Julián Castro wants the residents of Flint, Michigan to know that they haven’t been forgotten. Last weekend, the former Housing and Urban Development secretary and San Antonio mayor became the first 2020 candidate for president to visit the city, where immediate accessibility to clean water for all families remains an ongoing issue.
“Today I’m here in Flint to hear about some of the progress that’s been made in the community after the Flint water crisis,” he said in a video, “and to hear about the progress that still needs to be made in the community, and to let them know that we haven’t forgotten about them―that if I’m president, I’m going to be a president for them and to all Americans.”
Castro held a town hall to hear from residents, met with local advocates, and toured First Trinity Missionary Baptist Church, which since at least 2016 has distributed clean water to residents, now aided by a portable water filtration system donated by rapper Jaden Smith. But as Dawn R. Wolfe wrote for Daily Kos in April, “five years after the beginning of the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, residents are still feeling the impact of being poisoned by their state government.”
“Lines for donated water remain long, the city is still working on replacing its antiquated, lead-lined pipes, and justice is still a long way off in both the civil lawsuits and the criminal court cases that have resulted from the negligence of former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration.” Negligence that continues to cause harm. In February, resident Jassmine McBride died eight days after being admitted to the hospital due to shortness of breath. Her family and friends attribute her illness, which left her “tethered to an oxygen tank,” to the water. She was just 30.
“Having a new governor in office has also made a difference,” Wolfe continues, reporting that “according to the executive director of Michigan Faith in Action, Eileen Hayes, people are ‘very hopeful’ about the positive changes that seem to be coming from new Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration, but ‘If you’re still living with a filter on your faucet, you know things haven’t been fixed.’” The treatment of Americans in Michigan and Puerto Rico has been abominable, and all candidates should be following Castro in making sure they are not forgotten.
It’s “unfortunate that even today there are people who do not have the clean water they need to be able to drink from, take a shower from here in Flint, that the Flint water crisis continues,” Castro continued. “There’s been some progress made, but there still needs to be progress, and we’re here today to hear about that, to understand how we can be a strong partner from Washington, D.C., to make sure that everybody here can have something as basic as clean water.”