Tiffany & Lisa

TEXT BY tiffany whittington • ARTWORK BY lisa phan

#FlintWaterCrisis

Flint.
A broken city.
Full of shattered dreams turned into despair.
Killings after killings…
Except now there is a New Murderer.
#TheFlintWaterCrisis.
Slowly killing the young and bringing the elders closer to their death.
To think that this could have been avoided…
If only someone would have cared enough to take action.
Now a community that was already in ruins is ruined.
We cry to the government asking for help, but the answers we get are more like a threat.
The water bill must be paid, in full and on time.
We can’t drink this water and yet we’re forced to spend our dime.
Take a look at the media, and you will see Flint continue to cry, but how can we focus on the lead when the world is attempting to cover our eyes?
The elections occurred and our focus went somewhere else, how can we vote for a country who leaves us to fend for ourselves?
Bottle after bottle we watch the mother’s pour, soon the children will be lead-ridden when the mothers just can’t take anymore.
Lack of transportation, “I can’t make it to the water sites.”
But that’s the solution for the water pollution.
Flint vehicle city, decades ago the center for jobs and a place travelers would go.
I can’t Google Flint now without a cringe in my soul.
Once workers paradise dipped in gold.
Flint is now just a dead end…
Will we make it be old?