The courageous morality of Flint’s heroes challenges the corruption and self-serving duplicity of politicos — Dr. Phil Zimbardo
By Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D.
President, The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP)
TED Profile: https://www.ted.com/speakers/philip_zimbardo
When I first visited Flint a few years ago I expected to see ugly, but instead what I noticed was lovely. I had expected to see the worst consequences of what it means to be one of the poorest cities in America, as a consequence of the automobile industry discarding lifelong workers and replacing them with robots. Having grown up in the ghetto of the South Bronx in New York City with high-rise tenements, the absence of any form of nature around us, abandoned cars on the streets, graffiti everywhere, and broken windows never repaired, along with garbage in abundance – that was my view frame for poor cities. However, in Flint, the streets are lined with beautiful trees, there are grassy lawns in front of private homes, no garbage lying on the curbs. Seemed idyllic! “Look more closely,” my host, Cora Keene, told me as we drove around town. Cora was my personal assistant, who had grown up in Flint, and was one of the success stories of their failing public education system.
House after house was boarded up, abandoned by their owners or foreclosed for failure to pay the mortgages. Local schools stood empty or were closed down due to budget cuts. Cora explained that kids were truant or often just never returned to school after being moved to a school farther from home, the bus ride was too long or the parents were unable to drive them -and they faced discrimination in the mostly white suburbs taking in “city” kids. Instead of grocery stores, what was most glaring were pawn shops and liquor stores in excess. In a city where many of the 57 percent Black majority live in poverty, we drove carefully through without stopping in the East Side where gang violence and racial tension plague this once blue collar working community. Those racial tensions apparently also characterized the local school board as well, and thereby prevented joint agreements on how best to proceed to improve education for all of Flint’s schoolchildren.
In an effort to help improve the negative situation in Flint, I tried a number of approaches: first, to install our revolutionary HIP educational program created and tested in many high schools; to work with U. Michigan-Flint campus’ new Dean to give Flint high priority and have her graduate psychology students work with us in delivering our educational lessons; to help create a Hero Conference in the local high school and repeat it every other year in a nearby venue; engage local business people, and politicians to work in harmony and help fund a more positive outlook with Flint as ‘Hero Town.’ And to begin to create a new generation of everyday heroes that everyone in Flint could be proud of.
We saw initial excitement and dedication from community members who came to the conferences and participated in our trainings. Unfortunately internal organizational problems that seem to be all too characteristic of Flint, led to a period of disengagement. As our HIP team was rethinking the best new strategy for a constructive approach to re-engaging Flint’s community leaders, to renew their promises, LEAD led the news, and “Ed.”* was put on the back burner.
As has been well documented, Flint has a water crisis. To save money from depleted economic resources, Flint’s water supply was diverted from Detroit to its local river sources. Unfortunately, the water from the river was not treated with a corrosion inhibitor, and leached lead from pipes into water flowing into people’s homes. Lead is a neurotoxin that kills brain cells, especially in babies and youngsters. The more lead-infused water pregnant women drink, the greater likelihood their offspring will have permanent cognitive-impaired functioning. It is devastating.
Obviously, as soon as the first signs of such horrific unexpected consequences of the water diversion became known, the state and federal officials should have taken immediate remedial action. Think again! Who cares about impoverished towns; who cares about what kind of water Black people are drinking? (They haven’t cared for decades Cora points out, “ I was always told not to drink the water in Flint”) Apparently not any of the agencies who should have been alarmed and reacted constructively and immediately. Instead, they ignored warnings, minimized complaints, and even challenged the evidence of authorities in water science. It has taken national exposure of this impending tragedy by powerful spokespeople, like Rachel Maddow, Erin Brockovich, and the Huffington Post, to force their hands and extract lame apologies. Much more must be done soon to limit the damage. Apparently, more than 40 people are already diagnosed with lead poisoning, others with Legionnaire’s Disease, and now many children with newly formed skin rashes.
Long term, permanent, effective usable solutions must be enacted as soon as possible. Replacing the lead pipes with modern pipes is one obvious solution—costing multi-millions of dollars and much time to complete.
