In the heart of the American South,
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a city steeped in history finds itself
at the epicenter of a modern crisis.
Jackson, Mississippi, a community where echoes
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of the civil rights movement still resonate,
faces a struggle, not just for justice,
but for the most basic necessity of life, water.
Here, we explore how decades of neglect and decay
silently escalated into a full-blown catastrophe.
In a timeline marked by intermittent warnings
and temporary fixes, the collapse seemed sudden to some,
yet inevitable to others.
The crisis here in Jackson was so severe
that, I mean, we were working around the clock.
We were up every morning on calls,
starting as early as 7:30 in the morning,
just to kind of, you know, understand
what the crisis of the day was,
what was the need of the day. Managing call centers,
boots on the ground, distribution operations.
And on one particular day, I was out.
My brother had lent me his truck.
So we had filled it up with water, you know,
as far as it could go.
And I was out making a delivery.
And I was at this church out in West Jackson.
And when I was unloading the truck, this lady came up
and she had her son with her and a small arm baby.
And their son probably was no more
than maybe seven years old.
And this was the day that the schools
actually had come back.
They said, you know, kids need to be back in school
'cause they had been out for so long.
And this little bitty boy, I'll never forget it
as long as I live, I see him come up,
his mom gets out the truck,
she opens up the bag, and he's seven.
And he's picking up a case of water to put in the truck.
And he has this, I mean, his clothes are soiled.
You can see that they haven't been washed.
And I'm thinking to myself, this can't be home.
This can't be where we live.
And it's such an emotional story
because I'm thinking to myself, you're seven, you know,
you shouldn't have to deal with this.
And your mother, who has an arm baby,
shouldn't have to deal with this.
She shouldn't have to try to prepare a bottle of water
for her child, I mean, a bottle
for her child using bottled water
because she can't rely on the water
that's coming out of her faucet.
That's when it hit home for me.
And I had no idea what their situations were
or their circumstances, but I could see it.
And that child's face is etched in my brain forever.
And he's why I get up and I do this work every single day.
It's because of that little boy.
I don't know his name, but I will never forget his face.
♪ In a world where lies divide ♪
♪ Sometimes you have to face the tide ♪
♪ Where rivers run with tainted streams ♪
♪ Justice emerge from shattered dreams ♪
♪ So we raise our voices ♪
♪ And the men change ♪
♪ So no more fighting ♪
♪ And no more pain ♪
♪ Can you hear the cries in the air ♪
♪ A battle for justice that we can't bear ♪
♪ We can't bear ♪
♪ Poisoned water, a silent fight ♪
♪ In this unfair world, we seek what's right, oh, whoa ♪
♪ We stand united, oh ♪
♪ For justice, we fight, mm ♪
♪ To heal the waters, oh ♪
♪ And bring back the light, mm ♪
♪ Raise your voice ♪
♪ To heal the waters ♪
I wanna go right too.
I get that.
Okay, come on.
Come on down the car.
All right, right here.
I don't care.
All right.
This is the story of the Jackson, Mississippi
water crisis, an American emergency,
a wake up call to a nation,
and a testament to the strength
of community in the face of adversity.
Join us as we trace the currents of this crisis
to their source, and seek to understand
how the flow of water, like the currents of history,
has shaped the destiny of this capital city.
Well, I'm Waikinya Clanton.
I serve as the Mississippi state director
for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And at the Southern Poverty Law Center, we are committed
to being a catalyst for racial justice
in the deep south and beyond.
And what that really looks like is really
being on the forefront of the fights
around eradicating poverty, ending mass incarceration,
protecting voting rights, and dismantling white supremacy.
And at the next of that, particularly here in Mississippi,
sits environmental justice.
One, we've seen individuals, babies
breakout in rashes, right?
Individuals have had stomach infections
from consuming the water.
We've had an individual that was a diabetic
and had a small open wound, and they did not know
that they shouldn't be bathing in the water.
And so they actually got in the tub to take a bath
and the water infected that wound,
and to the point where the individual
had to have their lower leg amputated.
Ask me how did I brush my teeth this morning,
and I would tell you I brushed my teeth this morning
with a bottle of water
because I can't rely on the water
that's coming out of a faucet for a utility
in which I pay for every single month, right?
That's how we got here.
That's where we're facing here in Jackson.
And that's just not true for me.
That's true for more than 100,000 people
who live in this city every single day.
That's true for the businesses
that operate here in the city every single day.
And so when you talk about the massive injustice
that we're facing, we're not talking about
just one singular issue of a pipe bursting here or there.
We're talking about more than a century of erosion
in a system that still funnels water into households here
throughout the capital city.
And that itself should be a crime.
My name is Danyelle Holmes.
I'm with the National Poor People's Campaign,
a national call for moral revival.
