Michael Moore’s Open Letter: Don’t Send Water To Flint
Source: CBS Local Detroit
January 29, 2016 12:00 AM
Michael Moore writes letter asking for the arrest of Gov. Rick Snyder over Flint water crisis
The amount of generosity since the national media finally started to cover this story has been tremendous. Pearl Jam sent 100,000 bottles of water. The next day the Detroit Lions showed up with a truck and 100,000 bottles of water. Yesterday, Puff Daddy and Mark Wahlberg donated 1,000,000 bottles of water! Unbelievably amazing, Moore says in his post.
Memo Shows Michigan Officials Ordered Bottled Water For State Employees In Flint Over A Year Ago
The problem originated when officials decided to use water from the Flint River, but neglected to add a corrosion inhibitor to the system. At the time, officials estimated the cost of buying water from Detroit this year at $16 million, and the overall annual cost of switching to the new Karegnondi Water Authority would be $12.5 million.
Over all of this time, Flint residents have been exposed to this hazard without the protection of whats supposed to be in federal law , which is a corrosion control program to keep lead low in the water supply. So, the lead problems been going on ever since the switch, said Mark Edwards, a Virginia Tech professor who oversaw research on the lead in Flints drinking water.
Read more: http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2016/01/29/michael-moores-open-letter-dont-send-water-to-flint/
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Former Detroit Water Director Sentenced In Kilpatrick Corruption Case
http://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-detroit-water-director-sentenced-kilpatrick-corruption-case
How can you trust appointed dictators with millions of dollars to fix this unnatural disaster, great oversight is necessary!
mitty14u2
(1,015 posts)01/05/2016
"In an effort to address the concerns of Flint residents, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District is working closely with the EPA on the investigation into the contamination of the city of Flint's water supply," Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, told HuffPost on Tuesday.
The Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped expose the poisoning of Flint's water, was the first to report the Justice Department investigation, highlighting it as an "unusual step."
Last week, a task force appointed by Snyder squarely blamed the high lead levels in Flint's water on the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The agency failed to address the water's corrosiveness after switching the city's water source to the Flint River as a cost-saving measure in 2014. At the time, Flint was under the authority of an emergency manager appointed by the state of Michigan.
The new water absorbed lead from Flint's aging pipes, and researchers discovered a corresponding increase of lead levels in the bloodstreams of local children. The MDEQ continued to deny a lead poisoning problem even as evidence mounted last year
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/flint-michigan-water-lead_us_568be5abe4b014efe0dbb159
oberliner
(58,724 posts)People should definitely continue to send bottled water to Flint (in addition to working towards long term solutions).
I am sure any and all residents of Flint would be grateful to have clean drinking water in the interim.
EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)Not for the problem to go away because Pearl Jam gave everybody a bottle of water for the day.
Since this has happened not one pipe has been replaced. Not one. How long can benevolent people keep giving 100,000 people a free bottle of water a day.
I've seen Moore's interview on this. It's not that he doesn't appreciate the donations, but he's afraid the severity of the situation will be lost with a few feel good band aids to the problem.
pintobean
(18,101 posts)Autumn Colors
(2,379 posts)Of course media makes it sound like he's asking people to stop sending water. What's been donated thus far is enough water for one bottle per person for ONE DAY. Also, that the brain damage to children is irreversible ... and so MUCH MORE THAN JUST SENDING WATER NEEDS TO BE DONE.
It would have been nice if the media could have included a post to his actual letter so people could READ it.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)It's not the media spin - it's his actual site using that headline.
http://michaelmoore.com/DontSendBottledWater/
BumRushDaShow
(128,837 posts)Towards the bottom, he mentions one suggestion that he had heard was to have every home receive 2, 55-gallon drums that are filled daily with fresh water, and these get tapped into home's water supply. Of course one issue would be pumps to push the water into the home, including to a hot water heater, and the biggest issue would be that it is still winter... in Michigan... and anything "water" outside will freeze if not heated. But it is an interesting stopgap idea that would keep people from having to continually lug water back and forth for a long time.