There is a positive side to this disaster that also needs reporting: the emergence of Flint heroes– those insiders and outsiders who were active upstanders when most others were passive bystanders. I want to highlight four of them for special recognition.
Lee-Anne Walters has been a fierce force from the outset, insisting that something be done about the contaminated water that children had drunk. Lee-Anne Walters noticed that the growth of her son, Gavin, was being stunted. She also saw that her hair and that of her daughter’s was falling out in clumps. She refused a bribe from city officials who promised to replace her lead pipes if she signed an agreement that the city would not be held liable for any damages already done to her family and others. She refused. Instead, she contacted a water expert, Dr. Marc Edwards, and persuaded him to come to Flint to do a scientific evaluation of the water quality.
Dr. Marc Edwards is a civil engineer and expert on water treatment and corrosion in his position as professor at Virginia Tech. He and his 25 person team came to Flint, performed a series of water quality evaluations, and issued a clear, firm statement that Flint’s water suffered a serious contamination of lead pollution. Government officials dismissed his conclusions, and he was personally attacked as seeking notoriety. Nevertheless, Dr. Edwards has persisted in both condemning the quality of water and in helping to engage citizens to be mobilized.
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, is a local Flint pediatrician who gathered data on blood lead levels in children, both before and after the transition of water from Detroit supply to Flint supply. City officials denied her systematic appraisals of this new toxic danger to the children of Flint. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha’s report indicated that lead levels in children’s blood in Flint had on average doubled since the water transition, and in some zip codes even tripled! Both local media and authorities said she was causing mass hysteria, and so she should cease and desist. Rather than doing so, she continued heroically to sound an even louder alarm.
Miguel Del Toral, is an EPA water expert, who identified potential problems with Flint’s drinking water in February 2015, confirmed his suspicions in April, and summarized the looming problem in a June internal memo. His report to his superiors was suppressed for seven months, and not released until November. Dr. Edwards has described Del Toral’s original memo as “100% accurate” in his assessment of the looming problem. Again, rather than give into political pressures to soften his statement, Del Toral stuck to his heroic guns, and continued to stand by his warnings.
Recently, I have been alerted to the creation of many Everyday Heroes throughout Michigan, students and teachers in high schools and colleges, along with many other citizens who are collectively challenging government officials to do the right thing for Flint, or be forced out of office, and who are also offering support in many ways to the men, women and children of this special city, that I still hope one day will qualify to be FLINT-HERO TOWN, USA!
P.S. It has been inspiring to see the actions of caring citizens across the country who have rallied for the people of Flint since the story has hit the news. Businesses, schools, organizations, and churches across Michigan are collecting water and personally delivering it to the people of Flint. Celebrities have given their voices: Cher sent 180,000 bottles of water and Pearl Jam is donating $300,000 of matched donations. Detroit is especially active with the number of businesses posting on Facebook that they are collecting. It is exactly this kind of compassion and action that Hero Town seeks to promote!
*Ed. = Education
Acknowledgements: Dr. Marc Edwards, Cora Keene, Siddhartha Roy
[Commentary] Imminent and Substantial Endangerment in Flint: Better Late Than Never?
Now that EPA “Good guys” Bob Kaplan, Miguel Del Toral, Mike Schock, Darren Lytle and others have been brought in, and EPA political appointee Susan Hedman is out of the way, EPA has exercised its 1431 “imminent and substantial endangerment” powers to take over responsibility from MDEQ for Flint.
This is nearly 4 months after we (and other many environmental groups) publicly pleaded:
While it comes months after the public health crisis was largely addressed in early October, we believe the intervention is necessary to address the dangerous crisis of confidence that Flint residents rightly have in their government. We publicly endorse the qualifications and ethics of the new team who is in charge at EPA.
While responsibility for the Flint water crisis still rests on a few career employees at MDEQ, none of whom have lost their jobs, responsibility for the public crisis in confidence rests entirely with the EPA. Dr. Yanna Lambrinidou, Paul Schwartz, Ralph Scott (deceased) and Dr. Marc Edwards have fought a losing battle since 2005, to get officials at the U.S. EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (OGWDW) to get serious about lead in water.
