Page 2 The Skanner February 3, 2016
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Opinion
Flint Residents Mistreated Due to Race and Class
L
et’s face it: Contaminat-
ed water would not have
flowed through the pipes
of Flint, Mich. — certainly
not for as long as it did — if the
residents of the city of nearly
100,000 had been White and
affluent instead of Black and
largely poor.
In fact, if two-term Repub-
lican Gov. Rick Snyder had
dreamed of that happening
in Bloomfield Hills, he would
have called a press conference
the next morning to apologize
for having such a nightmare.
But Flint is not Bloomfield
Hills.
According to 2014 Census
Bureau figures, Flint is pre-
dominantly Black (56.6 per-
cent), has a poverty rate of
41.5 percent, which is nearly
three times the national fig-
ure, and a median family in-
come of $24,834.
On the other hand, Bloom-
field Hills, which is 90 percent
White and only 3.2 percent
African American, has a pov-
erty rate of only 2 percent,
an estimated median family
income of $151,596, and the
medium house or condo is
valued at $670,823 - about 23
times the value of the average
home ($29,000) in Flint, ac-
cording to city-data.com.
Whether a family drinks
or bathes in lead-contami-
nated water should not be
determined by their race or
income. Black and poor lives
should matter as much as
White and rich ones. Because
that wasn’t the case in Flint,
children were exposed to un-
acceptably high levels of lead
poisoning, which could lead
to brain damage, learning dis-
abilities and behavioral prob-
lems.
Everyone responsible for
this fiasco should lose their
job, be criminally prosecuted
George E.
Curry
NNPA
Columnist
and if found guilty, serve time
in prison and pay restitution.
Fortunately, the eyes of the
nation are fixed on Michigan
to see if justice will prevail.
The National Bar Association,
under the leadership of Presi-
dent Benjamin L. Crump, was
“
Flint’s water supply from
Lake Huron to the Flint Riv-
er. Shortly, after the change,
residents began to complain
about the water’s taste, col-
or and odor. Stories were
written about it in Flint and
Detroit newspapers, but res-
idents were repeatedly told
they had nothing to fear. The
city issued a press release
saying, “Flint water is safe to
drink.”
While city residents were
being targeted with that mes-
sage, state employees were
quietly getting another one.
to hear that GM property was
being damaged, so he jumped
through a number of hoops
and quietly spent $440,000 to
hook GM back up to the Lake
Huron water, while keeping
the rest of Flint on the Flint
River water. Which means
that while the children in
Flint were drinking lead-
filled water, there was one -
and only one - address in Flint
that got clean water: the GM
factory.”
Last February, Miguel Del
Toral, an Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA) expert,
wrote to one city
official, “Given
the very high
lead levels found
at one home and
the preflushing
happening
in
Flint, I’m worried that the
whole town may have much
higher lead levels than the
compliance results indicat-
ed.”
But no one in a position
to change this was worried
enough to step in.
Remember, all of this hap-
pened while Flint was oper-
ating under state-appointed
emergency managers. Like
he had done in Detroit, Gov.
Snyder appointed emergen-
cy managers supposedly be-
cause local officials were too
inept to handle their own
business. But they couldn’t
have done any worse than his
appointees in this instance.
A year ago, Detroit water
officials offered to reconnect
Flint to Lake Huron and waive
the $4 million connection fee.
But the emergency manager,
Jerry Ambrose, declined the
offer and residents of Flint
continue to suffer to this day.
Someone needs to pay for the
state-sponsored serial inept-
ness.
Fortunately, the eyes of the nation are fixed
on Michigan to see if justice will prevail
scheduled to hold a town hall
meeting on the water crisis
Monday in Flint with its local
and state counterparts.
Congressional
hearings
were scheduled for this
Wednesday and Rev. Al
Sharpton was planning to
bring busloads of New York-
ers to monitor the proceed-
ings. Unfortunately, most of
our civil rights leaders are
doing little beyond holding
press conferences and issuing
statements about the crisis in
Flint. With February — a.k.a.