I would also think they could switch back to buying water from Detroit but the issue now is that due to the acidic river water that has been run through the pipes (and incorrectly treated), the leaching that has been going on since that started is probably going to take awhile to reduce, even after flushing it.
Crepuscular
(1,057 posts)jumping in and replacing the pipes immediately would be a huge mistake. Dr. Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech researcher who helped uncover the lead issue was interviewed yesterday and cautioned the State and Flint from making the same mistake that Washington DC did a few years ago. DC rushed to replace pipes in a similar situation, without having a sound overall plan and according to Edwards actually caused more harm and higher lead levels then existed prior to removing the pipes. They also spent $100,000,000 making things worse.
As tempting as it might be to start digging up streets, that would be a mistake. Water filters have been made available and those will reliably prevent further lead exposure in the short term. Replacing infrastructure will take years and it should be done in a methodical, well thought out manner, not on a knee jerk basis just to satisfy public outrage.
demigoddess
(6,640 posts)for all those people to buy a house in another neighborhood that has decent pipes. Then you could tear down all those houses with lead pipes and build a big park with lots of trees. Just a thought, don't ban me just for dreaming!!!
BumRushDaShow
(128,837 posts)"Do Not Send Us Bottles Of Water. Instead, Join Us In A Revolt."
A Letter From Michael Moore
Many of you have contacted me wanting to know how you can help the people of Flint with the two-year long tragedy of drinking water contaminated by the radical decisions made by the Governor of Michigan. The offer is much appreciated by those who are suffering through this and who have not drank a glass of unpoisoned water since April of 2014.
Unfortunately, the honest answer to your offer of help is, sadly, you cant.
You can't help.
The reason you cant help is that you cannot reverse the irreversible brain damage that has been inflicted upon every single child in Flint. The damage is permanent. There is no medicine you can send, no doctor or scientist who has any way to undo the harm done to thousands of babies, toddlers and children (not to mention their parents). They are ruined for life, and someone needs to tell you the truth about that. They will, forever, suffer from various neurological impediments, their IQs will be lowered by at least 20 points, they will not do as well in school and, by the time they reach adolescence, they will exhibit various behavioral problems that will land a number of them in trouble, and some of them in jail.
That is what we know about the history of lead poisoning when you inflict it upon a child. It is a life sentence. In Flint, theyve already ingested it for these two years, and the toll has already been taken on their developing brains. No check you write, no truckloads of Fiji Water or Poland Spring, will bring their innocence or their health back to normal. Its done. And it was done knowingly, enacted by a political decision from a Governor and a political party charged by the majority of Michigans citizens who elected them to cut taxes for the rich, take over majority-black cities by replacing the elected mayors and city councils, cut costs, cut services, cut more taxes for the rich, increase taxes on retired teachers and public employees and, ultimately, try to decimate their one line of defense against all this, this thing we used to call a union.
The amount of generosity since the national media finally started to cover this story has been tremendous. Pearl Jam sent 100,000 bottles of water. The next day the Detroit Lions showed up with a truck and 100,000 bottles of water. Yesterday, Puff Daddy and Mark Wahlberg donated 1,000,000 bottles of water! Unbelievably amazing. They acknowledged its a very short-term fix, and that it is. Flint has 102,000 residents, each in need of an average of 50 gallons of water a day for cooking, bathing, washing clothes, doing the dishes, and drinking (Im not counting toilet flushes, watering plants or washing the car). But 100,000 bottles of water is enough for just one bottle per person in other words, just enough to cover brushing ones teeth for one day. You would have to send 200 bottles a day, per person, to cover what the average American (we are Americans in Flint) needs each day. Thats 102,000 citizens times 200 bottles of water which equals 20.4 million 16oz. bottles of water per day, every day, for the next year or two until this problem is fixed (oh, and well need to find a landfill in Flint big enough for all those hundreds of millions of plastic water bottles, thus degrading the local environment even further). Anybody want to pony up for that? Because THAT is the reality.
