Flint still doesn’t have clean water. This is very important.
If we wont crowd source a goddamn repair, can we crowd source a fucking evacuation? As a social worker, I’m against destroying communities through involuntary displacement but jesus christ. Something has to be done and if we wont get these people new pipes then what else can we do?
The people of Flint have shigella en masse, okay? I feel like I need to mention, again, that my sister had shigella when i was in high school and it was a goddamn nightmare. Seriously, the only thing i can remember being actively more horrific happening in our family were hurricanes, and institutionalizations or deaths of family members. That’s it. Those were the only things WORSE to EVER HAPPEN and to be honest, at least one of those institutionalizations were not as bad as watching her have shigella
I brought her period of illness up with her recently, how fucked up her having it was for us (me and my mother) and she was like “it was that bad? i dont remember. it was kind of a blur. huh. i’m finding out i’ve blocked a lot of traumatic shit lately.” and my mother and I were kind of fucking terrified because we remember. We remember here unable to get out of bed and we remember her stuck in the bathroom and we remember her unable to eat and we remember her curled up in the bathtub sobbing from pain. We remember it going for days on end. She doesn’t.
Her mind blocked her memories of having shigella because it was so bad, her brain decided to protect her from the experience.
That’s the experience of one white-passing girl in a family in a white suburb who had clean water and good food and enough money and excellent insurance thanks to a father in the health field with the word Doctor in front of his name. Imagine an entire town going through that, without the benefit of clean water to take refuge in, to drink when you’re done being wrung dry in the most painful and humiliating ways.
That’s what we the people voted to approve.
*exhales*
Enough stopgaps. This government has decided that it wants to throw government funded infrastructure and strict regulation in the garbage and embrace maverick capitalism? Fine. Lets crowdfund the money to get a private company in there to replace their pipes. Does that sound easy? No. But I think it’s more doable than waiting around. I mean, seriously, I don’t even know about the legality of the situation but who cares at this point? the police of Flint have to live there and use the water too. Are they going to stop the people who are going to fix the problem because it’s vigilante repair? I don’t think so. Fuck this. FUCK IT.
Who knows how much repairs are supposed to cost? I’m serious. It’s time to open a fucking kickstarter and to reach out to contacting companies. Waiting for the government to fix this is clearly hopeless. If we can get millions of people out to march, to raise money to make movies, to pay for cameras and clicky pens, we can get people moving to save our citizens actual goddamn LIVES.
PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING AND WE COULD DO SOMETHING. THERES NO REASON WE CANT. Come on fandom. Come on tumblr. We’re in every industry and if we’re not, we know people who know people who know people. We can find this shit out. WHY ARENT WE? We move fucking mountains. We can do this. We can.
This isn’t idle for reblogging anymore btw. If you know any of the answers to questions re:cost and legality please message me. Anonymous is on.
According to CNBC, we’d be looking at about $55 million.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/22/flints-crisis-can-be-fixed-with-55m-in-new-pipes-lansing-mayor.html
(Not hyperlink because mobile)
That’s a lot. I’m not sure about crowdfunding for all of that, but there are things like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that might be willing to help.
I also have a connection with Netflix who also knows people at Google. I’m considering reaching out to that person. IDK if they’d actually be able to help but ffs, enoughalready.
I actually sent an email to Cards Against Humanity yesterday about it because JFC they raised 100K to DIG A HOLE TO NOWHERE JUST TO PROVE A POINT. IMAGINE WHAT THEY COULD DO IF THEY ACTUALLY WANTED TO DO SOMETHING GOOD?
This is something we could do. It really really really is. So why aren’t we?
Listen. I’m like…3 months away from my degree and it’s all about organizing and capacity building and fundraising with a focus on community partnerships which is a fancy way of saying “getting people to work together for a common goal.” Like – this is what I spent the last 3 years of my life training for. What’s the point of getting this degree if I dont use it? I might not get anything done but why can’t I try? No reason. No reason at all.
That would be AMAZING. The only thing is, just raising a bunch of money doesn’t auto-solve things (see: Live Aid), we’d also need to get it done. Plumbers can work on individual houses without an issue, but the problem there is EXTENSIVE. Getting at the water mains means digging up roads and public property. (You’d need engineers and construction crews and I don’t even know what else.)
It would be pretty much impossible to do it without at least the cooperation of the local government, so even though the government there has completely, utterly and irrevocably shit the bed, we would have to partner with them and do it legally instead of “vigilante repair,” which sounds awesome but might not work out that great. Not to mention, it will make it easier to get people to do the work if they aren’t at risk of getting arrested for it.
I almost feel like moderate republicans would be the best ones to target for that, if there were any good candidates, because republicans are going to oppose anything a democrat does but the dems are not as quick to villify people for helping people.
I actually believe the local(county/city) level govt is on Flints side as they are Flint residents. Getting engineers, construction crews, and everything else is what I’m thinking of cost wise (thats why I’m like…fuck 55 – i’m talking Disney Money. Monsanto Money.) Like… the money to dig up the streets and put up lights in the streets and pay cops to stand out there and monitor shit and make sure workers dont get hit. I mean ALL OF IT. Because gov’t has failed. So fuck government. Like. Fuck it. Something LiveAid/RedNoseDay thats just for fixing Flints infrastructure. It’s probably too big a dream but at this point its more likely than Michigan or the FHWA doing something.
A Middleground 