Episode 1: Chia Morgan

Chia Morgan, Flint native and community activist, shares her experiences with the Flint Water Crisis and describes how it impacted the Flint community. In our conversation, Chia touched on how folks in Flint are thriving—despite it all. She also discussed why it is so hard to keep Flintstones down. 

Transcript

Tainted Tap Podcast

Host by Dr. Katrinell M. Davis

Interview with Chia Morgan

Episode 1

Air Date: April 27, 2021

“People's skin was just open. I remember one guy he couldn't work because his skin was literally open. And he was just like, “I'm not going out. I'm scared I'm going to get an infection, and if I don't get an infection, I'm scared that people are going to gawk at me.” He lost all his income because he really couldn't explain these big- they weren't even boils- they were literally like craters all over his skin. One young lady had all seven of her children are diagnosed with lead poisoning, all seven of them.”

Chia Morgan

So, what have you been up to?

Chia Morgan:     I am a social worker by career, and then I'm doing my community activism here in the city of Flint. Proud program coordinator for the nonprofit, Well of Hope. I'm also a notary; I'm also a wedding planner, and I'm a public speaker talking about mostly service to the community and how we can come together as a community to bridge that gap for things that we need. I've been up to a little bit.

…What led you to the work you do in the community? 

Chia Morgan:     Well, I'm a GM baby.  Both my parents are GM retirees- shout out to Flint, can’t mention Flint without GM- but they were never above service. They were never above giving. I can remember my dad worked third shift, and I would be sitting in my first and second grade class, and he would walk in with a bag of hats. I'm not talking cheap hats. He went and the things that he had bought me at home, he brought them for all the kids in the class. He would go, and him and my mom would get pinatas and pizza and just bring them to the school on a random day to serve the students. I watched my parents at seven to eight years old, I would be with them, and we were out cleaning the toilets of those who couldn't do it for themselves or those who couldn't afford cleaning supplies. And so, it was something that I watched them do. My dad was very instrumental in the community, and my mom was right by his side. And as I got older, I just remember that same giving spirit being on me, and it was never anything that I was attached to. It was all about how can we serve others and working in the community and volunteering. I would probably say my premier moment as a leader in the community was when God gave me the dream for my blessing to be a blessed Thanksgiving dinner. It was literally a dream: I remember waking up I don't even really eat mashed potatoes. They're like the last thing that I will put on my plate- I remembered them being in the meal that we serve for Thanksgiving. I woke up, I went and told my friend, Brandy, “We have to do this dinner.” And we put it together in two months with the help of the community. And I prayed, she said, “We need a name.” I said, “I'll pray about it.” God gave me the name Blessed to Be a Blessing, and just over the time since doing that dinner, God has just opened up doors for me to lead. I've done the “Stop the Violence Day”, very close to my heart. I've lost two close friends to gun violence, and so I wanted to do something to really support the community. And over time, God has just continued to grow that passion in my heart for the city. When people call me to do things, I've told people, “I can't work with you.” Not because I don't believe in what you're doing or not because I think that I'm better than you, but if your intentions are not all about service and now how you can progress yourself, I can't work with you because I'm all about my city. I'm all about service. God has put me here for a purpose, and I can't allow myself to be attached to people who just want a couple of accolades. My life isn't perfect, like I tell people, right now in the last three years, I've become not just the woman I should be, but the woman of God I should have always been, but God knew his plan for me. Over my bed, I have Jeremiah 29:11, and that was just the daily reminder that no matter what I did that I shouldn't have been doing, that I knew I shouldn't have been doing, I still had a purpose to walk in. When I was doing things that I knew I should not have doing, God was still giving me ideas, God was still opening doors for me. I let people know, I've always loved the Lord.  Good Friday: I celebrated being saved 27 years, but in those 27 years, I haven't been perfect, but I've always said, God, however you use me, I'm available. 

…What was going on in Flint before the crisis?

