The resilience of Flint, a city poisoned

Saginaw Street runs south to north through the city of Flint, Michigan, USA. Saginaw is, or should be, one of the most famous streets in the history of the workers’ movement. In the space of an hour you can trace our movement’s course – from our most famous victories, through to seemingly impotent rage at the mass poisoning of an entire city.

On the corner of Saginaw and Atherton West streets, well south of Flint’s downtown area, is the site of the Fisher Body Number One plant – one of the General Motors factories that once dominated the city. Fisher Body Number One was made famous by the historic sit-down strike launched on 30 December 1936.

After 44 days of factory occupation – after sit-downs at other GM plants in Flint and beyond; after cops using tear gas and gunfire had been driven back by strikers using fire hoses and heavy duty car door hinges, fired by slingshots; after the famous women’s auxiliaries had organised everything from food to physical combat; after a decade or more of difficult organising by communists and other militants inside the plant – auto workers emerged on 11 February 1937 with a union contract from General Motors. For the first time, the viciously anti-union car companies, the centre of the emerging economy, would have to deal with a unionised workforce.

The victory at Fisher Body on South Saginaw detonated a wave of organising and sit-down strikes throughout the United States. For the first time, the great mass production industries in the largest economy in the world were organised, transforming the labour movement in the US and beyond.

There’s not much left of Fisher Body today. There’s a plaque commemorating the sit-down outside the former administration building, the only part of the old plant still standing. Across the road, a run-down single storey building, the old union hall of United Auto Workers Local 581, is shuttered. The boarded up, decaying building next door has a poster stuck to it, with the bitterly ironic slogan:

COMING SOON – JOBS.

FORD PLANT.

HIRING CONTACT – MEXICO.

Having pumped untold billions of dollars in profit out of its workers, General Motors has now largely left Flint for dead. GM jobs here peaked at 80,000 in the late 1970s, collapsing to around 7,000 today, spread over a tool and die workshop, an engine factory and a truck assembly plant.

Jobs leaving Flint is an old story. Corporate responses to union strength have always included relocation and automation, along with coercion, concessions and cooption. Even the massive growth of the auto industry in cities such as Flint and Detroit a century ago was, in part, an attempt by manufacturers such as Henry Ford to get clear of union strength in the skilled trades in centres such as Chicago.

Down on South Saginaw, a bleak sign of more recent times is the large electronic screen advertising a massive fitness centre, the next building down Saginaw from the remnants of the Fisher Body plant. “YOGA CLASSES FOR ALL LEVELS: Classes 6 days a week” flashes on the screen, followed by “ZUMBA! Classes free with membership”, and then “SWIM LESSONS ARE BACK – classes here”. And then the essential, contemporary Flint punch line: “LEAD FREE WATER!!”, flashing red over three colours.

‘All this’ is still going on

Towards Flint’s downtown area, the Flint City and Genesee County offices sit on either side of Saginaw Street. As I walk past early in the morning, two women are taking boxes of disposable nappies out of their car, piling them on top of three giant pallets that have been parked on the footpath, loaded up with slabs of bottled water.

“So”, I ask, not sure what to ask: “all this is still going on?”

“Oh yes”, one of the women assures me firmly, pausing only briefly to look up. “Oh yes, ‘all this’ is still going on. Very much so.”

“All this” is the Flint water crisis; the industrial-scale poisoning of a hundred thousand human beings.

The whole world knows the basic story. In April 2014, unelected city administrators authorised a switch from the Detroit water system – sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River – to water sourced from the Flint River, which for decades has been used as a dumping ground for all manner of toxins from GM and other industries.

The same authorities refused to add anti-corrosive chemicals to this highly alkaline water.From the start, Flint residents complained about the awful colour, smell and taste of the water. For nearly 18 months, city, state and federal authorities ignored the residents’ skin rashes, ignored their complaints when clumps of their hair fell out, ignored kids who stopped growing, ignored the head fogginess, awful abdominal pains and blinding headaches that became standard among city residents.

For all that time, the corrosive water was flushing huge quantities of metals and other toxins out of ageing city pipes and into the bodies of a hundred thousand humans. One of the toxins was lead, a powerful neurotoxin that can permanently scar children’s developing brains.

In October 2015, Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder finally admitted that an error had been made, and ordered a switch back to the Detroit water system. But now the pipes, both public and private, have been permanently compromised and continue to leach toxins into the water. Not even the authorities pretend the water is safe to drink. Signs at the bus station and hotel warn me not to drink from the water coolers.

