“One day I turned on the faucet the water started coming out yellow,” said Lucia. She’s one of the 1,000 undocumented immigrants who are not going to water distribution centers, calling 211 or getting water deliveries. She is scared together with the rest of the undocumented residents in Flint. A few months ago when Lucia went to a water distribution center she was asked for her driver’s license, something she didn’t have, as result she hasn’t gone back.
The poisoning of the people of Flint, Michigan—especially the children—with lead and other toxins in the drinking water is just the latest ugly example of how corporate control of America is destroying human life.
Flint residents filed a class action lawsuit against the city and state, and thousands of people have signed a petition calling for Gov. Rick Snyder to be jailed. Snyder is dictator in chief of a dangerous political model in Michigan: fascist Emergency Managers.
Seizing control of municipalities and school districts, the EM’s steal parks, public schools, and more. The corporate theft of local public water rights now underway led directly to the poisoning of an entire city (Flint) in Michigan.
Underlying this process, computers and robots have been replacing human labor in the workplace for years. We see the results graphically in Flint, where G.M. was a center of industry and high-wage employment for thousands of workers once needed in production. Today, the unemployment, the poverty, the falling wages, the home foreclosures, the water shut-offs, the homelessness are the results when our labor is no longer needed. Then a few wealthy individuals and corporations make the decisions as to who gets life-sustaining resources and who doesn’t.
The Flint experience shows that the corporate politicians and parties can’t represent the people. We need our own political organizations to demand that the government serve the people’s interests. Water should be publicly owned and the government should guarantee that everyone is able to get safe, clean water, regardless of ability to pay. The government has intervened to bail out the banks and other industries—why can’t it bail out the workers?
