No sir, I'd rather not drink that water, but thanks for all of your help.
It has been so long since I have written about Flint. It is remarkable that, being too “busy” to write about what I am doing on the west side, one of the things I have been hearing around town is how Flintstones need to “take control of the narrative.”
It’s not that folks feel they can manipulate the media to their advantage. That, for the folks of Flint, would be a losing battle, because media wants conflict, and we have enough of that.
What we don’t have enough of is a refusal to accommodate the media portraits of Flint and the current crisis as an informed perspective, let alone one that has our interests in mind. For, while some of the media outlets were heroic in pursuing the issue of the water crisis once it broke, like writers for the Flint Journal and Michigan Radio, and even the Detroit Free Press. But the initial frenzy is over, and now the inquiries related to justice and renewal seem limited to stories about legal matters and bits and pieces about pipe replacement. You are given the impression that things are getting fixed. Somebody, somewhere, is working on it, right?
There is so much more to this, and what is going to happen if we don’s shout from the roof-tops around this state is this: There will be more blame heaped upon victims sooner than later, and the victims will not benefit from any redevelopment that occurs. The most consistent story around town, especially from black folks, is that gentrification and the ensuing profits are right around the corner for those who have, and Flintstones will be pushed to the furthest margins, if you can believe such boundaries exist beyond the Flint City Limits.
A United Methodist pastor friend of mine seemed not to believe me when I told him with certainty that Flint residents were not going to be drinking water from even newly installed pipes. There are a lot of issues with putting new pipes in as a fix, but one that is on everyone’s mind is that homeowners are stuck footing the bill to replace their private plumbing after the work of replacing city pipes is finally completed – which, does not seem to anyone as a potential fix to the water problem, let alone the problems that run much deeper in this community.
So, Reverend Bills asked 70-year-old water distribution volunteer Samuel Smith if Sam would be drinking the water once the pipes were fixed. Sam, who is known as BB, has a southern way of responding to well-spoken white folks, as he grew up in Memphis. If I would have asked him the same question, BB knows me well enough that he would have said “hell no I ain’t drinkin’ no water I don’t care what they say. You must be crazy (epithet here).”
But to the good Methodist minister, the words were politely measured.
“No sir, I don’t believe I’ll drink the water. They say it’s safe, but I’ll pass all the same. It’s probably good for other people, but I’ll drink something else. Thanks for asking sir, there are a lot of good people helping us.”
The fact is, the water is not safe unless you have filters, and we don’t know when that will change. There are plenty of other aspects that play into what Flintstones will think about the water, but that would take up too much time and effort better spent on sharing a realization with you. Flint residents have not only been traumatized, they have repeatedly been marginalized, ignored, and lied to for no other reason than that they are poor and resistant to repeated attempts of the wealthy, privileged, and politically powerful to use them toward means other than the well-being of Flint. After being lied to so blatantly, at a cost of human lives and public health, you expect folks to believe science.
I’m sorry, but you can never call this good. Something has to happen long-term to prevent Flint from becoming the home to a permanent underclass that can easily be removed so that people of privilege can come in and restore everything to grandeur. It is they who will buy up cheap houses when owners can’t replace the plumbing. It is they who will take advantage of the university and health professional opportunities. It is those folks who will renovate homes and drink fresh water from a renovated water system.
And the narrative will be “we did everything we could do for those folks, but you can only lead a horse to water. You can’t force it to drink.” We cannot let that happen.
It interests me that NPR set up a studio at the Flint library so that residents could record their stories about the water crisis for history’s sake. This is a big deal with neo-liberalism, the concept of writing a history that records the voices of the marginalized as well as those who drive policy, win wars, make the most profits, and, of course, teach at the right schools. This is a remarkably astute way to maintain the preferences of the privileged – make sure that peoples voices are heard in the future, when we don’t have to actually respond to the voices, let alone listen or give them a real public forum where their truth can be told.
Flintstones can take control of the narrative by telling each other the truth, and organizing against a government that is intent, not on leaving them behind, but more to the point, driving them out so Flint’s future can be one of those successes of capitalism, and rebuilding of a failed city that found its way once the market was given a chance to do its magic. The first step is to fix a few pipes and tell people the water is safe. The next step is to stop paying for water to distribute to those who will never drink the city water again, ever, because they fear for their health and well-being, and the future of their children.
This is the story – Flint got the crap-end of the stick, and they were told to grab hold of it again after they threw it down.
The state had coated it and called it safe for consumption. But it still tasted, smelled, and sucked all the same. Flint must refuse these inept and patronizing offers of infrastructure help and refuse to grab hold of the stick being offered. Give us the lumber boss – we know what to do with it in this town.
