8. Public Trust
• Requirements:
o Meet performance standards
o Transparency / honesty
o Consistency over time
• Rational and emotional elements
Source: Braithwaite and Levi. (1998). ”Trust and Governance.“
10. Authorities’ Efforts to Maintain Public Trust
• Mayor Dayne Walling:
“It’s a quality, safe product. I think people are
wasting their precious money buying bottled
water.” (June 12, 2014)
• Mayor twice drank tap water on TV
(April 2014 and July 2015).
• Gov. Rick Snyder’s “30-Day Flint Challenge”
• Residents’ complaints minimized for over a year
12. Voices of Flint
• Helena Jones “We've worked hard all our
life, and we've paid our dues and pay our
taxes. And this is what we get”
• Melissa Mays “they took away my right as a
mother to protect my children . . .
they chose to hide it from us and then we
ended up poisoning our children.”
• William Wiggins “I don't think I'll ever go
back to drinking it again, because you just
don't know”
• Gabrielle Holms-Scott “I don't think I will
every trust the water again”
13. New City Leaders Campaigned on
Transparency and Fiscal Responsibility
Dr. Karen Weaver
(Mayor 2016-2019)
Sheldon Neeley
(Mayor 2019 - Present)
Washington Post (2016) “Flint's water crisis reveals government failures at every level”
Pic: Dingle, Adrian. “The Flint Water Crisis: What's Really Going On?” American Chemical Society, Dec. 2016
Legionnaire death count: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/flint-water-crisis-legionnaires-disease-deaths/
Pic:https://www.wnd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/flint_water.jpg
https://www.epa.gov/watersense/how-we-use-water
(Singer and Evans 2013)
Clark, Anna. The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy. Metropolitan Books, 2018.
https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2016/04/25/remember-that-time-gov-snyder-said-hed-drink-flints-water-for-30-days-thats-over-already
https://www.mlive.com/news/page/still_standing_flint_residents.html
“My job is to show the world the faces of the people of Flint, to help humanize this disaster. Earlier this year, I visited several sites across Flint to take portraits of 100 people dealing with the crisis. 100 portraits. 1/1000th of the community. These are the stories of my neighbors. We are human beings who want a basic human right, who want clean water running through our taps.”
- Jake May, MLive/The Flint Journal photographer
“That's criminal. I'm sorry. There's no other word for it, the fact that they took away my right as a mother to protect my children because they chose to cover up and lie instead of fixing the problem or at least addressing it, They chose to hide it from us and then we ended up poisoning our children. And there's nothing they can say or do that will take that away and fix it.” Melissa Mays
Pic: http://www.socialworkblog.org/advocacy/2016/02/flint-water-crisis-update-resources-for-social-workers/
First two quotes:: Berlinger and Netto. (2016). “Voices of Flint: How Residents Are Coping”
Last two quotes: May. “Voices of Flint.” mlive.
From a survey conducted by the MDHHS last year 49.1% children and 36.6% adults of Flint residents were found to use tap water. Nearly 2/3 of the people who use the water use it where ingestion is likely (drinking/cooking/brushing teeth, etc).
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trust-eroded-years-flint-drink-water/story?id=62582926
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/mdhhs/MSU_Interim_Evaluation_681269_7.pdf
Pic: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/glass-half-empty-debunking-the-myths-of-optimism-and-how-we-can-use-it-to-perform-our-best/