Chia Morgan:     Well, for me, it kind of all started with the emergency managers, and it wasn't exclusive to Flint. We had them in Ben Harbor, we had them in Pontiac, and we had them in Saginaw. And so, you kind of see a theme there because these are all highly populated urban cities that are in the state of Michigan on the west side, as well as the east side of the state. However, the Michigan residents voted down the emergency management and the then Governor Rick Snyder, he overrode it and he continued to go on with the emergency managers. And so, before there was the lead crisis, there was already a plan to silence the voice of the people, because we spoke resoundingly and said, “We don't want the emergency managers.” We have mayors, and it would have been different had it been one city, but you went to all these urban cities and put in emergency management. And then what happened when they went into those cities, when they came out, they didn't come out better. Even before we talk about the Flint Water Crisis, they sold off the assets for the city of Flint. When I talk about the Stop the Violence event that I had, we rent the big show mobile from the city of Flint, and we would have the speakers come on; that got sold with the emergency management, and that was kind of a pride thing for Flint, because that was where we held our concerts, music and the parks, and so that was something that was prideful to Flint residents. When you look at Pontiac Silverdome; who doesn’t want to be driving down I75 seeing the Pontiac Silverdome? So, these are all these things that came in to dismantle communities. And so, the overall theme is a disregard for the people. Even if they go and say, “We didn't sit at the table and say, ‘we wanted to poison Flint’.”, you did sit at the table and say, “We're going to disenfranchise Flint; we are going to silence the voices of Flint and other Michigan residents.” And when you began to take out the structure where the people are at the forefront, then you get chaos, such as Legionnaires, such as the Flint water crisis, such as lead contamination, and here we are. 

How did neglect in Flint look and how does it manifest? 

Chia Morgan:     You had a city council who was there, but they didn't have any power. You're talking about a mayor whose salary was stripped down, I think somewhere to $50,000, if I'm not mistaken, because he really didn't have powers that he needed. We're talking Flint schools rapidly closing because the funds aren't coming in. And yeah, it's true that schools operate off of the tax base, but we also know that if the government wants to find one, they will. We’ve seen that during COVID 19, where we've had this surplus of money to go to different things. We've seen this with the bailout of the Big Three. So although we know how things work, we also know that if the government wants to make something happen, they do. We began to have all our Alma maters close: Whittier, Longfellow, Northern Flint, Central Northwestern, open, close, close and open. The different schools, the Bryan center, which is a staple on the north side of Flint. How many don't have a story of the Bryan center? Garfield elementary, another staple in the community right across from the old Northern. And so, these were some of the things that began to just be a part of the domino effect, children having to be bused across town. So we didn't have teachers that were right there in our communities.  When I was younger, if a student was sick, the teacher could walk through the neighborhood and just check on the students; so, the model of the Flint community schools began to just kind of disintegrate. And so, there were all these things that were going on to kind of handicap the community, and it began to work. And if you continue to put people in a position to where they feel, “My voice doesn't matter”, then people become apathetic. But even when we come to the water crisis, people were not apathetic. People were lied to deliberately, because I can distinctly remember the day when the water smelled like eggs, and I remember being in the shower and I rubbed my back, and it just felt like just a blank wall, like soft paint. And I was like, “Something is wrong with my skin”, but it was no rash there, it was just feeling in it. I told my boyfriend at the time, I said, “Look at my back.” He was like, “Girl, it's nothing wrong with your back.” I'm like, “No, it is.” And so, one day-this was in the summer- they told us that it was a water main break and to shut the water off and boil the water for a couple of days. Well, this was the beginning of what we now know as the Flint water crisis. It was the summer, and I had on my little tank top and my hair pulled up into a bun, and he said, “Chi, come here.” I said, “What?” I could hear some panic in his voice, but we were just kind of walking. He like, “Man, you’ve been telling me about your back.” It was like a light gray where I had been saying it felt funny. It had manifested for like a gray rash. And I'm like, “I kept telling you, it was something wrong with the water.” And I was getting my eczema creme from the doctor, but this was not eczema. I've had eczema my whole life. It doesn't flare up anywhere except for the same spot. But I'm like, “Okay, maybe this is it.” And we kept saying, "We're not drinking that water.”  And you're from Flint, so you know the joke has been forever: don't fish out the Flint River, don't drink the Flint Water, don't swim. Flint people are funny, so when they first switched over to the water, Flint people were like, “Oh, we supposed drink that, and we haven't that our whole life”, like it was all these jokes and stuff. But then we were like, “But low key, the water still stinks for real.” We're playing, but we're for real; the water smells like eggs, the water is brown, we’re not playing. And then, people kept going and they just uncovered it, and it was something that we were dealing with here. One of my friends, I won't say their names, but my friend and his wife, she lost her baby. She couldn't really understand why, because she'd otherwise had a healthy pregnancy. Then she had a little baby at that time- and don't judge her, she married, she can do back-to-back if she needs to, while y'all listening- she had a little baby at that time, and then that baby started getting sick and she really couldn't explain it. And then she ended up getting diagnosed with lead poisoning, so they were able to track that was why she lost her baby. But it was just a phenomenon that people have been in chaos, and they couldn't explain it because we knew the water smelt like eggs; we knew that we weren't supposed to drink nothing out the Flint River, or eat the fish, or swim, but we never thought that that was equating to all of these different things that people were going through. I'll never forget driving down the street and finding out that we had lead in our water, and even then, it didn't get the attention that it should have nationally.

