flint water emergency

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

-Lilla Watson, Australian Aboriginal elder and activist

It's been well over four years, and we still have a water problem. While we continue to work on getting safe and affordable water to all the residents of the city, it is also critical that people of faith have a clear understanding of how this could happen, so that we can agitate, Jesus-style, for better public policies and a greater regard for the common good. Thanks for your invitations to tell our story, and for your commitment to a world that works for us all. 

(for a list of donors, click here.)       

Here is is a run-down of the issues, and how your dollars are helping:

Bottled Water and filters.

You'll remember we asked for donations of money, but requested you not send bottled water. It's not simply that we like money better (and we promise not to blow it on drugs or alcohol). Your shipments of water require space to store, even for a short time, and staff time to load and unload; plus this puts a heavier burden on local activists to distribute them. Bottled water also disproportionately supports Nestle, a company with 70 water brands in the US, which pays little to extract water from public sources, and gets wealthy selling it back to us. And all those bottles are an environmental disaster in and of themselves. Scientists have said they expect the oceans to have equal amounts of plastic and fish by the year 2050 -- not that far off. So, while we have handled hundreds of thousands of single bottles, we are doing what we can to help in other ways. 

The filters bring their own challenges.

  • The common ones that snap onto faucets don't fit all faucets.

  • When they do, they are for cold water only; even running hot water through one time can render the filter ineffective. 

  • Filters not changed often enough lose their ability to filter.

  • Filter cartridges are great places for bacteria to grow -- yet another fear when we've already lost residents to water-related illnesses. 

Refilling Stations.

Through your gifts, we turned two community spaces into "safe water houses," to make free, filtered water available to the community in whatever size containers they would like.

This summer, our governor has told us he is shutting down the bottled water distribution centers, because he says the water is safe now. Since his word has not been good and trust here is very low, we expect most residents to continue to seek sources of safe water, making our "safe water houses" more important than ever.

While Peoples Church of Flint has moved, and are no longer are able to offer that space ourselves, we continue to agitate, and to make bottled water available. When we are landed in our new permanent space, we will surely include this as a core of our mission. Water is life, an issue of justice; we will not forget this. 

Your ongoing gifts will help support the increased water bills at the other centers, and perhaps help establish others, as need and opportunity coalesce. 

community assistance.

Regularly it seems, the city decides -- either in practice, or as a community threat -- that water shut-offs should resume for households with delinquent accounts, and that the city should again begin issuing tax lien notices for accounts more than 6 months past due. This affects thousands of households. 

Despite having among the highest water costs in the country, and despite water not fit to consume, our people have still been expected to stay current with their water bills. Some have; others have given up, using their water money for the associated costs of the crisis. The city declared a moratorium on the liens (not the shut-offs), but the governor's appointed receivership authority set it aside; then the county leadership announced they wouldn't be enforcing it. You can see why folks here don't know who to trust. 

With your gifts, we have provided water bill support to about 250 families, to prevent shut-offs or tax lien foreclosure. It is only a drop in an unfunny, proverbial bucket. In one 2-week period last year, we had approximately $250,000 in requests, from about 400 families. The need doesn't go away. 

support to our partners. 

  • We partnered with a local organization, M.A.D.E., to underwrite training for 3 formerly incarcerated men seeking industrial (and lead-abatement) certification; and we arranged plumbing work in a couple of most urgent cases. 

  • We made work space available to two important community organizations: the Flint Democracy Defense League and the Genesee County Hispanic Latino Collaborative (GCHLC), both of whom are working to connect in diverse communities with needed resources. Now, in our new location, FDDL continues its work. But, as we were unable to house the GCHLC in this small space, we have unwritten 100 percent of a lease for them in another facility. Our hope is that we will come back together in a new, permanent space. 

  • With your gifts to UCC Disaster Relief Fund, we steered a grant to the GCHLC, so that Spanish-speaking people in the community could have an interpreter for medical visits.  

  • We designated part of the funds to secure a summer intern through the UCC/Alliance of Baptists' "summer communities of service." We engaged 3 interns throughout the first "crisis summer," 2016, all in some capacity related to water, because all of Flint is related to water somehow; one intern worked in-house with the GCHLC, getting an education about what is needed and what is at stake. 

We will continue to seek out ways to put your gifts to work in remediating this water crisis. Just because the national news shifted its focus elsewhere does not mean the crisis is resolved. Watch this space for news of other ways you are helping here.

The work and the need are ongoing, not just in Flint.

