Flint water crisis

I, I just really felt like I had to continue what I grew up with, which was that mom-and-pop grocery store.

And we meet the creators of a new tightly staged play telling stories of the Flint water crisis.

I mean, the kind of driving moral feeling around the play was what many people were feeling, which was, you know, that you could have children that would lose IQ points, and-

All that ahead of us today on Stateside.

Look for the book, but definitely stop in for the chili too.

[Instrumental music] We need to take a quick break.

When we return, a play about the Flint water crisis comes to Michigan.

The Flint water crisis happened far before the current leadership that we have nationally, and I think that it was a sign that the notion that business was gonna come save people, it hasn't worked out.

Very good.

And so you also address the Flint water crisis and you're working.

You've worked in the the lab, right? The testing lab.

Yes.

So at the time that the Flint water crisis went public, I was at the Michigan House of Representatives.

Rep Neely, who is now the current mayor, at the time he was the state representative.

That was like

And so I guess thanks to, I don't know how to put it, but because of what happened in Flint, lead went from a tier two warning system to tier one, meaning they have now only two business days to warn you when there's lead found in the system for the whole state.

Caleb graduated cum laude from the University of Illinois-Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, in 2023, and is currently finishing his master's degree in public administration online at the same university.

Caleb has experience working with local groups, such as starting an organization to raise money for the Flint water crisis in 2014 called H2O for Earth, Special Olympics of Ohio and Kentucky, being a Spanish language translator for a back to school supplies drive in Lockland in 2021, and worked with members of Cincinnati City Council to rename sections of Reading Road after former President Barack Obama.

Caleb is a dues-paying union member from his time working as a barista, and he has worked all kinds of jobs in the service industry and broadcasting industry, such as being a busboy at Skyline Chili, cashier at Home Depot, and Cincinnati Reds team store associate.

Caleb understands the meaning of a dollar earned from a hard day's work, which is why he plans on being a fiscally smart representative who looks out for the average worker and the average family.

I mean, it's all so many cases.

cases.All right, let's talk about the Flint water crisis.

Th- this is another one.

This isn't a conspiracy.

There definitely were conspiracies that popped up around it, but what I wanna talk about is this University of Michigan article about conspiracy thinking around the water crisis.

Because what I love about it, most articles that deal with, "Oh, well why are there conspiracy theories around this thing?" Every one of them, in mo- nine times out of 10, their conclusion is, "Oh, it's just people trying to find explanations for things that don't make sense, and just grasping at straws, blah, blah, blah, when the government said what happened and they should just accept it." This article does not take that approach.

This article, the basic premise is of course there are conspiracy theories around the Flint water crisis, because it's a thing that mostly impacted Black people, and it's a thing that happened mostly because of government incompetence.

And this government has a long history of doing shit to harm people of color intentionally, and being like, "Whoops, we didn't know that was gonna happen." The Tuskegee syphilis experiments are the obvious parallel they bring up here.

Well, this kind of goes back to where I work at Uncommon Productions and our playwright, M.M. Haney, is from the Michigan area.

And I think when the Flint water crisis happened, she had family there.

And so this was a story that was personal to her.

And so we talked about making it into a documentary film and what we could do.

And that's because of decisions made by our officials.

So I don't say all that to convince people to come.

I say it's inspired by the Flint water crisis.

But I think that triggers something in everyone.