Opinion

Op-Ed:Behind Flint Water Horror, a Corrosive Cynicism

Published

10 years ago

February 10, 2016

The basic story of the poisoning of the children of Flint, Mich., through the water they drink is now pretty well known, but as more details come out, it keeps getting worse.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, after passing a big tax cut for the rich and corporations on coming into office, had to find cuts to make up for the lost revenue.

In Flint and other cities, he essentially nullified democratic elections, deposed elected mayors and city councils and installed his own agents with virtually dictatorial powers.

The “emergency manager” of Flint decided that the city could save money by discontinuing its water supply from Lake Huron and instead drawing it from the toxic Flint River.

He then failed to treat the new water with additives needed to keep the city’s old pipes from leaching lead. When people objected to the brown, smelly water filled with particles that was coming out of the taps, the governor’s men reassured them the water was safe.

All of Flint’s children were exposed to water with elevated levels of lead.

Now we learn that General Motors complained to state officials that the water was corroding their auto parts. So the governor’s team gave GM its own hook up back to the water from Lake Huron — while still insisting to the residents of Flint that the water was safe for their children to drink.

State officials also acted promptly to respond to the bad water for one other constituency: state employees in Flint’s state office building. Even as it was reassuring residents that the water was safe to drink, Flint officials arranged for coolers of purified water to be set up on all the floors of the office building.

Flint’s residents — disproportionately Black and low income — were seen as disposable. And they are not alone.

The national statistics on lead poisoning, as Kevin Drum of Mother Jones details, show that African-Americans were poisoned at three times the rate of whites until recent times.

And, of course, low-income people are poisoned at higher rates than the more affluent; poor, urban African-Americans and Latinos suffer the highest rates of all.

Drum notes that while white children were severely afflicted in the postwar lead epidemic, it produced “nothing less than a carnage among Black kids.”

He argues that before lead was brought under control in the late 1980s, virtually an entire generation of urban Black teenagers was at risk of lower IQs, more behavior problems in school, higher rates of violent behavior.

This, of course, reinforced already vicious racial stereotypes of African-Americans, and of the poor. The only hope in Flint is that the children’s exposure was limited in time and intensity, but even that is grasping at straws.

And as Flint resident and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore points out, this isn’t just a crisis of water.

Flint’s residents now see the value of their homes wiped out and their hopes for jobs dashed. Few would consider buying a home in Flint now.

Few employers will want to set up shop there or expand there. The governor’s men have wreaked untold economic damage on the residents of Flint on top of the threat to their health.

The lessons of Flint are plain. Those who scorn government are the wrong people to elect to head it. Government capacity to enforce health and safety, to police environmental poisons and water safety, is essential to the security of our children.

As America gets more and more unequal, the cynical, unstated assumption that there are some who are simply disposable, who don’t deserve decent services, is likely to spread.

But Flint may end up showing something else as well. That cynicism is more corrosive than the toxic water coming from the Flint River. People aren’t going to put up with it.

They aren’t going to adjust quietly to the decline of basic services. The Flint calamity was exposed because the poorest residents objected time and again, despite the reassurances issued by authorities.

The failure of the governor’s local dictator and of the state officials themselves is now apparent.

Yet the reaction to the calamity still seems in slow motion. It is time for the federal government to step in.

Investigations should lead to indictments. Federal resources should be mobilized to rectify the water in Flint immediately, and to provide the city with a real plan for renovation and revival.

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Arts and Culture

COMMENTARY: Black Music is the Sound of Black Freedom: Let Us Reclaim Both This Juneteenth

Black Music Month started when Black Music Association members Ed Wright, Kenny Gamble and his wife, journalist and radio host Dyanna Williams were able to persuade President Jimmy Carter to establish the observation on June 7, 1979.

Published

3 days ago

June 9, 2026

Oakland Post

Robert Johnson (1911-1938) is thought of as the godfather of blues music, especially Delta blues. The 29 songs recorded by him during his short life have been of massive inspiration to guitarists and musicians over the last 80 years. Public domain photo.

By Wanda Ravernell

Black Music Month and Juneteenth are inextricably linked – Black music is the sound of our freedom.

From the plaintive moans of the enslaved Africans’ ‘sorrow songs,’ to the fields of Civil War battle where Black soldiers picked up abandoned bugles, to the upright piano played in juke joints on Saturday night and churches come Sunday morning, our ancestors’ innovation in the face of want, fear, degradation, and hopelessness has yielded genres of music imitated ’round the world.

In 2000, Congress made it official. In 2009, Pres. Barack Obama changed the name to African American Music Heritage Month and in 2023, Pres. Joe Biden changed it back to Black Music Month, two years after he declared Juneteenth a national holiday, the result of a movement led by Opal Lee.

Our ancestors battle for freedom over these last 400 years and the music that allowed them expression of their humanity deserved to be honored.

But we may be losing sight of the value of their sacrifices.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Faith That the Dark past Has Taught Us…’

Along with the long-known exploitation of Black musicians whose recordings were stolen by record companies, the commercialization of Juneteenth feels like another kind of theft.

I had never heard of Juneteenth until I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Philadelphia. I didn’t know it was one of many freedom festivals celebrated by descendants of enslaved people in the United States.

Emancipation Day was Jan. 1 in Pennsylvania, April 16 in Wash., D.C., May 20 in Florida, and Aug. 8 in Kentucky. But Juneteenth, June 19, has the most renown, known in Texas as the ‘colored peoples’ Fourth of July.’

It was marked by parades, beauty pageants, rodeos, backyard barbecues and church picnics.

Yes, church.

The formerly enslaved began the day praying in thanks for their freedom just as they had prayed for Jubilee – the day of freedom – when they had chains on their feet and hands. They ‘testified’ about their past suffering and how they had managed to overcome.

And they sang.

Although, we will not hold it this year, Omnira Institute’s Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance recalled this part of Juneteenth with prayers in the languages of the African captives. In the middle of the ceremony, a soloist would lead us in singing “Many Thousand Gone” while we took turns reciting portions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the news of freedom that took more than two years to reach Texas – two months after the Civil War ended.

“Many Thousand Gone” was famously recorded by Black luminary Paul Robeson in 1947:

“No more auction block for me,

No more, no more

No more auction black for me

Many thousand gone.”

Other verses refer to the ‘pint of salt’ and the ‘driver’s lash,’ the realities of enslavement that they had survived.

‘Sing a Song Full of the Hope That the Present has Brought Us’

All of the genres of African American music have at their root songs like that, the essence being, as Stevie Wonder, wrote, “the joy inside our pain.” So Black music is not just music. It is our story, our history, our very strength.

During the Civil Rights Movement, which peaked 100 years after slavery ended, the people testified that it was the freedom songs – based on spirituals – that gave them the heart to march, face attack dogs, fire hoses, beatings, and shootouts with vigilantes.

The music reminded them that power was in the people. That music, our music, can do so again. We don’t have to accept the commodification of the products of our culture.

The power of those songs is showing a resurgence across the South as we battle again for the right to self-determination through the ballot box.

Those songs are the voices of our ancestors, voices forged in their blood, their sweat, their tears, joy and, above all, faith. Those songs, those prayers live in our blood and our very breath.

This Juneteenth, let us reclaim those holy voices expressed in Black music for ourselves. It is our birthright. It can neither be bought nor sold. No more. Never again.

Wanda Ravernell is the executive director of Omnira Institute, sponsor for 18 years of the Juneteenth Ritual of Remembrance and Oakland’s 11^th Annual Black-Eyed Pea Festival, which will take place on Sept. 12.