Flint: Its A Hard Knock Life

I was born a child of privilege. I always wore nice, clean clothes. I attended private school. Both of my parents had graduate degrees. I was no stranger to the taste of steak and onions. I was an adult before I truly learned what it meant to be both poor and black.

In the mid-eighties, I lived in Harlem. This was not the gentrified Harlem that exists today. This was Harlem at the height of the crack epidemic. As I walked its broken sidewalks, I saw first hand the effects of social neglect on a community. Hungry children; dirty, decrepit housing; filthy supermarket; open air drug dealing; abusive policing and politicians who were masters at telling the polite lie. Underneath all of that, I lived around black and Latino people who possessed tremendous resilience and the courage to survive with dignity in tact. You see back in the eighties, Harlem was the third world (or as some would say, the two-thirds world). It was sort of like Flint, Michigan today.

Between 2009 and 2013, some 41.5% of Flint's residents lived below the poverty line, compared to just 16.8% of the rest of the state. A quarter of its families have an annual income of below $15,000 a year. Flint, a city of 100,000 people does not even have a grocery store. FBI statistics say that Flint, Michigan has the highest crime rate of any American city.

In 2013, the Governor of Michigan enacted a state law provision to appoint an emergency manager to take over the governing of the city of Flint. Local people were irate that the electoral process had been circumvented and that they would have no say in the person chosen to govern their lives. Activist, Reverend David Bullock who appeared on the television show, “Preachers of Detroit” said: We are being disenfranchised across the entire state of Michigan. Michigan is the new Mississippi. Liberty is being lynched in Michigan. Democracy is being destroyed in the name of financial stability.”

Flint’s new emergency manager seemingly found a way to bring about that stability. He commanded that the city draw its water from the Flint River instead of the more expensive Detroit system. Trouble was, the Flint River had a high salt content which began to corrode the pipes of Flints aging water system.

Soon after the fateful decision was made, residents began to complain that the water smelled like rotten eggs. According to an article in the Atlantic Magazine called, What Did Governor Know About Flint’s Water Problem And When Did He Know It? “Engineers responded to that problem by jacking up the chlorine level, leading to dangerous toxicity. GM discovered that city water was corroding engines at a Flint factory and switched sources. Then children and others started getting rashes and falling sick. Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech environmental-engineering professor, found that the water had nearly 900 times the recommend EPA limit for lead particles. As my colleague Alana Semuels noted in a deeply reported feature in July 2015, residents believe the city knew about problems as soon as May 2014. Yet as late as February 2015, even after tests showed dangerous lead levels, officials were telling residents there was no threat.” The amazing thing is how long it took the governor to respond to fact that 100,000 were being poisoned once he found out.

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.

Film maker Michael Moore said, “Let's call this what it is. It's not just a water crisis. It's a racial crisis. It's a poverty crisis. That's what this is, and that's what created this.”

And it’s not over by a long shot. Michigan State Representative Sheldon Neeley said:“The plan that is on the ground now is not sustainable. What is going to happen in two weeks when the American public may turn the page on this? We’re still going to have residents there who will be suffering through permanent effects from this crisis. [The governor’s] just trying to run out the clock on this American city of Flint. If this can happen in the city of Flint, it can happen anywhere.”

The whole things reminds me of a Jay-Z song.

“It's the hard-knock life for us

Instead of treated, we get tricked

Instead of kisses, we get kicked

It's the hard-knock life

Don't it feel like the wind is always howlin'?

Don't it seem like there's never any light?

Once a day, don't you wanna throw the towel in?

It's easier than putting up a fight

No one's there when your dreams at night get creepy

No one cares if you grow or if you shrink

Empty belly life, rotten smelly life

Full of sorrow life, no tomorrow life

…It’s a hard-knock life.”