My heart breaks for the people of Flint, Michigan.
The city’s water supply poisoned by austerity measures from their state government.
Flint is a majority black city. Commentators remark that the government would’ve been more responsive if those poisoned have lived in an affluent white city.
But, Porter Ranch is a wealthy, white suburb of Los Angeles, California plagued for months by a massive gas leak that is a mile from town, but so severe it drives thousands from their homes and sickens those who have yet to be relocated.
How do we address situations in which everyone of our institutions fail to protect the children and their families in major American cities?
We need to face up to these challenges. The Orange County Peace Coalition conducted an educational campaign comparing the cost to county residents of the 2012 cost of the war in Afghanistan, a whopping $32 million for the county.
It staggers the mind that we continue to squander such vast resources on instruments of destruction when we are increasingly unable to provide drinkable water and breathable air to our citizens.
Another tragic irony is the call we hear from so many quarters that our corporations are over-regulated. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory rails against federal clean water guidelines as dangerous government overreach trying to tell our farmers how they can use their land.
But, it’s not the farmers McCrory is protecting some say. It’s his former employer Duke Energy and the fracking industry.
Could it happen here in North Carolina? In Chapel Hill?
The poisoning of an entire city?
— John Heuer
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