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No power to the people? Emergency managers ruin cities, activists complain

By Barrington M. Salmon -Contributing Writer- | Last updated: Feb 4, 2016 - 5:30:11 PM

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Flint resident Angela Hickmon, 56, chants during a protest outside City Hall in downtown Flint, Mich., Jan. 25. Michigan’s attorney general named a former prosecutor to spearhead an investigation into the process that left Flint’s drinking water tainted with lead, though Democrats questioned whether the special counsel would be impartial. Photo: Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP

Flint, Michigan is a hard-scrabble city, as tough as its name suggests.

In the 1980s, this blue-collar municipality, like many across the country, experienced the shuttering and exodus of the manufacturing jobs that helped residents climb into the middle class. Despite a resilient and defiant populace, Flint has existed in a shadow world, clinging to life, refusing to fade away.

At the moment, Flint’s 99,000 residents—60 percent Black and 40 percent White, Hispanic and other ethnicities—are squarely in the public eye for all the wrong reasons. Since 2014, residents complained bitterly about the city’s foul tasting and smelling drinking water, after Gov. Rick Snyder, Emergency Manager Darnell Earley and city officials switched from using freshwater drawn from Lake Huron, via Detroit, to the dirty, polluted and corrosive Flint River.

But the governor’s former spokesman, state and city officials and others, dismissive of the chorus of complaints, continued to insist that the water was safe to drink. Emergency Manager Early, appointed by Gov. Snyder, engineered the move in April 2014 as a way to save $5 million. The order came from Gov. Snyder but a decision by state water officials to opt out of using corrosion prohibitors which would have cost a mere $50 a day, produced a man-made public health disaster that has affected the lives and health of many of Flint’s residents, particularly children.

After months of stone-walling and denials by Snyder appointees and city and state officials, Flint pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha—described by one writer as the proverbial canary in the coal mine—took the unusual step of sharing the results of the exhaustive study at a press conference. She found that the proportion of children under five in Flint with elevated lead levels in their blood nearly doubled following city’s switch to Flint River water.

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Jazmine Davis stands next to water cases and jugs of water that will be loaded onto a U-Haul truck for the people of Flint on Jan. 25, in Kalamazoo, Mich. Stephen and Keneisha Darden, owners of Exquisite Hair Design, wanted to help people affected by the Flint water crisis, so they put out a message on Facebook saying they would be collecting water to donate. With the help of family, friends and the Kalamazoo community, they were able to collect 466 cases of water as well as 50 one-gallon water jugs within one week. Photo: Chelsea Purgahn/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP

Dr. Hanna-Attisha, mother of two and director of Hurley Medical Center’s Pediatric Residency Program, told CNN, “We had an ethical, professional, moral responsibility to alert our community (to) what was going on. … Our mouths were ajar, and we couldn’t believe that in 2016 now, in the middle of the Great Lakes, we couldn’t guarantee a population access to good drinking water.”

According to the Detroit Free Press, Dr. Hanna-Attisha found that children in Flint who were tested exhibited elevated blood-lead levels which jumped from 2.1 percent in the 20 months prior to Sept. 15, 2013, to 4 percent between Jan. 1 and Sept. 15, 2015. In certain ZIP codes, she said, the change was even more dramatic and troubling, spiking from 2.5 percent to 6.3 percent in children who were tested. The changes corresponds closely to the timing Emergency Manager Early authorized the switch.

In addition, in mid-September last year, Virginia Tech researcher and lead expert, Professor Marc Edwards, invited to test Flint River water samples, said his testing suggested an undeniable presence of lead in water drawn from Flint homes and that Flint River water was 19 times more corrosive than Detroit water.

“In late August, we were hearing reports from the Virginia Tech group that there was lead in the water and when pediatricians hear about lead anywhere, we freak out,” said Dr. Hanna-Attisha, during a Jan. 15 interview on Democracy Now. “We know lead. Lead is a known, potent, irreversible neurotoxin. So we wanted to see if the lead in the water was getting into the bodies of children. So that’s when we started doing our research.”