                              …It was just like: here goes Rick Snyder again. I told people you can't trust somebody that calls themselves a “tough nerd”…That’s like me saying, “I'm a thug and a Christian”- but our boy DMX was a thug and a Christian, so we’ll let that one slide. But no, the two don’t go together. It was hard because people were starting to put it together, like with my skin, people who had lost their children, and then all of these people who were educated enough to know what lead could do. We're like, “Dang, my kids are acting a little different.” You were seeing parents who had taken their child through toddler years, and they have met every, met every milestone, and then they were regressing. For example, they couldn't remember to go to the bathroom. And so, all of these things began to happen, and then there was the testing. Insurance companies didn't want to cover the testing because I mean, it's really not a standard test that everybody needs if you had lead poisoning and then the doctors were making sure they were calling their clients saying, “Look, we don't care about the last time we saw you, we need you to get in and get these kids.” And then that's when some of the water drives started coming, and different people started bringing the spotlight to Flint. I remember that the presidential debates were here at that time. I spoke on a panel in Detroit for Saviors Day for the Nation of Islam; it was Ms. [Alin] and Tamika Mallory, Ice Wear Vezzo, brother Jasiri X, and we all talked about different topics at Cobo. And then there was the Rachel Maddow show was here and Chris Hayes, Down to Brazil, they were all here. But all of that seemed like a whirlwind, and people felt like Flint was getting over because we were getting the presidential debate and we were getting the Justice for Flint concert said, “No, we are going to boycott the awards. We would much rather put this talent into planning.” And people felt like, again, when you went to college, there they go being sensitive. But our spirits were just so low because it was like people were getting their lead test results back, and people's houses and pipes were busting. One of my friends, her mom’s house literally looks like something you would see in the movies with the glass windows in the waterfall and the floor; her pipes corroded, she couldn't even use one of her showers. People were incurring these expenses, people's skin was just ate open. I remember one guy he couldn't work because his skin was literally open, and so he was just like, “I'm not going out. I'm scared. I'm going to get an infection. And if I don't get an infection, I'm scared that people are going to gawk at me.” So, he lost all of his income because he really couldn't explain these big-they weren't even boils- they were literally like craters all over his skin. One young lady she had all seven of her children diagnosed with lead poisoning, all seven of them. 

                              …But another thing is Rick Snyder, he was such a leader to contend with, that he went back-to-back with his legislature, because he was determined to implement what he wanted to implement. So, no matter how much they fought, whether they were from Flint, or whether they were from some of the other urban areas, or they were just working with their Flint allies on these and other issues, it just wasn't happening. He was just one of those people that he always had, one more thing ahead, or one more avenue to go to where he circumvented things. And that was one of the things that just made it so repulsive about him. I remember my dad saying, “t doesn't matter if you meant harm if harm was done.”, and so that has been my mantra for probably about 30 years of my life. And so, Rick Snyder, we really don't care if you rest that night telling yourself that you didn't intentionally do this to Flint, he's never giving us a genuine apology that this happened to a city under his tenure. 

