00:00I am a mom. I have a 16-month-old daughter.
00:02I'm pregnant with my second child.
00:05If I lived in Flint, my daughter would be among those who had been poisoned.
00:11Lead is directly related to miscarriage risk.
00:14I might have miscarried my second child.
00:17So for me, this is deeply personal and morally outrageous,
00:23and I would hope any American would feel the same way.
00:36Even though people knew the Flint River was really polluted,
00:40there really wasn't water testing done before the city decided to start using that water.
00:47No one really made the decision to add an anti-corrosive treatment to the water.
00:51So many of the pipes here in Flint were made of lead.
00:55Literally the first day that people turned on their taps and water came from a new source,
01:00water was brown, it tasted funny.
01:02People thought it was uncomfortable going down their throats.
01:06It's not just that the water tasted bad.
01:08It's not just that it was discolored.
01:09It actually has lead in it, and children are being poisoned.
01:13Children have been poisoned.
01:21It's heartbreaking.
01:22As a pediatrician, we know what lead does.
01:25And we have done a great job as a nation to get rid of lead.
01:28So to see it resurface in an entirely preventable way, this didn't need to happen.
01:44So what I find heartbreaking is now the people on the front lines from the community know what they need,
01:51and we still haven't been able to do it yet.
01:54The two senators from Michigan are heroically arguing for funds at the federal level.
02:00I know the mayor is talking to Washington, talking to the governor, asking for help.
02:06But while we're waiting for that government funding to unlock,
02:09Flint really needs more private donations, more philanthropic funding to be able to fill the gaps.
02:15They've been overwhelmed in the most positive sense with donations of bottled water.
02:20But now they need a distribution plan to ensure that everyone who needs bottled water,
02:27particularly single mothers who may not have the time to drive to the local fire station to pick up their
02:32water.
02:33Older people, people with disabilities who are homebound.
02:36We need to be, as the mayor has advocated, employing people in Flint to really be that distribution mechanism.
02:52There has been this knee-jerk reaction of, you know, we need to force the governor to resign,
02:57we need to throw these people in jail, we need to have accountability.
03:00I completely agree that we need accountability, but people in Flint can't wait for us to figure out who is
03:05accountable.
03:06So if there are finite resources and public attention, we need to turn our outrage into action
03:12and really respond to what people in Flint are saying they need,
03:15so that whatever can be deflected from the burden of lead poisoning is being done.
03:21But we can't lose focus on the fact that the victims here, the 10,000-plus children of Flint,
03:28six years and younger between April of 2014 until whenever we fix the pipes.
03:35for September 64, 2020
03:35…M.A.L.S.
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