How Flint Closed the Gap Between Black and White Suffering Under COVID

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Mother Jones

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🗓️ 1 September 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

As the Delta variant upended hope of returning to normal this summer, Mother Jones reporter Edwin Rios published a deeply reported story on Flint, Michigan, recounting how residents of this predominantly Black city have battled COVID-19 in spite of government distrust, neglect, and environmental catastrophe.

But the pandemic isn’t Flint’s first crisis: In 2014, public officials implemented cost-cutting measures that led to dangerous concentrations of lead in the city’s water supply. Up to 12,000 children were exposed to contaminated water. Then-President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency. And in 2021, nine people—including ex-Gov. Rick Snyder—were indicted on criminal charges in the matter.

A few years later, when COVID-19 barreled across the globe and vaccinations became a political flashpoint, Flint already had an infrastructure of outreach and support in place. Their water crisis wound up being a crash course in how residents learned to band together in a catastrophe—and shows how one community used a dose of social medicine to close the gap between Black and white suffering during a pandemic.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey y'all, it's Edwin Rios. I'm a reporter at Mother Jones. I want to talk
0:06.1	about this week's summer investigation for the Mother Jones podcast, and it's a
0:10.2	deep dive on Flint, Michigan.
0:17.0	As a Delta variant began to upend any sense of things, getting back to normal
0:21.4	during the pandemic, I published a deeply reported story on how residents of
0:26.1	this predominantly black American city have battled COVID-19 in spite of
0:30.8	government distress, neglect, and environmental catastrophe. You may remember
0:37.2	Flint from the four times. A horrifying crisis that branded Flint as the
0:42.4	nation's poster child for government gone wrong. In 2014, Michigan's public
0:47.9	officials took cost-cutting measures to change the city's water source. The
0:51.8	problems began when the city switched its water source to the Flint River to
0:55.5	save money, but the corrosive river water wasn't properly treated and stripped
0:59.5	lead from pipes. That inevitably led to dangerous concentrations of lead
1:04.1	seeping into residents' homes. The levels of lead, one sip, would have cost your
1:08.9	blood lead of her child to be lead poison. Just one sip of water. Up to 12,000
1:17.1	children were exposed to contaminated water in the city. Today President Obama
1:21.0	declared Flint, Michigan a disaster area. And in 2021, nine people, including
1:27.3	former governor Rick Snyder, were indicted on criminal charges in matter.
1:31.7	Ex-governor Rick Snyder facing two counts of willful neglect of duty.
1:41.1	But here's a thing. Flint's water crisis wound up being a crash course in how
1:45.3	residents have learned to band together in a catastrophe.
1:49.3	When COVID-19 barreled across the globe, and vaccinations became a political
	...

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