The Poor People's Campaign actually picked up
the work of Dr. King,
the work of Dr. Martin Luther King from 1968.
And we have been relaunched this campaign in 2018,
February 5th, 2018, here to be exact, in Mississippi.
Here in Mississippi, we've been fighting the water fight.
In October of 2023, we launched more Mondays
around the water crisis in the city of Jackson,
mainly because of the conditions of the water,
the state's intentional divestment into
Jackson's water sewer infrastructure,
as well as talks of taking over
and privatizing the city of Jackson's water system.
And so there was a need to raise our voices
and lift our voices, not just on a local level,
but we needed the country.
We needed the world to hear, to see,
and to know what was actually happening
here in the capital city of Mississippi.
And mainly to a predominantly black city
in Mississippi and in this country.
And it has impacted us severely.
It has meant that our families have been ill
and have suffered through sicknesses.
It has meant boil water notices
have been commonplace for us.
And it has meant that during the winter season,
often times our families and our homes
have been left without running water.
We didn't get here overnight.
The crisis that we're facing here in Jackson
actually stems back as far as the 1970s
when the city first started experiencing white flight.
And for folks who don't know, white flight is when a group
of parents here in Jackson decided
that their white kids could not go
to school with black kids.
And so they forged a migration,
forcing them to leave the city.
You had an exodus of more than 5,000 children leave the city
along with their parents in that tax base.
And so it kind of put the city
in an economic crisis, so to speak.
For a while, Jackson was able to kind of maintain itself,
but as time progressed, systems changed, students leaving,
the quality of life shifted here in the city.
And so we've seen this kind of constant decline
in terms of the economic stability of the city.
I'm Nsombi Lambright Haynes,
and I am the executive director of One Voice.
We are a civic engagement,
leadership development organization
headquartered here in Jackson, Mississippi.
And one of our objectives is
to lift the voices of underserved communities.
And often that plays out in the environmental
and climate justice space here in Jackson
and in other communities around the state.
Well, that's a part of drinking,
having drinkable water, right?
Safe, reliable, drinkable water.
You know, I grew up in Jackson.
Since I've been here, you know, even as a child in the '90s,
I have never drank Jackson Water.
My parents have always said that you can't drink the water.
If you don't have a filter on your water faucet,
then you can't drink the water.
You know, we always had either bottled water
or a filter on our water.
And so I don't know a time in my life
where I felt safe drinking faucet water.
Whether I've been in Jackson or somewhere else,
I've been conditioned to believe
that I can't drink the water
because of contaminants that we know are in the water.
Not only in Jackson, but throughout Mississippi.
You know, people will talk about Jackson,
but when you began to look at the water even around us,
Bridgeland, Clinton, you know, you began to look at
the contaminants in those, you see a lot of contaminants
in those waters too.
And so what we began to do is not only distribute water,
but our team also began to provide water filters
and water testing kits so that we can become
more experts about what we're consuming,
what we're putting in our body,
and not simply just relying on someone else
to tell us what's going on.
In 2016, when I was pregnant with my twins,
my doctor immediately said, "Do not drink the water."
The nurse came to me.
She hands you your new mommy bag.
"Do not make formula with the water."
I was teaching then.
I was working with children, and my immediate thought was,
what about our mamas that don't get this warning?
What about the mamas that can't afford bottled water?
What are they gonna do?
That was my immediate thought.
My first thought every day is,
what are we going to do when it comes out
that we didn't do all we should have done
and the health effects on our children,
on those with disabilities,
autoimmune diseases, all these things.
The last study that came out said
every single county in the state of Mississippi,
in the state of Mississippi except for two
has the forever chemicals.
Every single county.
So I'm Rukia Lumumba.
I'm the executive director of
the People's Advocacy Institute, or PAI as we say.
And we are home to the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition,
which is a coalition of over 30 organizations
that come together during times of infrastructure failures
or natural crises caused by weather or climate change.
My grand babies, my daughter, it's hard for me
to allow them to come here to the city of Jackson
knowing the conditions of the water, right?
And so I don't want them to get sick.
So it's my goal to protect them.
But then we have a bigger issue
because I wanna protect my friends
that come here to visit, right?
But we also, they're coming and staying in hotels
and eating at businesses that are not alarming
their patrons that the water might not be safe.
So we're gonna provide you bottled water.
I've seen a businessman, he's so adamant about
keeping water, but not the safety of water that a few weeks,
I think it was probably over a month ago
when there was an E. coli scare,
and I still believe E. coli was in the water, right?
They went behind the scenes,
and in five, four, three, two, one,
it was, oh, it was a mistake.
My name is Brooke Floyd.
I am the director of People's Assemblies Initiatives
here with People's Advocacy Institute.