Outside the civic offices, I press on with the questions. We’re outside City Hall, so maybe the women are with the city authorities?

This time the woman doesn’t look up. “No, we’re just with ourselves.” Her tone of voice tells me that this, too, should be obvious. “We live around here and we help out. We knock on doors and make sure everyone’s OK. Some of the old folks can’t get down here to get the water.”

I walk past an older man at the bus stop nearby, three slabs of water piled into a creaky old shopping cart. Like most of the people of Flint, he’s Black.

I walk downtown, past the shuttered shops and smart bank buildings, across the dirty yellow Flint River, and past the famous arch welcoming visitors to “Flint, Vehicle City”. A block further up, on the corner of North Saginaw and East Fifth, I get to St Michael’s Catholic Church. I’m keen to look in on a meeting called by local groups Michigan Faith in Action and Flint Rising.

I come through the door into the church hall, and a woman asks me to sign in. I explain that I’m from Australia, that the disaster in Flint has been news over there and I’m interested to see how people organise in the midst of it.

Before I can explain much more she starts talking. Her name is Nakiya Wakes. “I have been profoundly affected by the water situation”, she tells me. “I was pregnant with twins at the time and I lost both of them. Both of my children have been diagnosed with high levels of lead in their bodies.”

I don’t know much about lead poisoning. But I know enough to realise this could mean a lifetime of learning difficulties and behavioural problems for her kids. Nakiya continues: “My son has been suspended from school 56 times this school year”.

As if on cue, her son runs over from the other side of the room, full of bounce. He might be about seven years old. He’s taken a bite of a banana and holds it up, smiling at me and shouting: “Would you like some?”

“Thank you very much”, I reply. “But, no, I won’t.” Not for the last time during the day, I start to choke up.

“I stay strong for my children”, Nakiya tells me later. “And for Flint, for everyone who has been affected.”

Trying to channel a little of her strength, I sign in, potter around, pour a coffee (pre-pack, not local water) and pull myself together.

I chat with one of the organisers, asking how much money Flint’s administrator meant to save by switching the water source. He pauses a little, as if the answer isn’t straightforward. “Well, it seems that they may not have saved any money at all.”

Detroit Water says it would have lowered the price rather than lose the contract. But the administrator, appointed by governor Snyder, wanted to shift the water contract to KWA, a private initiative operated by business interests close to Snyder.

The meeting gets under way. Most of it is a question and answer with Dean Scott, the chief scientist of the not for profit organisation Water Advocates. He can’t say whether Flint’s water system is safe or unsafe. But his main point is that no-one else really can either because the studies have simply not been done.

Flint water has been officially declared safe for bathing and showering, based on a small number of tests from cold water faucets – though people don’t generally shower under cold water but water that has been heated, stored, then turned into droplets and steam – all of which can alter the behaviour of toxic compounds and make them breathable.

And on it goes. There’s concern, confusion and weariness in the meeting but also a deep, deep anger.

A couple of representatives from Local 370 of the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union are here. They have been part of the practical solidarity movement since the start, their members organising to help those most in need. A couple of months back, the National Guard delivered tap filters for every home, but householders have to fit them themselves. This can be tricky, and in houses with older style faucets – mainly the older houses with poorer residents – the filters can’t be fitted at all.

As part of their regular volunteering, Plumbers Union teams have fitted many homes with new faucets and got the filters working. Only now, it seems, is even a portion of this work being organised and paid for by the state government. And the real work of ripping up and replacing the corroded and compromised pipes and plumbing is yet to begin.

Unless you’re General Motors.

Corporate power

As several people remind me at the meeting, soon after the water supply was switched, GM noticed that the new water was corroding the engines at the Flint engine plant. Official approvals and new pipes were quickly organised and GM’s plants quickly switched back to Detroit water. The workers, along with the rest of the town, were left to fend for themselves for almost another year.

GM’s contempt for its workers, and for the town, is no shock to Gladyes Williamson: “They’d line us all up down on Dort Avenue just to run us over if they could”, she tells me after the meeting. Gladyes was laid off by GM when it shut down Flint’s Buick plant in 1999. Her savings were invested in GM shares. When the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009, she was wiped out.

“They were never bankrupt. I mean they declared themselves bankrupt here, but they operate in 130 countries around the world! They never stopped trading in 130 countries, did they? They just went bankrupt so … I just, I never thought I’d be poor, I never thought I’d end up – “, she pauses, struggling with emotion.