This is a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. There is not a terrorist organization on Earth that has yet to figure out how to poison 100,000 people every day for two years and get away with it. That took a Governor who subscribes to an American political ideology hell-bent on widening the income inequality gap and conducting various versions of voter and electoral suppression against people of color and the poor. It was those actions that led Michigans Republican Governor to try out his economic and racial experiment in Flint (and please dont tell me this has nothing to do with race or class; he has removed the mayors of a number of black cities. This, and the water crisis in Flint, never would have been visited upon the residents of Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe -- and everyone here knows that). We have now seen the ultimate disastrous consequences of late-20th century, neo-conservative, trickle down public policy. That word trickle, a water-based metaphor, was used to justify this economic theory -- well, its no longer a metaphor, is it? Because now were talking about how actual water has been used to institute these twisted economic beliefs in destroying the lives of the black and the poor in Flint, Michigan.
So, do you still want to help? Really help? Because what we need in Flint and across the country right now, tonight, is a nonviolent army of people who are willing to stand up for this nation, and go to bat for the forgotten of Flint.
Heres what you and I need to do:
1.) Demand the removal and arrest of Rick Snyder, the Governor of Michigan. When the police have an "active shooter" situation in a building, they must first stop the shooter before they can bring aid to the victims. The perp who allowed the poisoning to continue once he knew something was wrong -- and his minions who cooked the evidence so the public and the feds wouldn't find out must be removed from office ASAP. Whether it's via resignation, recall or prosecution, this must happen now because he is still refusing to take the aggressive and immediate action needed. His office, as recently as this past Thursday, was claiming the EPA had no legal authority to tell him what to do. You know the EPA -- that federal agency every Republican politician wants eliminated? Governor Snyder is not going to obey the law. He has covered up the crime, and I submit he has committed an act of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. Last month I posted a meme of me holding a pair of handcuffs with the hashtag #ArrestGovSnyder:
It went viral, so I posted a petition (link) to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking her to arrest the Governor and asking President Obama to send help to Flint immediately. As each day brought a new revelation of the Governor's corruption or incompetence, and with Rachel Maddow on a nightly tear, the momentum built. MoveOn.org and Democracy For America joined me in circulating our petition. We are now on our way to having a half-million signatures! Then Bernie Sanders became the first candidate to call for the Governors removal. That same day, President Obama issued his first emergency order for Flint. The next night, Hillary Clinton fiercely called out the racist actions of the Governor.
You want to help? Sign the petition and get everyone you know to sign it. Now. Another half-million signatures could become the tipping point we need. All eyes are on Flint.
2.) Make the State of Michigan pay for the disaster that the State of Michigan created. The Governor wants the President to declare Flint a federal disaster zone and have him send federal money to fix the problem. Not so fast. All relief aid for Flint currently coming from the federal government to Michigan is going through the Governor's office to disburse. That is literally paying the fox to fix the chicken coop he destroyed. As a Michigan resident and voter, I think that the people who elected Governor Snyder must show some of that personal responsibility theyre always lecturing about to the poor. The majority of my fellow Michiganders wanted this kind of government (they elected him twice), so now they should have to pay for it. This year the state treasury posted nearly a $600 million surplus. There is also another $600 million in the states rainy day fund. Thats $1.2 billion just about what Flints congressman, Dan Kildee, estimates it will cost to replace the water infrastructure and care for the thousands of poisoned children throughout their growing years.
And before there is any talk of federal tax dollars being used (and, yes, they will be needed), the state legislature must remove the billion-dollars worth of tax cuts the Snyder administration gave the wealthy when he took office. That will go a long way to helping not just Flint but Michigans other destitute cities and school districts.