…I don't know that he didn't mean that, because as we go back to the beginning of my conversation, maybe you truly didn't mean to take it as far as poisoning the city. But you did mean to stifle voices. You did mean to override the vote when people told you that they didn't want the emergency managers. You did mean to keep doing all these other things, and so I liken it to The First 48-because that's my show- the detectives tell the young men in the interrogation room every week when the tears start. The tears start about minute 42 every week. Taking you to the 42-minute mark of The First 48, it doesn't matter that y’all just went to go rob somebody, somebody died in the commission of your ill intentions anyway, so you have to pay the price. Rick Snyder, it doesn't matter if- and there's a big if like a red if- you did not mean to poison Flint, you meant to do all these other things that disenfranchise Flint. And so, you could have very well lost control because you had set the bar to just eliminate us so to speak. And so, you get no sympathy for the “Oh, I didn't mean to poison you guys.”, because had you listened to the votes, had you listened to the voices, had you listened to those who try to speak out to you, had you listened to the activists who begged you to do away with the emergency managers. I’m not going to say that every mirror is perfect- I'm not going to go down that road today, that's another podcast- I'm not going to say every mirror is perfect. However, I will say that there is a less likelihood if there was somebody from the city of Flint running the city of Flint, that they probably wouldn't have poisoned themselves. That is what I'll say, and so you can't release a culture of hate and then expect it to stop. You showed disdain for us. We were just the poor city and the city of Flint that wasn't bringing in the revenue to the state, so we became expendable.

How did it feel when folks stopped talking about Flint, considering the fact that Flint isn't exactly fixed the problem isn't resolved? 

Chia Morgan:    It’s a three-fold question; that's why you heard me say, “Oh Jesus”, as you were talking, because the settlement itself that's a whole different ball game. I personally wish that they would have shot it down and said, “Let's try it again.” When I talk to people nationwide, they do tend to think that it's fixed here because they don't realize the cost of what it takes to fix Flint. And so, they'll say, “You got 170 million.” Well, we didn't go out and buy 10 mansions for people and that just fixed the problem. 170 million when you're talking about a city of Flint size, because Flint is right under one hundred thousand residents now. But if you think about Flint in his heyday, we were easily 250,000. The houses were full. The real estate was booming. And so, you have to fix those pipes at even vacant properties because things settle. The sediments are in there, so 170 million and the problem that we had, that didn't even fix the pipes. But you figured that we had to expand Medicaid; we had to provide bottled water; we had to pay for credits for the water bills; we had to expand education for children. And so, a lot of people would say, “What happened to all the money that came to Flint? Y’all got enough money.” Some of the money came for Flint, but it may not have count into Flint. There are people who are still not back to work from the crisis because it debilitated them. Their mental health will never be the same. And so, no Flint is not fixed. There are people whose brains will never function the way that they once did, likewise with COVID: a year later, we're not even necessarily on the mend.  And so they understand that people are not back to work well, when you look at Flint, you have to look at how lead goes into your body and the effect that it has on it. There are some houses that will never be the same; if your pipes have been corroded and you couldn't afford to move, then that has created another problem. Maybe now your walls are weakened on the inside. Maybe now you have electrical problems, and so there's all this money that has had to come to fix the problem, so there's no way that we are not completely made whole, and Flint is not even done changing all of the pipes. 

                        Now you see why I told you I got to go listen to my girl Sarah Jakes tonight, because this is too much, it really is. And when people will say "Black people are being overly sensitive,” when we talk about systemic racism; no, we're not. We're tired, drained, and we have to be the ones to fight this. Nobody came into Flint to say, “We are going to help you carry this.” It was the residents; it was our mayor; it was state Senator Jim Ananich.  It was those people who are all Flint residents who had to do what it took to get this declared an emergency. And so that was on the residents back. People couldn't even really rest because we had to write letters, we had to protest, we had to do this, and we had to do that, and it's just a lot.