And I am not a water person, but I got involved in water
and have become quite passionate about environmental justice
working with this organization
but also just because I was a teacher for a number of years.
I've worked in education for children pre-K through fifth
for the last 23 years.
And so I've seen the impacts
that the environment has on our babies.
And I had to get involved, had to make this city,
this state, this country better for our children,
for our babies here in Jackson.
They deserve the world.
And I am hellbent on giving it to 'em.
Well, when you're talking about an infrastructure
as old as Jackson's water system,
are you talking about a century, 100 years old system
that is now pushing water right into your homes
that isn't safe for you to inhabit.
And so what that does is it forces everything
around it again to change, right?
There is no, when we talked about, I mean,
it didn't matter if you were black, green,
yellow, white, it didn't matter.
Everyone in this city was affected by this crisis.
And I think that's what we have to take away from it.
When you talk about the face of poverty in Mississippi,
you're talking about a state that has one in five people
in the state live in persistent prevalent poverty,
and a third of those people are children,
and then we still have the lack of response
that we got from a leadership here in this state,
there's no other way to point to it
than the fact that we have a failing,
we have failing leaders who have failed the people
who have caused issues like, you know,
education issues, right?
When we talk about the fact that our kids
are finding it hard to function,
that's a result of the water that's coming into their homes.
When you're talking about kids who have behavior issues,
that's all connected back to water.
It's about what you put in your body
affects what comes out of your body.
And so we have to think about that in the broader terms.
When you talk about a state like Mississippi
where hospital infrastructure
is on this rapid decline, right,
that's all connected back to the quality of water.
It's connected back to the infrastructure.
So when you talk about environmental racism,
it's not just impacting black and brown people
the way that, you know, some people think that it is,
it's impacting all of us
because we all depend on this system to survive.
So that's, whether it's a business, a home, a school,
or a church, we have to have safe, clean, drinkable water.
There have been a number of reported cases of illnesses
that we have not been able to prove per se,
but that we have documented in Mississippi,
in, you know, especially documented here in Jackson
that we believe may be connected to the water.
Incidents of cancer, incidents of skin rashes,
incidents of, you know, children having hyperactivity.
And all of these incidents we believe are connected
to the water system here in Jackson
and not having adequate or clean and healthy water.
And we believe that this is the case
because we have, you know, read that in other places
that these are symptoms of unhealthy water.
I know as an educator what can happen
to a child's development, their brain,
their overall health and wellbeing,
with any of those chemicals introduced into their body
or their bloodstream, how their behavior is.
We know what lead can do to
a child's development and their behavior.
This is not only happening, they're not only getting it,
they're not only ingesting it, their parents ingested it,
their mama ingested it, and then had them in their belly.
Not only am I fearful of what these results are
that we probably don't even realize
the ramifications of what this is gonna be
until years down the line,
but I want folks to start investigating it.
I want to find out.
I want to know, is there a reason that
we have so many children
in the state of Mississippi with asthma?
Is there a reason that we have such a high concentration
of people in the Jackson, Hinds area,
Rankin County, Madison, with asthma?
Is there a reason that so many black children
in the state of Mississippi,
in the Tri-County area with asthma?
There are so many things
that people aren't even paying attention to
that we really need to start being concerned with.
And maybe because I'm looking at as an educator,
as a person that's worked for children for so long,
that I always look at it as is the lens of
how is this harming our babies?
How is this harming our children?
Because I always think about other people's children,
but it's very concerning to me
that this has not caused an even greater, like, cry.
Like this is a crisis.
We're in a crisis level.
If someone came to you and said that everywhere
that you've lived, every place that you've gotten your food,
every place that you drank your drinks, your tea,
your lemonade had poison in it,
every single place except for two places you went,
two places, every single place had poison in it.
Would you be calm?
And that study just went on and went about its way
and everybody's just act like we're supposed
to act like it didn't exist.
And I was in shock because it's something I knew.
I knew this.
And you know it because you hear the elderly black people
talk about and the elderly people from these communities,
"Don't drink that water.
Don't drink that water, baby.
Get you some water off the stove that's boiled
or get you some bottled water."
They tell you this.
My grandmother did it when I was a little girl.
The people here know what's going on, but nobody listens.
I'm very observant.
And so the few times I've been in the hospital,
even at my doctor's office, what I noticed is that
they don't turn that water on to wash their hands.
They go to the sanitizer and they're trusting more
in the sanitizer than they are in using warm water
and soap to wash their hands.
So that's one of the things.
And so when you see patterns like that, I know, you know,
and they know that it's unsafe to even wash your hands
with the water because once you wash your hands
with contaminated water and put it back in your face,
you're likely to break out.
