Page 6
March 30, 2016
O PINION
Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the
Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and
story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com.
Blame Game Doesn’t Fix Water in Flint
Children
continue to
suffer harm
by M arian
W right e delMan
America’s po-
litical blame game
continues while
children continue
to suffer life im-
pairing harm. The
nation was riveted last week as
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and
Environmental Protection Agen-
cy Chief Gina McCarthy were
grilled over the shameful inaction
on the Flint, Mich. water crisis by
members of the House Oversight
and Government Reform Com-
mittee.
There is plenty of blame to
go around. But where is the ac-
tion for the children and fami-
lies of Flint? Every day we delay
the damage to children and their
families grows. While Congres-
sional members were calling for
accountability and resignations,
water in Flint was being tested
again. Recent testing at one home
in Flint found lead poisoning lev-
els of 11,846 parts per billion.
When 5,000 parts per billion is
considered hazardous waste, why
are we wasting time apportioning
blame before the problem is fixed
and the poor children and families
of Flint have fresh, clean water to
drink and cook with and bathe in?
Tick, tock, tick tock.
During the months following
the governor-appointed emer-
gency manager’s reckless
April 2014 decision to switch
its water supply from Lake Hu-
ron and Detroit’s system to the
Flint River corrosive water as
a cost-saving measure – never
mind its health and life threat-
stopped using Flint’s water in its
manufacturing plant in October
2014 and told the city it was too
corrosive for its car parts was a
full year before authorities ad-
mitted and warned people not to
drink, cook with, or bathe in it.
Tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock.
The state’s quiet and late ac-
tion in January of last year to
provide bottled water just for its
Flint employees was 10 months
before children and families were
warned. The EPA failed to act for
For the Flint children
exposed to lead including 9,000
preschoolers, local, state and
federal help is needed right now.
ening impact on the children and
citizens of Flint – and the delayed
decision to tell residents to stop
drinking the water in October,
the crisis in Flint has too many
shameful moments to recount at
so many levels.
Authorities disregarded or hid
evidence and misled residents
who could clearly see, taste, and
smell the problem for themselves
and put the city’s financial con-
cerns ahead of concerns for child
and adult life and well-being. The
revelation that General Motors
months after it knew that lack of
corrosion controls in the city’s
water supply could put residents
at risk of lead poisoning. Michi-
gan’s Department of Environmen-
tal Quality failed to heed EPA’s
private warnings for months that
corrosion controls were needed to
prevent a risk to public health. A
state-employed nurse reportedly
dismissively told a Flint mother
whose son was diagnosed with
an elevated blood lead level: “It
is just a few IQ points. ... It is not
the end of the world.” No child in
America is disposable. Tick, tock,
tick tock, tick tock.
Lead causes biological and neu-
rological damage linked to brain
damage, learning disabilities, be-
havioral problems, developmental
delays, academic failure, juvenile
delinquency, high blood pressure
and death. Pregnant women, ba-
bies, and young children are es-
pecially vulnerable because of de-
veloping child brains and nervous
systems. Tick, tock, tick tock, tick
tock.
For the Flint children exposed
to lead including 9,000 preschool-
ers, local, state and federal help is
needed right now. While lead poi-
soning is irreversible, some steps
can decrease its effects. Gov. Sny-
der failed horribly in his response
to the crisis, but has now proposed
funding for safe drinking water,
food and nutrition, physical, so-
cial and educational enrichment
programs, and water bill relief.
Earlier this month, the Depart-
ment of Health and Human Ser-
vices approved his request for a
Medicaid and CHIP waiver from
the Centers for Medicare & Med-
icaid Services to raise income eli-
gibility standards to enable 15,000
more pregnant women and chil-
dren in Flint to receive program
benefits. Approximately 30,000
current Medicaid beneficiaries in
the area also are now eligible for
expanded services under this new
waiver agreement
The federal government has
also expanded funding to enable
Flint’s Head Start and Early Head
Start programs to serve every el-
igible child. These programs will
now provide comprehensive ear-
ly learning, health, and family
well-being services to 1,011 Head
Start children and 166 Early Head
Start children in the city of Flint.