What is needed to support Flint residents?  

Chia Morgan:    Medicaid needs to still be expanded. Every resident living in Flint should have free mental health care for life, because you really don't know who all was affected the most. Mental health care should be top notch and afforded to Flint residents for life. Some other things that should come in is there needs to be a free mobile pantry. I wouldn't even say for life, but at least, probably for every child who was born then, at least 18 years from that time; so we’re talking 2036. Free mobile pantry, because what about the foods that combat lead: the iron, the calcium, those types of things, those leafy green items. We're in a food desert plan, and so they could have given us a Whole Foods, a mobile grocery store. They could have loaded Whole Foods gift cards for families to say, “You know what, we'll give you $125 for this Whole Foods for five years.”, and they could've did it. They could have structured it a lot of ways, but the water pods are gone; they are going ahead and moving out from the expanded Medicaid. And so, in a sense, they just threw money at the problem, and they really didn't get to the root of the problem. We know that as we've seen with lead, that it increases violence and aggression, and agitation in individuals, whether they're children or adults, they could have built a free recreational center with free yoga for children and families.  It's a lot of things that could have been done. 

                        Programmatic efforts,  versus saying, “You have until March 29th to sign up for this money.” It's just a lot of things that that could have been done, and don't get me wrong: I appreciate the country and the world for stepping up because the government wasn't here to tell of it. Have we not had Houston to Flint, and Atlanta to Flint and the different churches and the different mosques and all of that step up, we wouldn't be as far as we are with water bottles and all of that. But if we talk about what I personally would have liked to see, some of the things, even with the new school that came, it was a selection process that it could have gone differently to ensure that those children who live in Flint had first priority, and then even more of a first priority to those who we know have been impacted by lead. Pay for some top-notch, world-class teachers to come in and make sure that they're giving these children the highest-level education because we know that they're struggling to grasp it anyway, because their brains are just functioning so differently. 

                        Then when we look at- and it's systemic racism- it all comes together full circle. When you look at the police brutality, and we can just look at this week alone, we know that there will be some children who will be more susceptible to prison because of their lead poisoning. And so are we training our police nationwide, because we know that people don't always stay in the areas that we grew up in, many families have moved and migrated. So, what are we doing on a national level to train our police, to be able to combat children who grow up and who have these violent tendencies with the police, to where they may not follow the commands that were given to them? They may be a little aggressive, but guess what? It really wasn't their fault because they were exposed to lead. Let's look at Freddie Gray, who was murdered in New York. We know that he had been poisoned as a child, he had a developmental disability due to being exposed to lead. And so, what are we doing to say, “Hey, listen police: this child may be from Flint that has lead poisoning, and this child may not even be from Flint and could have lead poisoning.” We have to begin to break the system, and there are so many different opportunities that we could have taken from Flint that I think once the cameras went away and once we weren't the highlighted story anymore, those opportunities were lost. But we had a chance to really reshape the way that things were done for the inner city had we used Flint as an example of tragedy to triumph. But where they messed up: you probably should have poisoned another city, because Flintstones, we always comeback some type of way. That's where they messed up. They probably should have poisoned Birmingham. I'm not saying I wanted it to happen anywhere else, but one thing I know about Michigan, it's one of the most resilient places. We bounce back, and we will bounce back from this, and we stick together. 

When you think of the effects of the crisis, what needs to happen to 

move Flint forward to its future, its rightful future? 