If you bubbling around your mouth, you may get sick,
you know, from the bacteria that's now on your hands.
So there are a lot of different dynamics
when we're talking about the safetiness of the water
or how doctors are navigating using the water.
What people don't know is a lot of wealthy folks
have gotten filters, filtration systems in their homes.
Think about people on dialysis
and what you have to do to make sure
that they have clean water.
Like it just makes life a lot harder, right?
It makes our lives a lot harder.
It's very expensive.
Not having access to clean water
coming out of your faucet is costly.
We spend so much water purchasing,
we spend so much money purchasing water that, you know,
that impacts your bottom line.
That impacts your cost of living, right?
And so it's expensive to us.
And I'm one of the ones, right?
Like I'm a resident just like everyone else here.
You know, you think about the impact on children.
I have friends who can't give their children baths,
you know, because when they turn on their water,
their water is still coming out brown.
Now we are in a place where we'll be getting to see fixes
in our water, right, in our water system,
but we're not there yet.
And we know that this is gonna be another 10 year process
to really get us to a place
where our pipes leading to our homes
are safe enough for water to get to us.
And so, yeah, water coming out of the utility plant,
out of the plant might be good, but as it gets to our homes,
we don't know if those pipes are clean enough
that they're proper enough in water
to bring us clean water into our homes.
And so children are not being able to take baths, right?
Something that some does.
You know, being careful about brushing your teeth
and having to use bottled water to brush your teeth.
You know, you think about elders.
I've heard stories of people having, you know,
believing that the blisters
that they're seeing on their skin
or on their children's skin are a result
of water contamination.
Yeah, I've heard many different stories.
You are seeing folks like myself
who are out here crying about the water, right?
And we wanna know, not just by word of mouth,
but we're asking to produce data to show us,
to show the residents that Jackson's water
is safe to consume.
That data is not being produced by third party interim,
Ted Henifin that runs Jackson water.
So this is one of the main reasons why the community,
we have real issues because we care about our lives.
And our lives are at stake here.
On August 29th, 2022,
the capital city's residents had to confront
an unimaginable reality.
A citywide failure has left taps dry.
And those that do function
spew forth water tainted and undrinkable.
This wasn't the first time
that the city's water system had failed.
And residents often complain of tainted
and contaminated water.
Chokwe Antar Lumumba.
Just wanted to take a moment to thank all of the volunteers
that are here on the ground today
that have been loading vehicles, unloading trucks,
just giving water to our residents.
The response has been overwhelming from other cities,
from other residents, from nonprofit organizations
that have all dedicated their time or their resources.
That day was a state of emergency.
We had been dealing with this on and off again,
kind of like boil water notices.
Until one day we were experiencing
extreme weather here in the city.
We had a massive freeze, which caused a lot of pipes
to burst and cracks of form.
We had the flooding of the reservoir
that it floated over into OB Curtis,
which caused then all of this water to become contaminated.
And it was just an overwhelming sense
of nature on the system itself.
And so we had this massive collapse.
People don't know what to do.
If it had not been for, and all of this is happening
while we're awaiting government response.
So nothing from the federal, nothing from the state.
It was just the people who took to the front lines
and made sure that people had clean water in their homes.
And so if it had not been
for the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition,
many families would've still, I mean,
you're talking about families
who are dealing with sick children.
You're talking about elderly folks
who didn't have water to take their medicines with.
So we're talking about just a state
not only of crisis, but extreme devastation.
And people didn't even know where to turn, where to go.
And so if it had not been for coalitions
of organizations who are just committed to the wellbeing
of the people here in Mississippi,
I don't know where we would've been.
Hold on, hold on.
Slow down.
So now you're working with us?
I really couldn't at that particular moment
put my emotions into it, right?
I had to deal with what was before us.
And that was we had a community of people
that didn't have water.
And it takes water to survive.
You know, one of the most sacred basic needs is water.
Water is life.
Yet we find ourselves in a situation
here in the city of Jackson
where we have unstable water in Jackson,
but yet we have deadly water
across the state of Mississippi.
And so we can talk about Jackson all day
and its water being unstable.
But what I will say is that while Jackson's water
is unstable because of decades
of crumbling water infrastructure,
Jackson's water isn't as deadly as some of the other water
that has been tested across the state of Mississippi.
I'm blessed in the fact that I have options.
So many people here in Jackson
and Mississippi don't have options.
You know, when it got too difficult for me,
I could go to my parents' house and, you know,
bathe and get myself up and get ready and be ready to go.
So many people couldn't do that.
And so when it became safe enough for me to come back,
I came back to make sure that I wasn't, you know,
running or retreating from the issues
that were really at hand, that these real life experiences,
like far being from me to remove myself
from a situation and come in as a savior.
