Filmmaker: Don't Send Flint Water, Declare Martial Law

FLINT, MI – Lightning rod Michigan documentary filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore said on his website that martial law should be declared in Flint, caught in the grips of a public health crisis over lead-contaminated water, and the federal government should be put in charge because Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature “cannot be trusted to get this right.”

Besides putting the federal government in charge of the beleaguered city, Moore renewed his call for Snyder’s removal from office and arrest, evacuation of any residents who want to leave now and the creation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency of a temporary water system for each home.

And he has a message for well-meaning Americans sending water to his hometown: Don’t send it, because it won’t help.

The donation of hundreds of thousands of bottles of water from across the country is “unbelievably amazing,” Moore effused, but he said Americans’ generosity doesn’t begin to provide for the 50 gallons of water each of Flint’s 102,000 residents needs for hydration, cooking and hygiene.

Besides, Moore said, the damage has already been done.

Moore said “every single child in Flint” already has irreversible brain damage from drinking the lead-contaminated water and is “ruined for life.” The exposure of children to lead when their brains are still developing is linked to a litany of neurological and health problems, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He asserted:

“It’s a life sentence. … No check you write, no truckloads of Fiji Water or Poland Springs, will bring their innocence or their health back to normal. It’s done. And it was done knowingly, enacted from a decision and a political party charged by the majority of Michigan’s citizens who elected them to cut taxes for the rich, take over majority-black cities by replacing the elected mayors and city councils cut costs, cut services, cut more taxes for the rich, increase taxes on retired teachers and public employees and, ultimately, try to decimate their one line of defense against all of this, this thing we call a union.”

The outspoken filmmaker and political activist went on to claim that the Flint water crisis would “never have been visited” on the affluent residents of Detroit suburbs like Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe — “and everyone here knows that.”

SEE ALSO

• Clinton Calls for 2016 Presidential Debate in Flint
• Pistons Owner Pledges $10M to Flint, Cites Private Sector Role
• Pediatrician Exposed Crisis of Lead in Flint Water
• State Delayed Action on Lead in Flint Water
• DEQ Director Resigns Over Flint Water Crisis
• Justice Department Looking at Flint Water Crisis
• Governor Declares Emergency in Flint Water Crisis
• Lawsuit Asks Court to Force State to Fix Flint Water Lines
• Former Prosecutor, Ex-FBI Chief Lead Flint Probe
• 2 DEQ Workers Suspended In Flint Water Crisis
• Congress Launches Inquiry Into Flint Water Crisis, $80M Aid Approved
• Flint Water Crisis and Scandal: 5 Things to Know