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Minister Leslie Watson Malachi speaks at Southeast on Wednesday, February 3, 2016. Minister Leslie Watson Malachi is the director of African American religious affairs for People for the American Way and the People for the American Way Foundation.
The Attack on Health and Democracy in Fint
The nightmarish water crisis unfolding in my hometown of Flint, Michigan, has turned a city that was once a bright example of prosperity and hope into a cautionary tale about what can happen when so-called “fiscal responsibility” is valued more than people’s health.
I grew up in Flint, but the city I was raised in is nothing like the Flint of today. I am always telling my nieces and nephew that I wish they could know the city of those days. Thriving employment, bustling neighborhoods, and yes, clean water. Today Flint’s population is half of what it was in the 1960s and 70s, when it was at its highest. In the past fifty years, Flint lost almost 80,000 General Motors jobs, and today more than four in ten Flint residents live below the poverty line.
Read the entire article published at the huffingtonpost.com