“Negro Employment Month”
— now upon us, they will be-
come even more distant.
Meanwhile, we continue
to learn new, sordid details
about this reprehensible trag-
edy.
From 2011-2015, Flint was
in state receivership and
went through four emergen-
cy managers appointed by
the governor. In April 2014,
in a move to save money, the
state-imposed
emergency
manager decided to switch
As the Detroit Free Press
reported, “In January of 2015,
when state officials were tell-
ing worried Flint residents
their water was safe to drink,
they also were arranging for
coolers of purified water in
Flint’s State Office Building
so employees wouldn’t have
to drink from the taps, ac-
cording to state government
e-mails released Thursday...”
State employees were not
the only ones receiving spe-
cial treatment.
Writing under the head-
line, “10 Things They Won’t
Tell You about the Flint Water
Tragedy,” filmmaker and Flint
native Michael Moore stat-
ed,”A few months after Gov-
ernor Snyder removed Flint
from the clean fresh water
we had been drinking for de-
cades, the brass from General
Motors went to him and com-
plained that the Flint River
water was causing their car
parts to corrode when being
washed on the assembly line.
The Governor was appalled
It’s Possible to Have a Bloodless Occupation
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TheSkanner.com
V
ideo footage of the Ore-
gon State Police shoot-
ing of armed occupier
LaVoy Finicum follow-
ing a vehicular chase is so
very sad to watch. Finicum
may have been quite stupid
in his belief that American
public lands should belong to
private ranchers, but he did
not deserve to die. Sadly, he
arranged for his own death.
Finicum, the spokesperson
for the armed militia which
took over the Malheur Na-
tional Wildlife Refuge on 2
January 2016, was quite open
— he carried a gun at all times
and was ready to use it. He
reached for it, apparently,
and was shot dead. Geez.
Like Finicum, I’ve opposed
U.S. policy enough to risk
arrest, to occupy federal fa-
cilities, and to stand up to
federal law enforcement. Un-
like him, I’ve actually done it
numerous times and never
been shot. I’ve always been
Tom H.
Hastings
Portland
State
University
nonviolent and, to be frank,
my method makes victory
possible and, in some cases,
achieved. Finicum apparently
“
tially illimitable powers to in-
vade and wage war on Iraq or
anyone else. Wyden ended up
voting our way. We were non-
violent and courteous.
I helped occupy his office
again in 2006 to convince him
to speak out against the war
in Iraq. We were quite friend-
ly, actually, with Homeland
Security, who arrested us.
Wyden did as we asked — he
posted on his website (final-
nonviolence.
I’ve done other nonviolent
occupations over the decades
— even a one-man occupa-
tion of the Soviet embassy in
nonviolent resistance to their
weaponry. I’ve never even
had a weapon pulled on me,
let alone being shot, and ev-
ery single public policy ask
I’ve made has ultimately been
granted.
It is so sad to see Muslim
ex t re m i s t s
reverting to
12th century
brutality and
American
“patriots” re-
gressing to
19th centu-
ry behavior. LaVoy Finicum
didn’t have to die; he needed
to learn about nonviolence.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is core
faculty in the Conflict Resolu-
tion Department at Portland
State University and is Found-
ing Director of PeaceVoice.
I’ve always been nonviolent and, to be frank,
my method makes victory possible and, in
some cases, achieved
thought that a gun makes you
safer. It is the opposite.
I helped occupy Oregon
Senator Ron Wyden’s office
twice — once when he was
thinking about how he might
vote on the 2002 Senate bill to
grant George W. Bush essen-
ly!) that he opposed the ongo-
ing war and he even rose on
the United States of America
Senate floor to call for an end
to that occupation.
As usual, we carried no
guns and in fact met with the
staff ahead of time to explain