Hillary Clinton has made every effort to make Flint her own.
Guardian
Is she donating her huge speaking fees to the city or its residents? Did she come in like the plumbers unions and fix things?
The water crisis afflicting this predominantly black Michigan city – ignored by Washington politicians for years – has become another battlefield in a progressive war between Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Is Bernie Sanders using Flint as his personal vote-getter?
“This is no time for politics as usual,” [Clinton] said. “Flint should start making the repairs you need to restore safe water as soon as possible."
[...]
Race, class and the environment matter again in an issues-based, neck-and-neck race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
As far as I can tell, those things have always mattered to Bernie.
Looking past Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire, where Sanders is tipped to win, and toward the March primary states where she will be counting on African American support, Clinton made a symbolic campaign stop here on Sunday.
Symbolic, indeed.Photo op.
“I feel blessed to be here but I wish it were for a different reason,” she said, as she took to the stage at the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church, flanked by purple-robed members of a choir and surrounded by a sea of nodding heads.
She could have been there any time she wanted. For any reason. Also, this is not something new. This has been an issue in Flint for over two years. And only now is she showing up. How's she going to play that?
"I am here because for nearly two years mothers and fathers were voicing concerns about the water’s color and its smell, about the rashes that it gave to those that were bathing in it. And for nearly two years Flint was told the water was safe.”
And for nearly two years, what was she doing about it? Zip. That's what.
Not everyone in a city where the words “FLINT LIVES MATTER” appear next to bullet holes in windows wants the lead in their children’s drinking water made into a photo-op, a kind of Hurricane Katrina for a more liberal nation’s eco-justice age.
“Don’t jump on a cause just to get votes,” said Flint Lives Matter organiser Calandra Patrick, as Clinton’s jet arrived in town.
[...]
Arnette Rison III, a 47-year-old independent contractor, put Clinton’s visit in starker terms: “If she’s bringing 35,000 hydroelectric filters, I’ll love her for it. But that’s not what she’s about to do.”
[...]
For 32-year-old Lorenzo Lee Avery Jr, though, it was a disingenuous visit: “Honestly, she not coming to help,” he said. “Feels like she coming for the entertainment.”
[...]
Clinton stood before a packed audience and spoke emphatically about the moral imperatives of the situation, saying: “The children in Flint are just as precious as the children in any other part of America”.
The children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria - not so much.
On 11 January, Clinton called the Flint water crisis “unconscionable”; a few days later, she appeared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show to call the situation “infuriating”. She was the first candidate to bring the subject up in presidential debates and she even suggested one of the four additional Democratic debates should be held in Flint, in order “to shine a spotlight on what’s happening there and in places like Flint around the country”.
Work that campaign, Hill. Work it.
That will now happen, in March.
Lucky Flint. There's a presidential election coming up.
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