If there’s one belief Progressives share – and I’m referring to the ones that (for all their many blind spots) built the waterways, sewers, and other infrastructure that made our cities livable a little over a century ago – it’s that providing essential services to the public is government’s most sacred responsibility. Education, sanitation, fire codes, libraries, among other things. It’s a belief built on a principle of shared trust, and a much older idea of the common good.
Flint reminds all of us that the most basic service of all is clean water. Think of it. It’s such a beautiful idea. Turn on a tap in your home and clean water comes out of it, right into your kitchen sink, right into your bathtub. Water you can drink, or bathe a baby in. In practice, sure, the idea has been eroded, downgraded and privatized for years, but now it’s genuinely being threatened with extinction.
It’s time to bring clean water back to its fully glory.
Clean water. Clean water as a right, not a privilege.
And for a start, that means that any violation of that right by public officials (or their lackeys, cronies and bribers) is a betrayal of the public trust that should, as Bernie put it the other day, be punished accordingly:
Not only should Gov. Snyder resign immediately, the Justice Department must hold everyone accountable who knew about this crisis and did nothing. The federal government needs to take every possible measure to ensure that the people of Flint get clean drinking water as soon as possible.
Or as Bernie said last month,
“There are no excuses. The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint’s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign.”
Even though I’m a Bernie supporter, I was also happy that Hillary said yesterday “what happened in Flint is immoral:”
"This has to be a national priority, not just for today or tomorrow. Clean water is not optional, my friends, it is not a luxury. As I said weeks ago, if what had been happening in Flint had happened in Grosse Point or Bloomfield Hills, I think we all know we would have had a solution yesterday," Clinton added, referencing two wealthy, largely white Detroit suburbs.
Meanwhile, yesterday Bernie rightly called the denial of bottled water to undocumented immigrants a “humanitarian crisis.”
"No one should live in fear of being deported for getting a bottle of water for their family," Sanders continued. "All people, including immigrants, should have access to clean and drinkable water, regardless of immigration status or lack of identification."
Weeks ago, Hillary was calling the city’s water crisis “unconscionable.”
"No parent should have to worry that their kids' water isn't safe," Clinton said in a statement issued Jan. 11.
So if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s the fact that the Flint crisis is a moral crisis for all of us, for the deceptively simple idea of government for the people.
That’s what makes the silence on the other side so deafening. Of course it’s no surprise. How can they criticize one of their own dismantling municipal services without admitting that clean water is a right?
Here’s what the Republican candidates have to say about a city full of toxic water:
- Rubio still hasn’t said whether he’s been “fully briefed” on the matter.
- Trump apparently can’t bring himself to comment.
- Cruz, of course, the only Republican to that clean water matters, blames not the Republican governor and the cronies he assigned to destroy the public water system, but the Democratic municipal government they trampled in the process. (Rachel Maddow points out the irony, “Oh, I see. Flint is an absolute outrage if it can be worked into a partisan frame.”)
- Meanwhile, Christie has effectively “downgraded and eviscerated” his DEP office in New Jersey responsible for water safety.
- And then Kasich has his own water problems.
- Oh, and no doubt Jeb! still thinks Governor Snyder’s doing a heck-of-a-job.
What a bunch of clowns.
Scary, mean clowns.
And if any one of them happens to become our next president, we can all look forward to our own bathtubs full of toxic water. Flint is an emergency of national proportions, a gross violation of a basic human right, and we need to demand a national response. Candidates on both sides of this race must be forced to tell the public how they plan to protect the common good.
We are all Flint. Flint is all of us.
Clean water is a right, not a privilege.