Well, no, I needed to understand, I needed to be here
and that was the motivation, right?
'Cause I gotta do the same thing you gotta do.
I gotta get up and brush my teeth with water.
I can't wash my clothes here in Hinds County.
I gotta take 'em to Madison County, right?
I gotta do something other than be able to get up,
trust the system that I pay for every single day
and be able to rely on those systems.
You pay for security.
At that moment, we lost security here in our homes.
And that to me was the real crisis.
That was the real danger.
Because people who didn't have, I think about people
who are transportation insecure, right?
They don't have cars.
We don't have a public transit system here in Jackson.
And we have the JTRAN,
and that doesn't run everywhere, you know,
and that's a bus system, right?
So you're talking about people who had
to really uproot their entire lives just to survive.
In 2022, in 2023, we were surviving,
not in the position of thriving
or being able to exist in just normalcy.
We had to redefine normal for us
for an extended period of time.
And that should never have been the case.
You know, just being able to just take a bath,
being able to not have to worry about
if you put your child in the water and it's brown.
You know what I'm saying?
Can I actually put my child in there?
Let's not put my child in the water.
Can I give my child a bath today?
You know, just being able to have access to that,
having to boil your water before you cook your meals, right?
That was hard for many, many people.
And it takes a lot longer.
You know, one senior home that I remember we went to,
it was in North Jackson.
And not only didn't they have water,
but they also didn't have electricity.
This was another time during one of our major water outages.
And that was due to, we had a,
I think it was a major power outage.
And so residents not only in that building,
didn't have electricity so they couldn't see,
the elevators weren't working.
They were all, it was a senior elder living facility.
Couldn't get up and down the stairs, many of the elders,
'cause they were relying on the elevators,
didn't have water, right, to drink,
and we were going in the dark.
They had been in the dark for weeks
and without water, not weeks, for days,
and had been in without water for a few days.
And so we were able, we found out about them,
got them what they needed.
And it was just, you know, the tears
that come down people's eyes, just for people
to think about them, to be able to reach them,
to be able to get something so simple and basic,
so simple and basic.
You never think about it until you don't have it.
Again, it really made me feel like
I was in another country or another nation.
It didn't make me feel like I was
in the United States of America
to be in a place where we were running out of water
and that we were in a place where
we didn't have access to clean water
and that we didn't know when the water
was going to come back on.
And so that was the scariest part about the situation.
I'm talking about alternating
the battery power so you can stop.
All right.
So when you talk about the impacts
of this crisis on daily life,
we talk a lot about the drinking water.
Most people don't think about the potable water.
Like when that system failed,
the entire system lost water pressure, right?
Which means that the water that used
to flush your toilets with or wash your clothes with,
none of that was moving, right?
Because the system was so old, it was decrepit.
And so folks had to literally,
one of the schools we were visiting
that we had adopted actually
at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Wilkins Elementary,
was describing to us how during the crisis
that they had to take buckets,
fill them up with water
to flush the toilets for their students.
Like that's what teachers were having to do.
And it's so unreal
because it's not something that you can even fathom.
Like that's like, you know, you think back
to outhouses in the olden days,
but this was something that was happening right here
in the 21st century in, you know,
the greatest place on earth, right, America.
This is what we were experiencing.
And it just really, it was so heart wrenching, right?
To think about that if this is
what children are experiencing at school, right,
the place that they come to school,
because many of them don't get
three meals a day, right, at home.
Like school is the only time that they eat
for a lot of these families.
And to think about the impact
that this water crisis had on those children
who would go home and not have food, right?
Just on a regular day, but particularly
in the middle of a crisis, you can't even make
a pack of noodles, right?
If you don't have clean water, right?
And so, you know, we're talking about
just a series of things that
you don't even imagine are possible,
but became possible for us in an instance here
in the capital city and we received those reports.
That's why we provided meals for, you know,
communities every day.
You know, somebody was sponsoring 1,000 meals a day
in this community or 1,000 meals a day in this community
because it was that important.
And you know, it was great that we had
the Red Cross come in and provide meals
and support the ecosystem as well.
But we're talking about hot meals, like, you know,
people need hot meals, like sandwiches are cool,
but that ain't going to hold you.
You know, you need something that stuck to your bones.
And so we had a lot of support from the business community,
people who just stepped in, and that's what we saw.
And that's actually what speaks to the humanity
of folks here in Mississippi, you know,
is that in tough times, we do know how to come together.
We do know how to band together.
I mean, I think one thing that you never realize
is how important water is until it's gone.
And so for folks who are living
where they can't get out the house
and make it to a distribution site, our team,
our ground team was making, was delivering water
door to door to residents that were calling,
asking for water to be distributed to them.
So we had a team that not only was
doing water distribution at the sites,
but also going door to door.
