Submitted by the Water Committee of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Residents of Flint, Michigan were disappointed last December, but not surprised, when Genesee County Judge F. Kay Behm gave former Michigan governor Rick Snyder and others the Christmas gift of dropping all criminal charges over their role in the 2014 poisoning of Flint’s water system. This ruling telegraphed a message: taking over a city’s public water assets will go unpunished even when it results in poisoning an entire city, causing irreparable harm and even death.
With Snyder’s approval, the emergency manager who controlled Flint’s finances, switched its publicly owned water supply from Detroit to the Flint River, bringing lead poisoning to city residents. (See the Rally article Flint is Still Broken, Six Years Later.)They claimed this switch was needed because Flint’s aging system was costing the public too much, so a new pipeline had to be built.
But water rates stayed high after the system was switched, and remained high after the disaster, when they restored water from Detroit. Why should a town that’s in the middle of the Great Lakes – largest water reservoir in the world – have among the highest water rates in the country? Because 60 percent of every dollar people pay goes for the pipeline bond debt owed to JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo, and Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.
Judge Behm issued the ruling freeing Snyder and others of any criminal responsibility shortly before becoming a federal judge in late December. Fadwa Hammoud, a lead attorney on the state’s criminal prosecution team, was later appointed deputy Michigan attorney general. How did these people get promoted when they failed to protect Flint residents? The answer seems to be that they protected corporate interests instead.
Near Flint, the Benton Harbor water system is running at a deficit, and on March 6 consultant John Young told city commissioners the city needs Michigan’s government to rescue it with $2.5 million a year over 10 years. But Mayor Marcus Muhammad insisted this was not just a handout. “We want justice. Because what was done to Benton Harbor through the emergency management was a grave injustice because of the monies that were taken away.”
WATER STRUGGLES REFLECT FASCIST MODEL
The 2016 Rally article called What Happens in Michigan Won’t Stay in Michigan warned readers that “corporate private property has secured a fascist political model to carry out its aims. Democracy as we know it has become a liability.” Attacks on public water systems across the country are verifying the truth of this danger.
In Jackson, Mississippi a state senate bill was introduced this January to create a new Regional Water Authority board that would “oversee” Jackson’s sewage and drainage systems. (The bill passed the state Senate in February and was sent to the state House, where on March 8 it died in committee.) This came on the heels of a $600 million allocation from Congress for Jackson’s water system. The bill’s backers claim that local elected officials in this majority African American city may not be “capable of managing its own affairs.” That accusation comes straight out of the playbook developed under Michigan’s Emergency Manager law, used to impose state takeovers of majority African American cities.
The Mississippi governor and state legislature’s plan for “regionalization” masks the outright takeover of Jackson’s water system and is best described by Mayor Chokwe Lumumba as “a colonial power taking over our city. It is plantation politics.” He adds that “It reminds me of apartheid. … They dictate our leadership, put a military force over us and we’re just supposed to pay taxes to the king.”
Meanwhile, out west, 40 million people in seven states use the Colorado River for drinking water, for agriculture and for hydroelectric power. Climate change and the resultant water scarcity led to a federal mandate that a conservation plan be established, and while the debate over which states have access to what amounts of water ensues, Wall Street investors are swooping in.
Water Asset Management, LLC, a Madison Avenue hedge fund, has snapped up at least $20 million worth of land in western Colorado and is now one of the largest landowners in the Grand Valley. Company president Matthew Diserio has admitted that his firm’s strategy is to “profit from the water” by selling parts of its water rights to other farmers and cities desperate for them.
According to Andrew Mueller, general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District, “I view these drought profiteers as vultures. … They’re looking to make a lot of money off this public resource. Water in Colorado, water in the west, is your future. Without water, you have no future.”
ECONOMIC CRISIS WORSENS WATER CRISIS
In Jackson, Mississippi, Fox News reported on January 29 that “Jackson’s longstanding water issue has caused years of economic decline.” But people should realize that the economic crisis in Jackson and across America preceded today’s unfolding national water crisis. These water disasters only make an already bad situation for the working class even worse.
But the spread of corporate fascism is being met with a growing unity of action among workers. In Michigan, a broad movement won overwhelming support of the public, and finally got the state to overturn its emergency manager law, only to have the Snyder regime tweak and reinstitute it. In February, State Representative Brenda Carter introduced a bill to repeal the emergency manager law completely, calling it “a terrible idea that opened the door to the discrimination and decimation of low-income, primarily Black communities.”
Organizers are pushing city after city to pass resolutions in support of the bill, as did Flint. When urging their council to pass it, water warrior Claire McClinton told the Flint city council: “This resolution represents a pushback on a long, treacherous and unpleasant experience of emergency management in Flint.” She added: “The emergency manager law is what set [the water crisis] in motion.”
Flint, Jackson, Mississippi and Colorado have a connection. Capitalist interests, especially Wall Street financial corporations, are on a mission to seize water assets. We urge all environmental justice advocates, water warriors to join together, support each other, reclaim stewardship, turn up the heat against the theft of what they see as “the new oil” – our WATER. That’s a step toward understanding that we need a complete reorganization of society that takes control out of hands of corporations, and uses society’s wealth to provide for people’s needs.
May/June 2023 Vol33. Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades
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