Chia Morgan:    I think Flint is actually on the mend, and I'm going to give some shout outs to some people in Flint, and there are strategic and why I'm giving them these shout outs. Flint is about to get money from this settlement, and it's not a lot for the adults, but for the children, it can really begin to shape generational wealth with his handle, right? I think that one of my friends, Antonio brown, he's the only black CPA in our area. He is doing weekly financial literacy classes for the month of April, and outside of that, he's working with youth to teach them financial literacy. He's doing that to kind of change the model to where, when people may hear, “We're going to give you $5,000”, that doesn’t even really sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, because I've been working with my CPA A.C, and $5,000 won't cut it. When people feel empowered with their dollars, they talk differently about their money. They talk different about what they will accept. We have Flint Beat- Jiquanda Johnson. She's telling the story of Flint versus some of the larger news productions, where they tell the bad side of Flint and you call them to talk about sponsorships and they're too busy, but then if there's a shooting, they have somebody there before the family is even notified. So, Jiquanda is beginning to change the face of Flint and how the story is told about Flint. She's telling real people, real stories in the city of Flint. One of my very good friends, Dr. Herbert Miller, the pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle, he is stepping outside of the pulpit, and he's rallying his friends with him, and so he's politically engaged. He's working hand in hand with our sheriff. He's working hand-in-hand with our school district. He's working hand in hand with some of our legislators. He's still representing the church because we know that historically the church is where people get their news from. And so, if he is the president of the Great Lakes Baptist District Association, and he's involved and he's representing something that needs to be represented. Our sheriff, I love our sheriff, Chris Swanson; he made national headlines last year when he said “Walk with us”, and many people have asked me from around the country, “Was that a stunt?” And I said, “No.” He really had been working on some things behind the scenes before that happened. That's just who he is. And beyond that moment, beyond the election, he has installed voting booths in the Genesee County jail- six of them. He has taken a niche to human trafficking and driving it out of our area, which we know that that's important to talk about the lead because that makes that population more vulnerable to human trafficking. He has a full certification program, the Ignite Program in the jail, so where inmates may go in one way, he's making sure they come out better people. He just graduated six chefs last Friday. And so, these are people that are really doing the work in Flint to change it around and to say, “No more will we take what you're giving us.” We're going to give you something to tell about us. I think that's very important. There's another pastor, pastor Chris Taylor. He has the Flint grounds crew, and so he's not just preaching: he's going out and saying, “How can we beautify this city so that when people drive through, they want to be in Flint?” He's working with different neighborhood groups, such as Mr. Arthur Woodson, who is one of our tenacious people who did not stop with the Flint water crisis. He's one of the reasons why it hit the national spotlight like it did. And so you put together pastor Taylor and Flint grounds crew and people like Arthur Woodson, and they're going out and saying, “You know what, we'll do this clean up. We'll do it free of charge. And we'll haul away the debris because we were not letting people come in and literally made Flint a dumping.”  You have attorney Torchio Feaster, who is young and tenacious. Before we just had this expungement law that took place in Michigan this April to change, Torchio was working with young people to empower them, to tell them what to ask their legislators for, and for these people right here, they're just a few people who are doing things in the city of Flint to say, “You know what, y'all poisoned us, but we're going to use this as a chance to say, we're turning the page.” We're changing the narrative. My dad Will Morgan. My mom, Deborah Morgan, they're working with our nonprofit, Well of Hope, to say, “Whatever programs we can do to change the city,” because our mission is breaking the cycle of poverty by creating city-wide programs, so we're constantly expanding our partnerships. We know that they could have potentially canceled out the food desert in the city of Flint. Well of Hope said, “We'll build two freestanding pantries in the communities where individuals can go and get what they need.” And so, these are the type of things that they didn't bank on with Flintstones. They didn't bank on the pastor saying, “You know what? I'm going to come out the pool pit and see what I can do to put my hand a little bit here with the sheriff, a little bit here with education, and a little bit here somewhere else.” They didn't bank on the other pastor saying, "You know what? I have a gift talent and some equipment I'll beautify the city and bring some other young people to teach them how to have pride in their city.” They definitely didn't bank on the black writers saying, “You know what? I'm going to leave MLive because I'm tired of telling these stories that put my people in a different light. I’ll start my own.” And so, don't mess with a Flintstone, because a determined Flintstone will change the face of their city with very limited resources.