Opinion

Op-Ed: Michigan Poisons Poor to Save a Few Bucks

Published

10 years ago

January 15, 2016

Flint, Michigan is impoverished. The auto plants have closed. Forty percent of the city’s 100,000 residents live below the poverty level. It is majority minority.

It’s been in fiscal crisis since 2011, with the state taking over budgetary control and a state-appointed “emergency manager” driving policy focused on cutting spending.

Flint residents are Americans, but like many impoverished Americans they are forgotten. And state officials led by Gov. Rick Snyder have shown that they consider the residents disposable.

In Flint, the water supply has been poisoned by lead. Police are now delivering bottled water from door to door. But it may be too late for hundreds of kids who are already suffering from elevated levels of lead in their blood. The damage done is irreversible with lifelong consequences, including lowered intelligence and long-term mental and emotional damage.

How did this happen? The emergency manager — accountable only to the governor and state officials — decided to save money by switching Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to a cheaper source, the Flint River. Only the river had been poisoned by waste from nearby factories for generations.

The toxic wastes not only turned the water brown, it corroded the aged pipes of Flint’s water system, unleashing lead into the water. Federal law required that the water be treated, but that would have cost $100 a day, so it was not done.

Parents began to complain of rashes and hair loss. The state’s environmental quality agency denied there was a problem. High-level state officials knew that the water supply was lead poisoned for six months before declaring an emergency.

Finally, a Flint pediatrician tested the blood of children and discovered lead levels double and even triple the prior amounts. State officials denounced her work before realizing the truth could no longer be hidden.

Finally, Gov. Snyder ended the denial. He declared an official emergency, and four days later called for delivering bottled water. The head of his environmental agency resigned. Snyder apologized for the catastrophe, but calls for him to resign continue to build.

Flint is not alone. Across America, in ghettos and barrios, reservations and rural valleys, the poor are isolated and too often forgotten. Systems basic to civilization — plumbing, water systems, school houses, garbage collection and treatment, roads and public transport — are in squalor, lacking even the investment to keep them up to minimum standards.

Impoverished neighborhoods often lack hospitals, grocery stores, and decent public spaces. The poor are left to fend for themselves, rising to attention only when violence breaks out, when innocents are shot, when tragedies like Flint become public.

The cost of this callousness — in lives lost, disease, mental damage, crime, drugs, hopelessness — are immense. This isn’t about money. We pay more on the back end — in prisons and emergency rooms, cops and guards, prisons and addiction centers — than we would have to spend on the front-end investments that would give every child a chance.

Conservatives continue to call for dismantling environmental regulations. They slash budgets for policing violations by corporations or cities.

They want to slash support for poverty programs and block-grant them to the states and localities.

The next time you hear that rap, think of Flint, its poorest children betrayed by state officials. Think of Flint deprived even of safe water in order to save a few bucks. Think of Flint and investigate your own community — the horrors of Flint are not exclusive to that city.

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Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 17 – 23, 2026

Published

1 week ago

June 20, 2026

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Oakland Post: Week of June 10 – 16, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 10 – 16, 2026

Published

3 weeks ago

June 12, 2026

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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 weeks 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.