By Jordan Chariton
THE FLINT WATER CRISIS :
A Decade Later And Still No Accountability
The following is an excerpt from Jordan Chariton ’ s new book We The Poisoned : Exposing The Flint Water Crisis And the Poisoning of 100,000 Americans .
Sitting at a table in the basement of a local Flint church , I saw him making the rounds . I wasn ’ t there as a reporter , but a journalistic opportunity landed right in front of me . He was a smooth operator , weaving from resident to resident . A typical politician with a million-dollar smile and Lord knows what ulterior motive . Sheldon Neeley , a former Flint city council member , was currently Flint ’ s representative in the state legislature in Lansing . Now , he was running to become Flint ’ s next mayor .
It was April of 2019 . To Americans living outside of the area , the Flint water crisis had been long resolved . At least that ’ s the impression they got from national and local media that had abandoned the story .
As I was eating lunch from the church buffet , Neeley plopped down at my table . I was there with my colleague Jenn Dize about to premiere a documentary we worked on for residents to watch . The film depicted our old-school journalistic voyage , knocking on over four hundred doors during a sweltering Flint summer to uncover that the Snyder administration had cheated on Flint ’ s water testing for two years .
I had heard less-than-kind things about Neeley from residents and others . Opportunistic , ladder climber , and selfinterested were just some of the offered adjectives . So . . . basically a politician ,
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I thought . I figured he knew who I was when he sat down next to me . By then , I ’ d reported over a dozen times in Flint and had interviewed the current mayor he wanted to oust .
I suspected he might have loose lips ; I also didn ’ t trust him not to spin that I had misquoted him . Since Michigan ’ s laws allowed me to tape the conversation without permission , I hit the record button on my phone . After some small talk where Neeley peppered me with criticism of his opponent , Mayor Karen Weaver , the state rep pulled out his laptop . He wanted to show me video of a news report from years earlier . The report detailed publicly released emails written by Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley that panned Neeley as an irrelevant political backbencher . “ We need a friend on the ground ,” Calley had written about Mayor Weaver . He urged Governor Snyder to say yes to the requests for water-related relief Weaver made to him . Snyder would get the credit for delivering for Flint , “ not the state rep or senator who are actually hindering progress at this point ,” Calley wrote about Neeley .
As Neeley closed his laptop , he offered a dark interpretation of what the lieutenant governor really meant .
“ Partner with the mayor , make them think everything is great , do everything they want , and take the real professionals out of the room , which is the state rep and the state senator ,” he posited . “ Put them to the side , and then we can molest this baby as much as we want to , without the parents or the babysitters in the
room .”
It seemed clear by Neeley ’ s aggressive terminology , “ them ” referred to Mayor Weaver and the “ abused baby ” was Flint residents . Of course , the mayoral hopeful saw himself as the responsible parent in whatever scheme Snyder and company had in store for them .
I pivoted to what I was eager to discuss — a name that kept popping up in so many of my interviews and reporting . Conversation after conversation , sick Flint residents invoked one entity when telling me where I should be digging to find a major culprit behind their suffering .
Sheldon Neeley was no exception . He , too , pointed me in the direction of Flint ’ s most powerful institution . For decades the Mott Foundation , named after early General Motors partner and stockholder Charles Stewart Mott , had been the charitable purse of Flint . Mott generously funded hospitals , schools , cultural centers , youth programs , and , in more recent years , Flint ’ s new Farmers ’ Market and Capitol Theatre . In 2013 a grant from Mott funded eleven positions in Flint city government .
Despite its reputation as Flint ’ s benevolent purse , residents and sources insisted the foundation was not the righteous force of generosity that politicians and media framed it to be . In the late 1970s ,