“And what we found was alarming, but not surprising, based on what we knew about the water. The percentage of children with elevated levels … doubled in the whole city and in some neighborhoods it tripled. And it’s directly correlated with where the water lead levels were the highest.”

That Gov. Snyder and members of his administration—appointed and unelected—ended up in this mess is no surprise to longtime Detroit resident Edith Lee-Payne.

“I’m not surprised. I mentioned two years ago what was it like living here with all that’s been going on. I live in the only state in the union that doesn’t have democracy,” said Ms. Lee-Payne, a 65-year-old community and civil rights activist. “What happened in Flint and what’s been happening in Detroit is because of emergency managers. They have had power over elected officials. They’re not doing what is best but what the governor and state treasurer have wanted, not doing what’s best for the people but working to pull Detroit and other parts of the state apart.”

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Flint resident Grant Porter, 5, watches as his mother Ardis Porter, 26, has her blood drawn for lead testing at the Flint Masonic Temple on Jan. 23, in Flint, Mich. Porter said she was having her and her son tested because she’s pregnant and he’s young. The event was organized by Herb Sanders of Sanders Law Firm in Detroit, Mich., Change Agent Consortium, Rev. David Bullock, and Mothers of Murdered Children. Following blood drawings by Quest Diagnostics, residents should know their results in 7-14 business days. Photo: Conor Ralph/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP

“This finally has become a national issue. We know it’s a travesty what’s happening in Flint and know it shouldn’t have happened. People are buying cases of water. Our church collected 300 cases of water which we will deliver to Flint in two trips. It’s so sad to see children with rashes. This is the thing I said to everybody: that Michigan is the state to watch because if it happens here, it will happen elsewhere in the country.”

Ms. Lee-Payne, executive director of the Lee-Lovett Foundation, a non-profit that promotes the importance of organ and tissue donations, said Gov. Snyder and those she described as his cronies are engaged in a cynical and calculated effort to disenfranchise poor and middle-class Michiganders.

“The emergency manager is there to dismantle our communities. It’s all about control. They’re putting Detroiters and African Americans out in the cold,” she asserted. “It’s racist 100 percent. It’s all racially motivated. And they bring in people who look like us like Kevin Orr and Darnell Early. When they make decisions, the legislature says they can’t be sued. The governor doesn’t have to disclose emails or any other information and the legislature has a gag order around initiatives. Bills just get passed and they don’t have to talk about it. Ostensibly, they want to save taxpayers money.”

“It’s about destroying our community. They’re waiting for longtime residents to die out. They’re forcing longtime residents out and White people moving in, getting tax abatements of 5, 10 years, while people who’ve lived here get nothing. We’re footing the bill for newcomers. We pay for city services they receive.”

Glenn Taylor, a 39-year-old Detroit resident, said he’s been watching the events in Flint closely and like Ms. Lee-Payne, lays the blame for this crisis at the feet of Gov. Snyder and his hand-picked emergency managers.

“They found out about this 18 months into Snyder’s first term,” said Mr. Taylor, who works at Detroit Diesel building engines for heavy duty equipment. “They put the emergency manager law in place in Detroit and Flint. It’s been a 16-year project.”

Mr. Taylor, who also mentors students attending public, private and charter schools, said when the state took over, officials stripped all rights from local elected officials.

“The emergency manager has the right to fire any elected official. Most of them went along with the game plan,” he explained. “The crazy part about that is that this is where all the takeover began. They wanted to take over water boards. They did an underhanded thing, said they were leasing it. The Detroit Water Dept. always generated money for state. They shipped off Flint revenue, made it seem like they were broke. They didn’t expect (the water poisoning) to be this big.”

“Snyder will go. New emails showed them laughing at residents who got sick. It’s gonna be ugly. There’s supposed to be a congressional hearing, the Environmental Protection Agency came in and you have a recall petition. Hopefully that will gain traction. They tried it a couple times before but those were unsuccessful, files came up missing and stolen. There was a statewide movement to get rid of him two years ago. There were a lot of signatures but for some odd reason, they went up missing. That’s how much they were trying to subvert the process. Snyder gave $2 billion worth of tax breaks to corporations. Two-billion dollars. But he cut education and all these social programs. He was trying to save money by switching over, now it’s costing them a whole lot more.”

