow the people in their households to use such water?? This is an absolute travesty, that the circumstances have been known by the water control company for YEARS and haven’t fixed it! I have no doubt there are thousands of families who don’t have sufficient income to purchase bottled water all this time, or even never. In my opinion, every other city-maintained operation in Flint should instantly cease and the water situation become the entire focus beyond and above anything else. This is horrible!!
What happened in Flint was just about a broken pipe. It was a decision to save money by changing the source of the city’s water. That water wasn’t treated with an ingredient that keeps lead from seeping into the water. That was also a financial decision on the part of the governor.
In the early 1960s, I lived in Flint. Back then it was a really nice place to live and work. Thank you for these links to Rachel’s wonderful work on this issue. It’s simply unconscionable that all this happened because of money, and I am hoping against hope that Snyder is held accountable. Thanks for this, Trish. I really am glad you are one of my “family.” 🙂
I didn’t know you had lived in Flint, DJan! I hope Snyder is impeached and then indicted!