Anguish at her own situation, and that of Flint, merges with fury at the 1 percent. “From sea to shining sea, this stuff is coming for everyone. And these billionaires who are taking control of our water, well they haven’t laid a single pipe from sea to shining sea – they just take over the pipes and then take the profits.”

“We built all the cars”, Gladyes continues. “We built the plants, we built the whole country. And look at us now!” She mentions the kids seriously affected by lead, the looks in their eyes. Now tears well up and she pauses, wiping them away and looking down for a second.

When she looks back up, her face is pure fury. “If I have one breath left in my body I’ll fight”, she declares. “And that Snyder – I hope that the last thing he sees – is – my face!” It’s the sort of thing that I’ve heard people say often enough, half in jest. But every fibre of Gladyes’ being is deadly serious about what she’s saying.

United for justice

From spending just a day in Flint, it’s hard to get a picture of exactly where all that energy and anger are going. Flint Rising has three basic demands: “We don’t pay for poison” (relief from the nation’s highest water bills, which have continued to be issued throughout the crisis); “Fix what you broke” (replace all the pipes and plumbing); and “Our families deserve to be healthy” (lifelong care for those affected by the disaster).

Flint Rising, Water You Fighting For and many other groups are active in putting these demands in front of the media, official hearings, politicians and anyone else they can. There are court actions, protests and the giant signature-gathering operation just launched to attempt to force an election to recall Snyder.

And there’s the giant network of human solidarity. Every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, canvassing sessions are conducted out of St Michael’s church. Teams knock on doors, check on strangers, gather stories, organise help and distribute water. In the failed state that is Flint, this work is the only thing that has kept people alive and connected through this catastrophe.

All of this is essential. But it’s notable that there is no mention of the power that was so effective down the other end of Saginaw Street all those years ago – the power of workers, organised at the point of production. In Flint, where GM is still be the biggest employer in town, that means the United Auto Workers Union, the UAW.

“Has the UAW done much on this?”, I ask. Gladyes smiles grimly, making a “zero” sign with her fingers. That’s terrible, I observe, especially given the city’s history. I mention I was just down at the old Fisher Body site before the meeting. “Oh yes!” She brightens. “Down there in Saginaw Street! When we passed bowls of soup through the windows to keep them fed.” Gladyes is way too young to have been part of the sit-downs. The “we” here is the organised working class, in Flint and beyond.

It’s not just Gladyes and I who mourn the lack of a fighting response from the UAW. In March this year, legendary long-time UAW rank and file militant Gregg Shotwell wrote at SocialistWorker.org:

“People living in Flint have a right to expect that the UAW would not only warn them and advocate on their behalf, but fight like hell for them – fight like the people of Flint fought for the UAW in 1937 … The old UAW would have struck GM until all the citizens of Flint had access to the same water as the corporation. A full-scale strike alarm would resound around the world in one day. Shut off the profit faucet, and one day is all it would take to jack the wheels in motion.”

It’s a good point. But we should remember that our power in South Saginaw Street took a lot. It took a lot of serious organising in incredibly difficult circumstances. It took an orientation toward stopping production – our strongest weapon. It took total ruthlessness about going for the corporate jugular when the time was right. It took those communists and other militants with hard class politics, operating as a coherent force.

The UAW, like much of the union movement worldwide, has spent many, many years systematically ridding itself of exactly all these things.

Shotwell once observed that the whole course of the union movement might have been different if the UAW, instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars building itself an up-country convention centre, had opened a union hall across the road from every new car plant. But with no serious approach towards organising the unorganised – within the US or further afield – the UAW has long been a shadow of its former self.

In the church hall, volunteers are getting clipboards ready for the afternoon’s canvassing. I have a bus to catch. History collides with today as I step out of the church hall, back onto Saginaw Street North. There’s no happy ending. There’s no rainbow in the sky. There’s just a brutal cold wind through yet another industrial town where the authorities, private and public, are counting the profits and poisoning the workers.

If you know the story of Flint, or of Wittenoom, or Baryulgil, or Rana Plaza or the Morwell mine fire, of an endless list of poisoned industrial towns; if you know these stories, you know the score. You know that where profit rules, the inside of a machine is infinitely more valuable than the insides of a human being. And you know that the difference between an organised, fighting working class and its absence is often, quite literally, the difference between life and death.