When we exposed cheating in Washington D.C., New Orleans, Durham and elsewhere, OGWDW officials stabbed us in the back, and supported wrongdoers in every single case. Rather than learn lessons from childhood lead poisoning in Durham in 2006, EPA OGWDW stated:
…there is no evidence of a huge public health threat originating from lead in drinking water. Rates of lead poisoning in children have declined for years, noted Veronica Blette, special assistant to the EPA director of the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water. “[Edwards] wants to say there is an emerging problem,” Blette said. “But I don’t see the percentage of children with elevated lead in their blood increasing.”
That is right. Before they enforce the existing law, EPA wants us to produce hard data showing the percentage of children with elevated lead in their blood increasing—well, their wish has been granted in Flint.
Consultants also openly bragged about approaches, that would make lead in water look low during EPA compliance sampling, even when it was high when people were drinking the water, at national meetings right in front of OGWDW officials. In November 2011 Dr. Edwards wrote EPA OGWDW:
What, if anything, does EPA Office of water, intend to do about such practices? Because of a lack of leadership on this and other issues, the EPA LCR is currently being used to provide US consumers with a false sense of confidence about levels of lead in their public water supply. Through its inaction, EPA is effectively condoning unethical behavior. As far as I am concerned, the US EPA is more to blame for the next child who suffers health harm from elevated lead in water due to utility gaming, than the consultants/utilities who now openly engage in such practices…I can only conclude that… the US EPA Office of Water does not care whether children are lead poisoned from public drinking water
EPA OGWDW owns the Flint Water Crisis of confidence, that is unfolding before our eyes. As a reminder, MDEQ and EPA have repeatedly insisted that Flint has always met the EPA LCR. On September 29,2015, Dr. Edwards wrote OGWDW:
EPA Office of Water and EPA Region 5 are a national embarrassment. You have a city in crisis, kids with elevated blood lead, and NO CORROSION CONTROL PLAN FOR 16 MONTHS, and yet you sit there and do absolutely nothing.
As we stated above, better late than never. But just barely.
Primary Author: Dr. Marc Edwards
[Press Release] Hedman Resignation Gives Hope for EPA Climate Change
Note: This also doubles up as a press release. Please use quotes from these if you are looking for a response from the group.
Today’s resignation of EPA Region 5 political appointee Susan Hedman, provides a tiny ray of hope for EPA’s many outstanding scientists and engineers, who desperately want to do their jobs protecting the environment and public health– but are repeatedly hamstrung by incompetent and uncaring management.
Last weekend we argued:
Over the last ten years Americans have been increasingly frustrated by an EPA that protects employees who get paid to watch pornography, repeatedly engage in sexual harassment, retaliates against whistleblowers, and hands out “Gold Medal” awards after an incident that lead-poisoned hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of D.C. children.
What can get you fired at the U.S. EPA? Doing your job. Like Mr. Miguel Del Toral, my friend Dr. Susan Richardson and countless others. Our U.S. EPA and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), currently epitomize the “human perversion of natural selection” at government agencies, which retains unethical cowards and destroys heroic actors.
While Governor Snyder is certainly guilty of being overly trusting of both MDEQ and EPA employees, and those out of their mind with anger are certainly justified, he did deliver a sincere apology for his employee’s and administrations misdeeds. He also released his e-mails, unlike EPA who redacted and covered up damaging information in response to a Guardian FOIA. And being a government agency means never having to say you are sorry. Act only in response to public ridicule, and even then, only to buy time and allow public scrutiny to fade.
Without a sincere bipartisan effort to get true climate change with our badly broken public health and science agencies, expect more Flints in our future—completely undetected, but no less devastating in harm to our most vulnerable.
EPA’s Press Release in response to the Flint Water Crisis
Author: Dr. Marc Edwards
Gov. Rick Snyder releases all emails pertaining to the Flint Water Crisis
While we haven’t gone through these personally yet, we are making them available for everyone to read and share.