I and so many others are beyond
angry that the lead in the water in
Flint would have been addressed
much more quickly if the majority
of the child victims had not been
poor and black. Children and fam-
ilies everywhere would benefit im-
mediately from stronger, clearer
and consistent national standards
for measuring, monitoring, and
reducing lead exposure that are
enforced. The incalculable child
harm from lead poisoning should
be reason enough to act now with
great urgency and persistence.
Flint’s poor children, sacrificial
canaries in the coal mine, must be
helped and all children in America
must be prevented from suffering
their fate. No child in America is
disposable. A child has only one
life to live and it is today. Tick,
tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.
Waking up in Jail and Not Remembering How I Got There
My story
inspires others to
work for change
t aMisha W alker
Black
women
today yield signifi-
cant political power
as the most reliable
Democratic voters.
Yet, despite growing
political importance,
they score at the very
bottom when it comes to virtual-
ly every economic indicator from
education to lifetime earnings to
household wealth.
Some past history that shapes
black women’s lives just aren’t
changing fast enough. I grew up
with no father and an addicted
mother. I raised myself, became
a mother at 15, dropped out of
school, and struggled to support
my child and siblings. It was a
dark time. Living with poverty,
surrounded by substance abuse
and being neglected, I didn’t think
by
much about the future. But noth-
ing was as dark as waking up in a
jail cell without remembering how
I got there.
More than 1 million women are
behind bars in the United States.
Two thirds are women
of color, and more than a
third of those incarcerated
for drug offenses. Eighty-
five percent have been
victims of violence, rape,
sexual assault, neglect and
child abuse.
A recent report shows
that over the past two decades, the
percentage of girls growing up the
way I did who get prison sentenc-
es jumped from 20 percent to 50
percent. The number of women in
prison is now rising at nearly dou-
ble the rate for men. Many of these
women are mothers criminalized
for being addicted while pregnant.
Last year, Tennessee passed a law
that made it a crime to be addicted
while pregnant.
The right intervention for ad-
diction is treatment, not prison,
but women of color disproportion-
ately get punishment instead of
treatment. Girls of color who have
lived with abuse are more likely to
be labeled as offenders than white
girls.
I was arrested 19 times before
I turned 18. No adult ever asked
what was wrong or what was
leading me down this road of bad
decisions and bad consequences.
There was no intervention before
going to prison, while in pris-
on, or even after -- when it could
have helped accelerate the healing
of my family. Most incarcerated
women have little or no access to
drug treatment, even though near-
ly 75 percent of them were using
drugs before their arrest. Nor is
there much available treatment to
help abused women recover.
There’s also little counseling
or parenting education for incar-
cerated women, even though most
inside, like myself, are mothers.
And there’s scant legal or advo-
cate support for women coming
out of prison and seeking to regain
custody of their children.
Like men, women coming
home face employment chal-
lenges, but they often face more
even barriers in getting assistance
for themselves and their kids if
they’ve been convicted of a drug
offense.
In the six years since I came
home from jail, I have earned my
GED, obtained an associate’s de-
gree, and become an advocate for
changing policies to better serve
people returning home after in-
carceration. I’ve reunited with my
sons and keep them close, assur-
ing them they won’t experience
the life I knew at their ages. I’m
a trained advocate, mediator, men-
tor and leader in the fight to end
mass incarceration.
Had I known that in my state,
California, 54 percent of drug-re-
lated prison sentences go to wom-
en of color, even though women
of color are only 38 percent of the
population, I wouldn’t have been
so surprised to end up in prison
like growing numbers of other
young women.
My story inspires others to
work for change, too. But it’s an
uphill fight, especially for women.
I’ve been there, and know it takes
more than inspiration, vision and
dreams to change Black history.
My work now focuses on re-
defining public safety by helping
people being released from jails
and prison to become whole in our
society. My goal is reduce recid-
ivism by dealing with conditions
that led to incarceration to begin
with, and facilitating recovery
from the pain and disenfranchise-
ment of incarceration and the con-
ditions that led to it.
A record number of women of
color in prison is becoming part
of our shared black history, a by-
product of systemic racism, sex-
ism, and oppression that continues
to persist. My story is evidence
that history doesn’t have to be our
destiny; it’s time to address the
past so we can build a future worth
celebrating for black women.
Tamisha Walker is the lead
community organizer at the Safe
Return Project in Richmond, Ca-
lif., and a formerly incarcerated
mother of two boys.