In April 2014, while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager who had nearly complete control over all decisions regarding operation of the city, Flint, Michigan, left the Detroit water system and began using the Flint River as its primary source of municipal water. It was a purely money-saving decision that has proved to be a total disaster. There have been severe problems with the city’s water ever since the switch was made. Recently, independent researchers have found high levels of lead in both the water and the city’s children.
In this documentary city officials are asked hard questions about who is responsible for this catastrophic decision and the public health crisis that it led to.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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