This city has been through some things, not unlike a lot of other cities -- mostly poor, mostly communities of color. In a place that has been through trauma, people remain traumatized, which adds its own challenges to the daily requirement of putting our feet on the floor and doing what we need to do. Peoples Church of Flint will continue to do what we can, and we appreciate your ongoing support. 

You can continue to send contributions to: Peoples Church of Flint (marked "water"), PO Box 1109, Flint MI 48501. Or contribute by credit card through the link on our home page. 

and here are other ways to help
(mostly in your own town):

  1. Show up for public demonstrations. Your presence adds bulk to the body and volume to the voices of people in cities across the country who are dealing with issues of water, failing infrastructure, failures of democracy, all a function of racial injustice, economic injustice and environmental injustice.  

  2. Read, learn and share information. Form book groups. Print excerpts in newsletters (always credit the author). Discern how you can respond as advocates of the gospel. Below is a starting point. Some are short enough for a Sunday morning forum; others are full-length books, well worth your time.

  3. Be aware of your own privilege. (I offer this on behalf of people in crisis everywhere.)

    1. People in Flint and other disaster areas go through a lot, emotionally as well as logistically. We, they, are angry, confused, frustrated, hopeful, exhausted, afraid, worried. Sometimes we simply cannot muster gratitude as well. Please believe that we appreciate being in community, and give us a break when we don't say thanks. (So, let me say thank you now. It matters to be part of a larger church that wants to do the righteous thing, part of a larger community that wants to be in solidarity.)

    2. Please don't just show up and ask us to re-arrange our days to accommodate you.

    3. Please email (rather than phone) your willingness to help, and be patient if we don't respond quickly enough.

    4. Please don't send us things we didn't ask for and can't use. Money is easiest, because it lets us respond to the ever-shifting reality here. Choose a church or charity you trust, and send them as much money as you can. 

    5. Please don't put conditions on your gifts.

    6. Please don't judge our ideas or contradict our requests. We are in constant communication with folks who know, and we are pretty sure we have a handle on what is needed.

  4. Consider the difference between justice and charity. Charity is about donations (like water and money), but justice is about building relationships, hearing the voices from the community, and changing the systems that got us into this in the first place. Which leads us to... 

  5. Advocate. There are three demands that all the advocacy/activist groups here have agreed to put front and center. You can help by contacting elected officials and making whatever noise you can make. These are still vital, as none has been addressed. 

    1. We need Flint declared a federal disaster area. This will allow us to access a greater pool of resources than the current "emergency" designation.

    2. We want Medicare expanded to include, not only every resident of Flint, but every resident of the US, regardless of age.  

    3. Tell the governor to honor our democracy! While we have a mayor who is at the table in some ways, we are still governed by an emergency transitional receivership. Not good enough! The Emergency Manager law needs to be repealed, so that cities across Michigan can have their self-governance restored.

    4. We need new infrastructure. and we need jobs. Agitate for a new WPA! Tell Congress to hire and train for these long-term projects. 

    5. Vote, and let your elected officials know that you're basing your ballot on a renewed commitment to the Common Good!

choose how to spend your money.

  • It's not an overreaction to consider a boycott of Nestle, massively wealthy in part by sucking up public water at little or no cost, and selling it back in small bottles under about 70 brand names. Reclaim public resources for the public!

  • Go vegan. And pay attention to how much water is needed to produce and sustain the lifestyle you may enjoy. Read the article below from Stanford Environmental Law Journal about the damage and unsustainability of the animal products industry.  

Films to watch for

  • For Flint, a new film on the crisis and what folks are doing.

  • Poisoned Water: What exactly went wrong in Flint—and what does it mean for the rest of the country? Aired May 31, 2017 on PBS, an episode of NOVA.

  • Here's to Flint, a documentary on the water crisis, produced by the ACLU's Curt Guyette and Kate Levy. 

task force report

The Flint Water Advisory Task Force was appointed by Gov. Snyder to investigate the circumstances surrounding the poisoning of Flint's water. The task force completed its investigation and published its report in March 2016. Since then, our Attorney General has been investigating and bringing criminal charges against folks -- 15 people so far. The governor has not yet been held accountable, though we remain hopeful. 

articles

a couple of the times peoples church of flint made the news

Books

As long as you're in a reading mood

deb's related sermons, essays and editorials

a webinar

  • responding to crisis in Flint, by the Center for Progressive Renewal,
    with Pastor Deb and Rev. Brooks Berndt, UCC Minister for Environmental Justice

and websites...