"We Are All Flint"

"What has always stuck me the most were the instances where people’s health was deteriorating. This has been true from the time I was a little girl to my work in Hinkley and beyond. What’s that common denominator? It’s usually the water. The one thing that sustains us all.

Communities across the country have been dealing with lead issues for years — but they’ve always fallen on a deaf ear. Flint is simply the perfect storm...

I didn’t discover Flint — the community wrote to me. We got out there and tried to sound the alarm. There’s almost always a community leader, and nine times out of 10, it’s going to be a mom. She starts gathering the community, setting up town meetings so we can inform people about what’s happening. We show folks how to protect themselves and their families. We try to work with the emergency contingency team that’s in place — we do that everywhere we go, and they usually don’t want to hear it. They want to run things their way, they think we’re just there to cause trouble, but that’s not the case at all...

We learned just this week that, in a memo, an EPA official stated that “Flint was not worth going out on a limb for.” The fact that someone from the governmental agency that is there to protect the health and the welfare of the people made such a disgusting comment will tell you where the problem is."

https://medium.com/@ErinBrockovich/we-are-all-flint-42fb50e700fe#.4bacikhp8

This is why I don't put up with arguments against action when they center around "this is how we've always done it and look at all the people who are fine!" or "This is how everyone operates, it's just how it is".

FB: Erin Brokovic on the Flint crisis - very worth reading
"Until we really start to listen — and I mean, until the municipalities, federal and state agencies start to listen to the people — instead of reacting to these disasters, we’re going to continue to create greater problems. Government officials and communities need to change their thinking in order to catch the crisis before it happens. And it starts with listening to the people. Right now, nobody is listening, so they come to me."