We the Poisoned by Jordan Chariton

Author:Jordan Chariton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2024-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Insane

From the start, I had a gnawing feeling this meeting was headed for chaos.

As I entered the church, it was bizarre to see the show of force: a row of police officers, donning bulletproof vests, lined up in the back. Were they prepping for Flintstones to storm the gates?

“I’m not going to play with nobody tonight,” Flint’s police chief warned at the opening of the town hall meeting. Any residents who dared to “disrupt” the meeting would be removed and thrown in jail, he warned.

Hardened from a whirlwind previous year covering a chaotic presidential campaign, and the horrific scenes of police crackdowns against peaceful protesters at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, very little shocked me anymore. But I was legitimately stunned at the militarized police display, and boot-camp tone, coming from the top cop. Intentional or not, the aura seemed meant to intimidate residents still reeling from being poisoned by their own government.

It was April 2017, and I was on my third trip to the struggling city since first coming the previous summer. The setup was like other town halls centered on the water crisis. A tall microphone stood at the front of the room. Residents lined up, waiting to approach the microphone and ask a question. Understandably, many angrily popped off at the row of listless politicians in front of them.

Some men were thrown out for not removing their hats in the church. Others were tossed for cussing. As the event unfolded, razor-thin tensions escalated to all-out mayhem. Several residents, angry at the lack of real government action three years into the crisis, got a little too mouthy for the tone-deaf politicians and police to bear. And the powers-that-be lashed out accordingly.

Tony Palladeno and his wife Leah delivered scorching criticisms of the state’s and city’s responses to the water crisis. Unhappy with their tone, they were both removed by a hulky police officer. As the Palladenos were escorted out by one of Flint’s finest, Tony proudly hoisted his arms up. As if he had just won a heavyweight-boxing match he shouted—“Mni Wiconi!” It was the Lakota phrase for “water is life.” Instantly, I was brought back to Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Half a year earlier, I had watched indigenous members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, who passionately identify as water protectors, chant the phrase daily as they protested against the Dakota Access Pipeline—what they called the “Black Snake.” In that case the government was colluding with a billion-dollar fossil fuel company to force a dangerous oil pipeline through their tribal land and water. The Flint crisis seemed fairly similar; the only difference was an unnecessary, greed-driven oil pipeline compared to an unnecessary, greed-driven water pipeline.

As the officer escorted the Palladenos out, Leah chimed in defiantly, raising her husband’s hat in protest against residents being forced to take their hats off in the church. “Bullshit, bullshit,” she said.

For good measure, Tony tossed out, “I’m the one who built this church!” Like a human cannonball, the officer inexplicably grabbed Leah tightly by her right arm and tackled her onto a nearby desk.

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