Mr. Taylor said the biggest problem with elected officials like Gov. Snyder is that they see government as a business.

“Sometimes you can’t do that because you’re dealing with people’s lives. It’s amazing that people with that mindset has no regard for people’s lives. Christianity makes people passive. If you go back into slavery, it’s not ours. I tell people the Bible is the greatest trick ever written. I’m amazed with all they got away with from writing that book. People are taught to forgive, forgive, forgive. But you come to a point where you can’t take anymore. People have to get to the point where they’re tired of being pushed around. But they so financially deprived, they don’t want to take any chances. They may have a shot at one decent job and don’t want to jeopardize that and debt implants fear in them.”

Environmental crusader and consumer advocate Erin Brockovich, who concerned residents contacted seeking help as the crisis unfolded, said during a Jan. 25 interview with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall, that what occurred in Flint is the tip of the iceberg.

“This is extreme negligence. I definitely agree. Flint is the tip of the iceberg here and is getting the national attention that it deserves,” she said. “I’m seeing many Flint, Michigans all over the United States. It’s time for those responsible in agencies and government and those voted and in place to govern to be held accountable. When does it switch from negligent to criminal? This was man-made. It’s the governor and political decisions that caused this. And somebody should be held accountable.”

“It’s of crisis proportions. There’s a whole host of reasons. We’re dealing with community in bankruptcy, emergency water managers, to save some money, with the governor’s permission, saving money and political reasons. They made a very grave mistake. We cannot be messing with water quality. We wrote a report to the emergency manager and told them how to fix it, but it fell on deaf ears. We can’t do this again. We’ve got to learn from this, can’t continue to make this mistake.”

What’s lost in much of the discussions and debates about the mess state and local officials inflicted on Flint are the larger questions about a rapidly changing job landscape; the deleterious effects on middle and lower class workers; the effects of this on towns, cities and other municipalities; and America’s crumbling infrastructure.

Labor, economic, social policy and other experts argue about the importance of reshaping cities, responding in viable, creative and innovative ways to the new reality as it relates to the relationship between citizens and jobs. And at the same time, there continues to be furious exchanges in political circles about how best to finance and maintain America’s roads, bridges, electrical grid, water supplies transportation and other essential systems.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has long been a vocal critic of the federal government and Congress both for their lack of leadership and inability or unwillingness to take the appropriate action. ASCE officials argue that “the state will strengthen with infrastructure investment.” After reviewing different facets of America’s infrastructure, the ASCE issued a report card in 2014 which gave the nation a cumulative ranking of “D.”

The results for the individual categories were equally telling: Aviation, D; Bridges, C+; Dams, C+; Drinking Water, D-; Energy, D+; Hazardous Waste, D; Inland Waterways, D-; Levees, D; Ports, D; Public Parks and Recreation, C-; Rail, C+; Roads, D; Schools, D; Solid Waste, B-; Wastewater, D-; Transit, D.

Meanwhile, political infighting in Congress has brought the notion of any consensus to a standstill and the Republican focus on the federal, state and local levels on limiting big government has manifested in the hollowing out of the middle class. In Gov. Snyder’s case, that has meant privatizing city services, firing municipal employees, taking back portions of the retirement and other benefits from pensioners, slashing social welfare services, all of which have eroded cities’ greatest resource, its tax base.

“This is not a new problem. The officials in Flint knew a long time about the problem,” said Dr. Shantella Sherman, a Washington, D.C.-based historian whose field is American Eugenics, said of the Flint problem. “With the cities, they’ve just patched them up. Bridges are the same. We need to reinvent and reinvigorate the Work Progress Administration. What they really need to do is get those who want to work—Black and Latino, young, able-bodied men—and put them to work. But I’m not talking about the type of situation with prisoners doing this work like in the South and Midwest. They need to learn a trade. Sometimes, it may be just picking up rocks.”

“People call it a conspiracy, but it was business as usual, shifting money, saving money and spraying it off. The real crisis is the crumbling of American cities. Roads, plumbing, and water systems are jacked up, electricity’s jacked up. … If you can bring the industries back, you could revive the cities.”