So we saw many elderly people
who could not get to a water distribution site.
We saw many people living with disabilities.
We would go to apartment complexes
that are filled primarily with people
who are living with disabilities
and we would go door to door distribute water to them.
When you talk about children, right?
A lot of our children were out of school
because the schools did not have water.
You couldn't flush the toilet,
you couldn't do things like that.
And so one of the things that we did is that
we ensured that we would go on the neighborhoods
where there were a number of children also
that were home from school.
And then when schools were able to reopen,
we were making sure that we were getting pallets of water
to those schools so that they could continue to operate,
and folks could have young,
the children could have drinkable water,
teachers could have drinkable water,
staff could have drinkable water.
Come on.
All right, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I just really, honestly, I thought of the beauty
of our people, of residents of Jackson,
of people who care about each other in this place.
For me, the most significant component
of all of that was how we came together.
You saw neighbors to neighbors picking up other elderly,
neighbors picking up other elderly members
that couldn't get there or comment and pulling in line
and saying, "I'm just gonna pick it up
for my neighbor who can't get out here."
You know, I remember tears of like older people
just coming and saying, you know, like,
"Just thank you so much.
Thank you so much for caring."
Like that's what I remember.
I remember the days too going home
and forgetting to bring me a case of water and getting home
and not having water myself, right?
I remember those days and those times.
But for me, I think what really settled,
what really just grounded me, which really helped
to continue to push me, to continue to be available
for folks was just how community overall in this city
came together to care for each other.
The water was not safe enough to wash your clothes in.
Then how could it be safe enough for you to bathe in?
How could it be safe enough for you to brush your teeth in
or to prepare a meal for your family?
Like, it places people at such an extreme burden, right?
When you talk about, you know, a city like Jackson, where,
you know, we have a little bit of everybody
who live in this city.
You know, you have some of your more affluent folks
who live in Northeast Jackson.
You have folks who are living paycheck to paycheck
that live in some of the other areas of Jackson.
And so when you talk about the gamut, you know,
that runs through the types of lifestyles
and quality of life that people experience here,
you know, it's few and far between.
And so, you know, when it came down to
what we were really talking about,
we're talking about people's inability to get to work.
You know, we're talking about school closure.
So then parents can't go to work
if their kids can't go to school.
You know, daycares aren't open.
And so the whole quality of life changes in an instant.
And that's what we were facing, not just for a day or two,
but we were dealing with this for months in the city.
And then you think about people
who were providing the response to the crisis.
These were people who were also impacted, right?
People who lived in this city, worked in this city,
had children with the school here,
you're talking about churches having to close,
you're talking about shelters that weren't able to function.
You're talking about so many different things.
And we just didn't get the type of response
that people deserved from our leadership here in the state.
And it was just unfortunate, it was inhumane,
and it's something that we need to address.
Ooh wee.
Oh my Lord.
♪ Thank you ♪
I see you got it in you, man.
What you doing for me right now.
Send my brothers.
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Yeah, my Lord ♪
♪ So, so good ♪
♪ So good to me right now ♪
♪ Oh, Lord ♪
He-hey.
Sing it to me.
♪ Oh, summer will be over ♪
♪ We'll be going home ♪
♪ On the other side ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Won't have to cry no more, oh ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪ Won't have to cry no more ♪
♪ Won't be lied no more ♪
Despite, you know, partisan politics
and you know, folks who have their own agendas
and vendettas, it is essential,
it was essential for us to see each other's humanity,
right, beyond the color of our skin.
We had to see each other's humanity.
And I think that's what made the response possible.
I would also say, you know, some of the other challenges
that we learned of during the crisis was that
the reality of the healthcare epidemic
that we experienced here in this state as well, right?
No one wants to call it that,
but it is an epidemic that we experience here
in the state of Mississippi when it comes to healthcare.
We're talking about not only strained
and stretched hospital systems,
but we're talking about crumbling
and decrepit infrastructure on top of those systems, right?
We're talking about the fact that
there's only one trauma center
in the entire state of Mississippi, and that's at
the University of Mississippi Medical Center, right?
We're talking about parts of Mississippi,
particularly in Mississippi Delta,
where you are experiencing hospital closures
at an exorbitant amount, right, at an exorbitant rate.
People have to travel anywhere from 50 to 75 miles
just to get adequate healthcare.
Well, many of the schools had to shut down.
Like that's the reality of they had to shut down
and those students had to go back home for periods of time,
you know, because they didn't have clean water on campus.
And some programs, some students at Jackson center,
they couldn't go home, so they still had to stay here.
And that's where community came in.
People provided meals on a regular,
we provided water bottles and cases of water.
I think through the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition,
we dispersed more than a million cases of water, right?
Because people needed it.
