As mentioned yesterday, the governor of Mississippi hopped on TV earlier this week to inform citizens of the largest city in the state that their water is no good. Heavy rains in the last week raised the water level of the nearby Pearl River to the point of overwhelming the city’s water purification infrastructure. Relief organizations started distributing bottled water to residents, until supplies ran out.
This may be the first time it’s headline news, but this isn’t the first time Jackson has faced issues with its water treatment. In 2021, a heavy winter storm led to tens of thousands of residents losing water between one and three weeks. According to the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, residents of Jackson were under a boil water advisory for at least 225 days last year alone. Hell, in 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order stating that the city’s water system presented “imminent and substantial endangerment” to its customers and could contain E. Coli. So, what the hell? Why is this still a thing?
Racism. It’s always racism.
Jackson (~82% Black), much like Flint, Michigan (54% Black) and hundreds of other majority Black cities in this country, has been the subject of racial discrimination and chronic underfunding of its essential infrastructure for decades. This article does a wonderful job explaining the history of Jackson’s water struggles.
"I have said on multiple occasions that it's not a matter of 'if' our system would fail, but a matter of 'when' our system would fail."
-Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba
Side Items
Former USSR President/Pizza Hut enthusiast Mikhail Gorbachev died yesterday at 91 years old. At best he was a failed politician who helped bring an end to the Cold War. At worst he was a failed politician who gave rise to extreme Russian nationalism as a result of the USSR’s demise
Salute to Ariel Koren, the former Google worker who publicly castigated the company for continuing to support and fund apartheid in Israel. Koren’s big concern was the recent passage of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion dollar contract between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government and military. Koren is the rare compassionate human who stuck with her principles and is leaving Google as a result
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that his ruling party will cut ties with the controversial Unification Church after a growing scandal initially triggered by Shinzo Abe’s assassination last month. Kishida went so far as to apologize for causing the loss of public trust in politics. Not to condone political assassinations, but the dude who shot Shinzo Abe with a homemade gun really achieved his goals, and that’s borderline inspirational