'They let us down': Water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi,
flows from systemic racism

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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here

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Friend,

Brooke Floyd lives with her husband and twin children on a cul-de-sac
in a leafy, middle-class neighborhood in the historic capital city of
her state.

Chastity Bass, a single mother, lives with her five children in a
considerably poorer section of that same city, in a small apartment
that is part of an affordable housing complex.

In the ways income tends to define people in the U.S., Floyd and Bass
have little in common. But in Jackson, Mississippi, two things unite
them. They are both Black women. And they have both lived for years
without something that most people in the richest country in the world
expect - the guarantee of clean, clear water.

Over the past two weeks, the attention of the nation has alighted on
the catastrophic water infrastructure
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in Jackson, where the city's largest water treatment plant
failed on Aug. 29, stranding 160,000 people, along with hospitals,
fire stations and schools, without safe drinking water. In many cases,
these communities had no water service at all. Jackson had already
been under a boil-water notice for more than a month. Mississippi Gov.
Tate Reeves announced this week that the city's boil-water
advisory has been lifted

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, but residents remained skeptical about the water quality. Advocates
encouraged residents to test the water before using it.

For this city in the poorest state in the nation, where 80% of
residents are Black and about 25% live in poverty, the crisis is the
logical progression of a slowly building disaster at least a
half-century in the making. For years, people from all walks of life
in Jackson have grown accustomed to having to boil their water every
time a storm throws the city's crumbling water pipes out of
whack. Parents regularly add bleach to the water to wash dishes,
hoping to prevent bacterial contamination. Over the winter of 2018, a
cold snap froze aging pipes in school buildings and children did not
go back to school until almost Valentine's Day. Last winter, the
city was under a boil-water advisory for almost a month.

Historians, infrastructure experts and advocates say the water
catastrophe in Jackson, like the one that emerged in Flint, Michigan

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, a few years ago, is the result of generations of neglect by white
politicians and policymakers.

"This is the result of deep, historical pain and suffering, and
being honest about that is essential to recovery," said Robert
Luckett
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, a history professor at Jackson State University, a public,
historically Black university in Jackson that had to shut its
classroom doors last week when the water coming out of faucets on
campus started flowing first yellow, then brown.

"People here are resilient, they are coming together with a
level of organizing that is rooted in the same communities that fueled
the modern civil rights movement," Luckett said. "But they
are living under conditions brought on by systemic racism and just
outright hostility to this Black city from the leadership of this
state."

Well-documented neglect

Last year, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S.
Regan presaged the current crisis, visiting the plant that ultimately
gave way this August and citing it as an example of what his agency
called "long-standing environmental justice concerns in
historically marginalized communities."

On Sept. 7, Regan met with Gov. Reeves, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar
Lumumba and other elected officials to discuss immediate steps to
improve the city's crumbling water system. He promised tens of
millions of dollars in federal loans to help get the water system up
and running. Reeves had already mobilized the National Guard to help
run water distribution sites in the city. He and Lumumba talked
cooperation.

But the show of unity at the meeting belied years of well-documented
neglect by Mississippi state officials that led up to the current
crisis.

READ MORE

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center



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