And this money, we had money coming in from other places
like outside sources, private, you know, donations
and funds just to help us sustain this infrastructure.
You're talking about a small consortium
of community partners coming together to help meet a need
that we couldn't depend on our government to do for us.
And that's the role of government,
is to provide and protect for its people
in a place where you're paying taxes
and you can't have access to clean state drinkable water.
People decide that that's a political issue
when water should be a human right.
That's what we're dealing with down here in Mississippi.
And so when it's time to step up, I'm so happy
that we had people who understood that this goes beyond
anything that's going on Capitol Street,
whether it's the governor mansion,
whether it's the Mississippi State Capitol.
It didn't matter.
People deserved clean water.
And it was the community that came together
to ensure that we had that.
Hey, hey, hey, you can walk up and put you back.
And so that for me was more important than anything.
And it told us that we truly are our own saviors,
that we are the change, we are the resource that we need.
You know, when we talk about water
and not having access to clean drinkable water,
you know, one of the things that I'll tell you
that Jacksonians have been doing,
we have been the true heroes of every story
around our climate issues.
You know, we have been the ones that have fit the bill.
When the state wasn't paying for it, we were paying for it.
We were paying for those little bandaids that were happening
to the water plant every time there was a pipe leak
or a burst or, you know, a crack, you know?
And so I'm just proud of this city.
I'm proud of the residents.
I'm proud of our ability to come together
and to continue to problem solve collectively.
The Jackson water issues that goes back 50 years.
And they need to read all of the documentation
of the problems that have been well-documented
of all of the requests that had been put forth
by the last at least five administrations
to the governors from the last five city administrations
to the last governors that had been well-documented
requesting help, begging for help
that had been ignored and turned down.
Those had been well-documented.
Whose life matters to you?
Because when it comes to the black and brown children
in Jackson, those lives are inconsequential to you.
Because if they matter to you,
then you would not be holding hostage to the city's funds
to repair its water system.
If those lives matter to you, you would be closing schools
left and right here in the city.
If those lives matter to you,
you would not have sent back funding to feed those kids
during the summer if their lives really matter to you,
if you were really pro-life.
So we have to really define what that means
in a place like Mississippi, right?
Are you talking about pro-life as it benefits you?
Or you're talking about pro-life as as it exists in general?
Charity starts at home.
Then it spreads abroad.
You can't talk about trying to solve a humanitarian crisis
across the waters when you're dealing with
a humanitarian crisis right here at home.
And what is happening here in Mississippi
is worth every single taxpayer dime
that you can afford to this state.
You gotta fix what's happening at home first.
You can't say that you care more about, you know,
land and territory being taken from Ukraine
when you don't care about land territory being taken
from black people right here in the state of Mississippi.
You can't talk about, you know, wanting a stable democracy
for all these foreign countries when you don't care about
a stable democracy right here in Mississippi.
We're fighting voting rights challenges
every single day in this state.
Part of the reason we're here is because
we have gerrymandering that has happened
throughout the state for centuries
that have not allowed us to be able to elect
the type of representatives that we need and we deserve.
That's what we're talking about here.
And I'm talking about at a statewide level.
And that's because of policy
that's been in place since 1890.
So we're still living under Jim Crow law
in the 21st century.
It's all you now.
It's probably the first time
that our mayors have come together in a friendly way
over the course of the last few years.
But they came together and said that yes,
all of us collectively have put in requests to governors
during our administration asking for assistance
for our water because we knew that this time was coming
and all of us received a resounding no.
And there's also proven documentation from our governor now
that said he would not spend a dime in the city of Jackson
until we did something about crime.
And he said that in his state of the state address in 2021.
And so all of this is well-documented.
And so that's what I would say to people
who say that it's a local issue.
The federal government across the board has been negligent
in delivering and investing in water infrastructure
across this country.
The state of Mississippi has been intentionally negligent
in investing in a predominantly black city
and especially a black-led city.
We've heard over and over again
from our conservative leadership
what they exactly feel about black leadership
and that is that black people can't govern, right?
And so they push that narrative,
but yet they're the ones who are caught
with their hands in the cookie jar stealing, right,
and really can't govern.
If that was the case of blacks can't govern,
but whites can, Mississippi wouldn't be
in the condition that it is in today.
So yesterday evening was a much better evening
than the night before.
They were able to get in a basket of water
that they could actually better clean or better treat.
And so that has led to gains within the system.
There were people that on Tuesday morning
that did not have water on Monday
that were able to see, you know, pressure return.
We lost some of that progress later that evening.
And so I think we've made those gains back in that regard.
But we still have a distance to go.
As you know, anytime we have our tanks bottom out,
it's really just a waiting game, you know,
dependent upon our ability to continue
to treat it at the pace that we're treating it,
dependent upon our ability to maintain pressure,
then we see steady growth.