3.) The Federal Government must then be placed in charge. The State government cannot be trusted to get this right. So, instead of declaring a federal disaster zone, President Obama must declare the same version of martial law that Governor Snyder declared over the cities of Flint and Detroit. He must step in and appoint a federal emergency manager in the state capitol to direct the resources of both the state and federal government in saving Flint. This means immediately sending in FEMA in full force. It means sending in the CDC to determine the true extent of not just the lead poisoning in the water, but also the latest outbreak that has been discovered in Flint a tenfold increase in the number of Flint people whove contracted Legionnaires Disease. There have now been 87 cases since the switch to the Flint River water, and ten people have died. The local hospital has also noted sharp increases in a half-dozen other toxins found in peoples bodies. We need the CDC. The EPA must take over the testing of the water, and the Army Corps of Engineers must be sent in to begin replacing the underground pipes. Like the levees in New Orleans, this will be a massive undertaking. If it is turned over to for-profit businesses, it will take a decade and cost billions. This needs to happen right now and Obama must be in charge.
4.) Evacuate any and all Flint residents who want to leave now. Theyve suffered long enough and, until the water is truly safe, no one should have to stay there who doesnt want to. The state and FEMA should move people into nearby white townships that are still hooked up to Lake Huron water.
5.) For those who choose to stay in Flint, FEMA must create a temporary water system in each home. One idea that has been suggested is to deliver two 55-gallon drums to every home in Flint. Each day water trucks will arrive to fill them with fresh clean glacial water from Lake Huron. The drums will have taps attached to them. People cant be expected to carry jugs of water from buildings that are miles away.[/list]
In the end, we will need to create a new economy and bring new employment to this town that created the middle class, that elected the first black mayor, and that believed in and created the American Dream. They deserved more than to be poisoned by their own Governor -- a Governor who thought that, because the people in the town were politically weak, he could get away with this unnoticed and without a fight. He figured wrong.
A crime against humanity has been committed against the people of Flint, making them refugees in their own homes. Tell me honestly: if you were living in Flint right now, and you learned that your children had been drinking lead-filled water for two years, and then you discovered that the Governor knew this and the state lied about it tell me, just how fast would your head be spinning? With your children now poisoned, and with the poisoning continuing is the word nonviolence dominating your thoughts right now? Are you absolutely, stunningly amazed how peaceful the people in Flint have remained? Are you curious how much longer that can last? I hope it does. If you want to help Flint, sign the petition, demand that the federal government take action, and then get involved yourself, wherever you live, so that this doesnt happen to you and so that the people we elect know they can no longer break the law as they rule by fiat or indifference. We deserve much better than this.
For a better world,
Michael Moore
Autumn Colors
(2,379 posts)The full open letter is on his site at http://www.michaelmoore.com
It says to SHARE, so I'm putting the entire thing here ... please read.
-------------------------------
Many of you have contacted me wanting to know how you can help the people of Flint with the two-year long tragedy of drinking water contaminated by the radical decisions made by the Governor of Michigan. The offer is much appreciated by those who are suffering through this and who have not drank a glass of unpoisoned water since April of 2014.
Unfortunately, the honest answer to your offer of help is, sadly, you cant.
You cant help.
The reason you cant help is that you cannot reverse the irreversible brain damage that has been inflicted upon every single child in Flint. The damage is permanent. There is no medicine you can send, no doctor or scientist who has any way to undo the harm done to thousands of babies, toddlers and children (not to mention their parents). They are ruined for life, and someone needs to tell you the truth about that. They will, forever, suffer from various neurological impediments, their IQs will be lowered by at least 20 points, they will not do as well in school and, by the time they reach adolescence, they will exhibit various behavioral problems that will land a number of them in trouble, and some of them in jail.
That is what we know about the history of lead poisoning when you inflict it upon a child. It is a life sentence. In Flint, theyve already ingested it for these two years, and the toll has already been taken on their developing brains. No check you write, no truckloads of Fiji Water or Poland Spring, will bring their innocence or their health back to normal. Its done. And it was done knowingly, enacted by a political decision from a Governor and a political party charged by the majority of Michigans citizens who elected them to cut taxes for the rich, take over majority-black cities by replacing the elected mayors and city councils, cut costs, cut services, cut more taxes for the rich, increase taxes on retired teachers and public employees and, ultimately, try to decimate their one line of defense against all this, this thing we used to call a union.
