Flint residents still living on bottled water
EVEN now, the people of Flint, Michigan, cannot trust what flows from their taps.
More than one year after government officials fi nally acknowledged that an entire city’s water system was contaminated by lead, many residents still rely on bottled water for drinking, cooking and bathing.
Parents still worry about their kids. Promised aid has yet to arrive. In ways large and small, the crisis continues to shape daily life.
From the pulpit of the North Central Church of Christ some Sunday mornings, Reverand Rigel Dawson can see it. The anger and frustration over Flint’s contaminated water, so visceral at fi rst, over time has given way to something almost worse: Resignation.
“It was one more big thing on top of a bunch of big things,” Dawsonsays.
You have to understand, Dawson says, that people in Flint have endured crime, blight, economic hardship. But as the water disaster stretches on, it has chipped away at their usual stoicism.
“You see the pain it’s caused. You see the discouragement and frustration,” says Dawson. “You see the full gamut.”
When President Barack Obama came to town in May, the 40-year- old preacher was among the Flint residents who met with him. Dawson tried to explain how marginalised people feel, how certain they are that, had this happened in a more affluent community, change would have come sooner.
“I told Obama, ‘It makes you feel like you don’t count,’ “he says.
Later that day, Obama referred publicly to the conversation.
“You can’t have a democracy where people feel like they don’t count,” the president said, “where people feel like they’re not heard.”
Each Sunday, the pastor tries to deliver a message of encouragement and perseverance. Lately, he has relied on Ephesians: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Mona Hanna-Attisha got a cat. The orange tabby showed up not long after Hanna-Attisha’s younger daughter told her, “Mum, ever since you became famous, we never see you anymore, and we don’t have anybody to cuddle with.”
Since the 39-year- old paediatrician went public last fall with research detailing dangerously high lead levels in the blood of Flint children - a move that forced officials to fi nally acknowledge a public health catastrophe - her life has been a blur.
She has crisscrossed the country, reminding audiences that Flint’s crisis isn’t over. She has told college graduates that “there are Flints everywhere, injustices everywhere,” and that they must have the courage to act. She has continued seeing her young patients - and their anxious parents.
Month after month, she has felt the same sense of urgency.
“I have to keep talking about Flint, and I have to keep advocating for Flint. Because it’s been a year, but not much has changed,” Hanna-Attisha says.
The crusading doctor - named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world - tries to compensate for all the time she has missed with her own children, ages eight and 10. She makes it to as many soccer games as she can and hopes the new cat, Simba, can stay on cuddling duty until life regains some normalcy.
But she also suspects her girls understand what’s at stake.
“They very much recognise the importance of the work,” she says.
“They see that I’m a mum to a lot of kids now.”
He missed her at Halloween, when she used to dress up as a witch and deck out the front porch with a smoke machine and a fake coffi n.
He missed her at Thanksgiving, when she would cook for a crowd of family and friends.
He missed her at Christmas, when she made her famous breakfast casserole.
More than a year has passed since Troy Kidd’s mother, 58year- old Debra Kidd, became one of the dozen people who have died from Legionnaires’ disease since officials switched to the Flint River for the city’s water supply. Scores more have fallen ill. — WP-Bloomberg