Highly poisonous, corrosive tap water has become synonymous with Flint, Mi. over the past few weeks, as images of the rust-yellow water spread across the news and social media. While CNN described the resulting political “blame game,” to the people of Flint and of Michigan, the game has already been won by callous budget cuts. From every angle, the corroded pipes have “austerity” stamped on them.
The cuts to Flint’s budget took place under the city’s “Emergency Manager,” Ed Kurtz, who was appointed by the governor of Michigan. The “Emergency Manager” takes power over all local elected officials—including the City Council and Mayor—and singlehandedly rules the entire city by the stroke of the pen. Since then, elections have served as meaningless rituals. The law establishing the role of such “Managers” deemed them necessary to resolve the “financial emergencies” that spread like prairie fires across Michigan in the 1980s. In a crassly-formulated political calculation, the law swept away any vestige of democracy in order to restore Michigan cities’ financial solvency; the people of Michigan would not accept such deep cuts willingly, without their wrists and ankles restrained.
Since 2011, Gov. Rick Snyder has appointed five different “Emergency Managers” to reign in Flint’s “financial emergency.” Despite Snyder’s obsession with reducing the debts city has occurred since its once-vivacious manufacturing sector began to crumble in the 1980s, there has not been a discernible economic recovery. Some 41.5 percent of Flintites live at or below the federal poverty line (166.5 percent greater than the national average); nearly 1 in 10 Flintites are out of work; Flint’s high school graduation rate is an abysmal 76.24 percent, nearly 4 percent lower than the U.S. average.
These figures are just a snapshot and do not show the full scope or the long history of poverty in Flint. The unemployment figures, for example, only show those who have been out of work relatively recently and thus are counted as “still looking for work.” Chronic unemployment therefore does not figure into Flint’s 9.1 percent unemployment rate. Moreover the federal poverty level—the measure by which someone is counted as living “above or below” the poverty line—has long been criticized for not counting basic living costs, such as taxes, debt, work expenses or out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Flint, a majority Black city, is consequently besieged by poverty. Its plight shows the extreme brutality of capitalism in America, where resolving the debts caused by the collapse of Michigan’s manufacturing sector viciously impoverished an entire city. The burden did not fall on the car companies or other big corporations who moved their manufacturing elsewhere, nor on the politicians who made such a move possible and attractive. Rather the jobs left, foisting the city into poverty and destroying the city’s tax base. The city went into debt, forcing cost-saving measures like operating the water utilities on a shoestring budget, and the people of Flint had to suffer the consequences both of the poverty and the “forced” cost-saving measures.
What Flintites are left with is a city in ruins thanks to a shift in the international labor market. In addition to the poverty they directly experienced due to the collapse of the city’s key industries, the city then cut services and neglected its infrastructure in an austerity effort to cut costs. Fearing a political fightback, the State of Michigan essentially suspended local elections to tyrannically consign Flint to live in ruin, complete with poison water. The situation in Flint thus boils down to the crass exploitation of Michigan’s workers and the naked oppression of the Black working class in particular.
Ed Kurtz, the criminal responsible, is now the “Emergency Manager” for Detroit’s public schools. Governor Snyder has not faced any serious consequences for running the state as an autocrat.
The only option left to the people of Michigan is to take matters into their own hands: the official political system has made it clear that that system is not for them, first by impoverishing them, as evidenced by its ruining the public infrastructure and suspending their input into the political process. The government makes no pretenses to be “of, by and for the people” instead only serving bankers and bean-counters.
While organizing for a new system is really the only solution, the exploitation and oppression facing Flintites is so severe that organizing for survival now is an imperative. Removed from the political process, the political arena has shifted to the streets, where Flintites have been demonstrating, demanding relief from extreme oppression. Only continuing the fight—by uniting the many of Michigan against the few bankers and ruling politicians—can the tide be turned and can the people be empowered to lift themselves out of poverty and oppression.