The amount of generosity since the national media finally started to cover this story has been tremendous. Pearl Jam sent 100,000 bottles of water. The next day the Detroit Lions showed up with a truck and 100,000 bottles of water. Yesterday, Puff Daddy and Mark Wahlberg donated 1,000,000 bottles of water! Unbelievably amazing. They acknowledged its a very short-term fix, and that it is. Flint has 102,000 residents, each in need of an average of 50 gallons of water a day for cooking, bathing, washing clothes, doing the dishes, and drinking (Im not counting toilet flushes, watering plants or washing the car). But 100,000 bottles of water is enough for just one bottle per person in other words, just enough to cover brushing ones teeth for one day. You would have to send 200 bottles a day, per person, to cover what the average American (we are Americans in Flint) needs each day. Thats 102,000 citizens times 200 bottles of water which equals 20.4 million 16oz. bottles of water per day, every day, for the next year or two until this problem is fixed (oh, and well need to find a landfill in Flint big enough for all those hundreds of millions of plastic water bottles, thus degrading the local environment even further). Anybody want to pony up for that? Because THAT is the reality.
This is a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. There is not a terrorist organization on Earth that has yet to figure out how to poison 100,000 people every day for two years and get away with it. That took a Governor who subscribes to an American political ideology hell-bent on widening the income inequality gap and conducting various versions of voter and electoral suppression against people of color and the poor. It was those actions that led Michigans Republican Governor to try out his economic and racial experiment in Flint (and please dont tell me this has nothing to do with race or class; he has removed the mayors of a number of black cities. This, and the water crisis in Flint, never would have been visited upon the residents of Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe and everyone here knows that). We have now seen the ultimate disastrous consequences of late-20th century, neo-conservative, trickle down public policy. That word trickle, a water-based metaphor, was used to justify this economic theory well, its no longer a metaphor, is it? Because now were talking about how actual water has been used to institute these twisted economic beliefs in destroying the lives of the black and the poor in Flint, Michigan.
So, do you still want to help? Really help? Because what we need in Flint and across the country right now, tonight, is a nonviolent army of people who are willing to stand up for this nation, and go to bat for the forgotten of Flint.
Heres what you and I need to do:
Demand the removal and arrest of Rick Snyder, the Governor of Michigan. When the police have an active shooter situation in a building, they must first stop the shooter before they can bring aid to the victims. The perp who allowed the poisoning to continue once he knew something was wrong and his minions who cooked the evidence so the public and the feds wouldnt find out must be removed from office ASAP. Whether its via resignation, recall or prosecution, this must happen now because he is still refusing to take the aggressive and immediate action needed. His office, as recently as this past Thursday, was claiming the EPA had no legal authority to tell him what to do. You know the EPA that federal agency every Republican politician wants eliminated? Governor Snyder is not going to obey the law. He has covered up the crime, and I submit he has committed an act of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. Last month I posted a meme of me holding a pair of handcuffs with the hashtag #ArrestGovSnyder:
It went viral, so I posted a petition (link) to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking her to arrest the Governor and asking President Obama to send help to Flint immediately. As each day brought a new revelation of the Governors corruption or incompetence, and with Rachel Maddow on a nightly tear, the momentum built. MoveOn.org and Democracy For America joined me in circulating our petition. We are now on our way to having a half-million signatures! Then Bernie Sanders became the first candidate to call for the Governors removal. That same day, President Obama issued his first emergency order for Flint. The next night, Hillary Clinton fiercely called out the racist actions of the Governor.
You want to help? Sign the petition and get everyone you know to sign it. Now. Another half-million signatures could become the tipping point we need. All eyes are on Flint.
