City Council postpones secondary water source pipeline decision and reviews amended 2021 budget
By Tom Travis The Flint City Council voted to postpone to May 11 an important resolution to enter into a contract for a secondary water source pipeline and also voted to receive an amended 2021 Flint city budget from city administration. Both items resulted in long discussion among council members and city officials. The council meeting, conducted via YouTube telephonically because of the coronavirus, lasted nearly eight and half...
Coronavirus Diary #2 — In Pandemic America 2020, Flint knows we are “collateral damage in a rigged deck casino”
Ed. Note: Here is the second of an East Village Magazine’s new feature, the Coronavirus Diaries — personal accounts and commentary from our writers to attempt to capture some of what we’ve all been going through and reflecting on what it means. By Robert Thomas Like an old crow perched on the very thin wire of elder mortality, I see dead bodies and lethal viruses everywhere. While COVID-19 is particularly dangerous...
“Still waiting for justice” — Six years in, water warriors remember Flint water crisis
By Tom Travis Remembering the sixth anniversary of the Flint water crisis, several local water activists gathered on the front lawn of City Hall Saturday. Democracy Defense League members Claire McClinton and Claudia Milton-Perkins led the effort to broadcast an online remembrance of what became one of the most notorious and tragic manmade environmental disasters in the country’s history. On April 25, 2014, then-Flint Mayor...
Ananich on the water crisis sixth anniversary: Hoping for justice, but “Man, could Flint just catch a break?”
By Jan Worth-Nelson Sitting in a small room in the State Capitol waiting for a floor vote Friday afternoon, State Sen. Jim Ananich, also Senate Minority Leader, made a call to Flint. He had agreed to offer updates to East Village Magazine, all of whose staff are sheltering in place, about the sixth anniversary of the Flint water crisis, the prospect of action from the State Attorney General’s office, and how the city he grew up...
Mayor Neeley reflects on sixth anniversary of Flint’s water crisis, extends curfew to mid-May; Chief Hart says homicides are up. overall crime down
By Tom Travis On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Flint water crisis, at a Zoom press conference called Friday afternoon, Mayor Sheldon Neeley said, “We still find ourselves working through it” and clarified one outgrowth of it — a secondary water source pipeline which has come up again recently before the Flint City Council. The mayor also commented on the city’s response to the coronavirus and extended...