We call those kinds of communities where the economy is almost non-existent in terms of supporting human activities, you know, good schools, and now, of course, even water, it seems, we call these kinds of communities sacrifice zones. These communities no longer have the ability to demand from the political system that they are treated as equal citizens in this country.
DB: Another thing that always comes up here is there are various ways to blame the victims for poisoning themselves. You already start to hear it reverberating, "Well, these people are too poor and stupid to know what's happening to them." You want to talk about that?
MC: Sure, I mean, it's such a pathetic argument, to be honest with you. This community started complaining almost two years ago, that the water had turned various colors: gray, brown. That there was an odor emanating from their faucets. And the governor, as well as all the other city officials, and also EPA, basically ignored them, made fun of them, basically tells them that there was nothing wrong with water that has [this] brown color.
In fact, there's a very interesting interview some government officials in Michigan actually were shown drinking, supposedly, the water from Flint. But the reality is that there are a number of people who actually knew that there was something terribly wrong. And one company, in fact, Ford Motor Company, realized that something was wrong because they refused to use the water because it was corroding the various parts they were creating. And they received some special compensation so that they could bring water in for the various parts that they were creating.
So they had enough sense to make sure that the water that they used to build cars was not polluted. But they, in fact, were allowing the children and the men and women of Flint to bathe in the water, to drink the water. It is a crime of such unbelievable proportion. The fact that no one has been charged with a crime is, in fact, absolutely astounding, at this point.
DB: It is indeed, and I'm somebody who spent about 12 or 14 years teaching in various areas, very poor communities in New York City. And I saw, first hand, the impact, what happened when kids were exposed to lead. It is beyond acceptance or understanding that this action would unfold like this, that these kids and this community would be poisoned.
It troubles me that, in fact, ... there is not even a clear and wide-ranging education program in terms of what to do, how to deal with it, what's coming next. A lot of people still don't know all the dangers, or what's bad and what's good. And it's troubling because there has been so much disinformation from the government, in terms of Michigan, at all levels.
MC: And not only that, lead is irreversible. The poisoning is irreversible. And it's an inter-generational poisoning. So the children of the fetuses who have been poisoned through their mother's womb, their grandchildren will most likely be lead poisoned. So this is an inter-generational poisoning.
These children will never, to a large extent, ... see their God-given potential because of this lead poisoning. And the President hasn't even gone to Flint, to kiss these babies or hold their hands, or just make a head bow to the incredible disaster that Flint has become. And so one of the questions that I asked in my first Guardian piece on this issue is what would have happened, for example, if we can imagine if ISIS, for example, had lead poisoned an American city? How would the response have been different if "a terrorist" had poisoned hundreds of American children and thousands of adults? How would we have dealt with that situation?
And it's one of the really sad parts about this is that a lot of the people who are responsible for this kind of poisoning will get away with it. They will get away with it. We've already seen one sacrificial lamb sort of pushed under the bus and that was Susan Hedman, who was Region 5 Administrator, in EPA.
DB: I believe she tried to blow the whistle in April of 2015.
MC: No, she didn't. There was an EPA whistleblower named Miguel Del Toral and he tried to blow the whistle in April. And ... in EPA's culture, if you try to blow the whistle the first thing they do is demean you. They start spreading rumors that you've got mental illness or that you're not quite up to par in the EPA.
They demeaned his work, they discredited what he tried to do. And what's really fabulous about this particular man, he just refused to allow the people of Flint to be poisoned, on his watch, without sounding the alarm. And so he joined with a Virginia Tech scientist named Mark Edwards, who also, by the way, was the person who exposed the lead poisoning in Washington, D.C. And EPA and the CDC did the same thing to this professor. They also demeaned him, tried to discredit him. And he also refused to be intimidated by the EPA and the CDC.
And also a medical doctor who noticed that a lot of her patients were bringing their children in to see her. And when she evaluated them and performed tests she realized that they had 3 to 4 times the amount of lead in their system that's allowed. So there [are] some real heroes in this story. There's one EPA employee who [has] been really battered but he's still standing. But all the officials from Region 5, Chicago, all the way to Washington, D.C., none of these officials lifted a finger to help the people of Flint, Michigan.
DB: Wow. It's very interesting when we look at the statement from the EPA administrator talking about, I guess, letting Susan Hedman take the brunt of it and call her the scapegoat and she says, "Susan's strong interest in insuring that the EPA Region 5's focus remains solely on the restoration of Flint's drinking water." She's resigning.
MC: I mean you have to laugh at this stuff. It's just so silly. And so the question that we're posing to Congress is when did Gina McCarthy, who is head of the EPA, when did she know about this crisis, and what did she do about it when she found out about it?
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