Make the State of Michigan pay for the disaster that the State of Michigan created. The Governor wants the President to declare Flint a federal disaster zone and have him send federal money to fix the problem. Not so fast. All relief aid for Flint currently coming from the federal government to Michigan is going through the Governors office to disburse. That is literally paying the fox to fix the chicken coop he destroyed. As a Michigan resident and voter, I think that the people who elected Governor Snyder must show some of that personal responsibility theyre always lecturing about to the poor. The majority of my fellow Michiganders wanted this kind of government (they elected him twice), so now they should have to pay for it. This year the state treasury posted nearly a $600 million surplus. There is also another $600 million in the states rainy day fund. Thats $1.2 billion just about what Flints congressman, Dan Kildee, estimates it will cost to replace the water infrastructure and care for the thousands of poisoned children throughout their growing years.
And before there is any talk of federal tax dollars being used (and, yes, they will be needed), the state legislature must remove the billion-dollars worth of tax cuts the Snyder administration gave the wealthy when he took office. That will go a long way to helping not just Flint but Michigans other destitute cities and school districts.
The Federal Government must then be placed in charge. The State government cannot be trusted to get this right. So, instead of declaring a federal disaster zone, President Obama must declare the same version of martial law that Governor Snyder declared over the cities of Flint and Detroit. He must step in and appoint a federal emergency manager in the state capitol to direct the resources of both the state and federal government in saving Flint. This means immediately sending in FEMA in full force. It means sending in the CDC to determine the true extent of not just the lead poisoning in the water, but also the latest outbreak that has been discovered in Flint a tenfold increase in the number of Flint people whove contracted Legionnaires Disease. There have now been 87 cases since the switch to the Flint River water, and ten people have died. The local hospital has also noted sharp increases in a half-dozen other toxins found in peoples bodies. We need the CDC. The EPA must take over the testing of the water, and the Army Corps of Engineers must be sent in to begin replacing the underground pipes. Like the levees in New Orleans, this will be a massive undertaking. If it is turned over to for-profit businesses, it will take a decade and cost billions. This needs to happen right now and Obama must be in charge.
Evacuate any and all Flint residents who want to leave now. Theyve suffered long enough and, until the water is truly safe, no one should have to stay there who doesnt want to. The state and FEMA should move people into nearby white townships that are still hooked up to Lake Huron water.
For those who choose to stay in Flint, FEMA must create a temporary water system in each home. One idea that has been suggested is to deliver two 55-gallon drums to every home in Flint. Each day water trucks will arrive to fill them with fresh clean glacial water from Lake Huron. The drums will have taps attached to them. People cant be expected to carry jugs of water from buildings that are miles away.
In the end, we will need to create a new economy and bring new employment to this town that created the middle class, that elected the first black mayor, and that believed in and created the American Dream. They deserved more than to be poisoned by their own Governor a Governor who thought that, because the people in the town were politically weak, he could get away with this unnoticed and without a fight. He figured wrong.
A crime against humanity has been committed against the people of Flint, making them refugees in their own homes. Tell me honestly: if you were living in Flint right now, and you learned that your children had been drinking lead-filled water for two years, and then you discovered that the Governor knew this and the state lied about it tell me, just how fast would your head be spinning? With your children now poisoned, and with the poisoning continuing
is the word nonviolence dominating your thoughts right now? Are you absolutely, stunningly amazed how peaceful the people in Flint have remained? Are you curious how much longer that can last? I hope it does. If you want to help Flint, sign the petition, demand that the federal government take action, and then get involved yourself, wherever you live, so that this doesnt happen to you and so that the people we elect know they can no longer break the law as they rule by fiat or indifference. We deserve much better than this.
For a better world,
Michael Moore
chapdrum
(930 posts)Snyder and all others involved should be arrested, immediately. They can be grateful that their trials (should any actually ensue) that the cost of same won't come out of their pockets, but instead of the dreaded government's.
And NO grand jury trials for these poisoners.
for the victims