And so that steady progress is taking place.
We certainly can't say mission accomplished just yet.
Well, you can't talk about environmental racism
if you don't talk about racial injustice in and of itself.
And here in Mississippi, we've been dealing with that since,
I dare to say almost the beginning of
the formation of the state, right?
We are a Jim Crow state.
It has been cemented into our policy.
You can look back at the 1890 constitution
here in Mississippi where it explicitly states that
many of the laws that are in place here in the state
are designed to keep black people
in a position of destitute.
And so when we talk about the failing infrastructure
and the challenges that we experience here in the city,
all that results back to just the plight of
racism in and of itself.
So you can't talk about environmental injustice
if you're not talking about racial injustice.
And unfortunately, Mississippi has made that a cash cow
and black people are the currency.
So as a result of the water crisis
here in the city of Jackson, we,
the national campaign co-chairs,
Dr. William Barber II has brought in
a legal team for justice.
We launched the, this is, I believe the first time ever
where community has been able to get legal representation
and fight our local government, state government,
and federal government, want to be inclusive,
that residents are to be inclusive in this governing process
around the water infrastructure
and know what's actually going on with our water.
Right now, we're locked out of the process.
We're locked out of if our water is actually clean.
All we have right now is a word of mouth.
Our third party interim manager who is not accountable
to anyone other than a judge.
And I will say a conservative judge
who has shown his disdain and spoken his disdain,
I guess this predominantly black city,
and he's black himself.
And so it's almost like we don't really have
a dog in the fight.
And so the only way to get some answers,
to get any kind of resolve and to be included
and having a seat at the table as it relates to community,
the Poor People's Campaign brought in attorneys for justice.
Other partners began to bring in attorneys
as well on a national level.
So now we have forward justice set up
for constitutional right.
National Research Defense Council and ACLU
that are all a part of the legal team
leading the Poor People's Campaign along with
People's Advocacy Institute as a part of the lawsuit
around the water crisis and to intervene
in this lawsuit as well.
I think it was May of last year,
we filed a complaint with the Department of Treasury.
So what happened in that legislative session was that
the legislature came back, and in April,
they decided that they would take the ARPA funds
and cities that were like Jackson
could receive a one-to-one match.
Some cities could receive a two-to-one match,
but any money that was appropriated for the city of Jackson
had to go into the state managed treasury fund.
And then that money could only be spent
at the approval of the legislature.
Now, what does that do for the leadership of Jackson?
Well, one, it makes it seem like the leadership is incapable
of managing its own money and its own budget.
And this is the capital city.
This is the largest municipality
in the state of Mississippi.
But yet because its leadership reflects its population,
it's now being held in a stronghold.
And so that money's now have to be sanctioned.
It's already been approved and allocated,
but now it has to be managed
and then dispersed by the state.
The state of Mississippi
has $1.8 billion in ARPA funds.
The following news report seems to support the claim
that cities other than Jackson are getting their fair share
for infrastructure improvements,
Water and sewer work, it comes about.
And so in this particular case,
we knew that ARPA dollars were available.
We knew that then we could get a state match
because of the work of Lieutenant Governor Hosemann
and our delegation.
And so to have a $4 million project happen
was almost all of it, construction wise,
being paid for by the state and federal government's
a big deal for us.
We got $1.8 billion in the state.
And when we got that, I just was very concerned
that we not turned around two or three years later
not be able to find anything we've done with it.
So we allocated $450 million to match cities
if they would put it in water and sewer.
And of course, Hattiesburg, under Toby's leadership
and the city council, they have great leadership here.
So they jumped on it right away, and it'll be $20 million
that'll go into water and sewer
in all of these neighborhoods.
They'll be here for generations.
As we delve into the layers of this crisis,
we encounter not just the failing pipes underground,
but also the complex tapestry of economic disparities,
political gridlock, and environmental challenges
that have woven themselves into the fabric
of Jackson's troubles.
Well, I can't give an exhaustive history of the city,
but I can say since we have been in office,
it has always been part and parcel of my legislative agenda.
There have been different concepts
that we have released in that effort,
but we always push towards a robust funding
of this infrastructure and we'll continue to do it.
We know what we're dealing with with the state.
We will not get anywhere with the state.
I don't believe in any time soon,
unless we're ready to get on our knees
and say, "Yes, sir, master,"
and take whatever qualms they're willing to
drop on the ground for us to pick up.
But right now, reality is that we have a extremist,
very conservative state government
who does not care about poor low, wealth people.
And they do not care about black or brown people.
So you got poor whites they don't care about,
and you got black and brown, whether you're wealthy,
middle class or poor.
They don't care about us either.
The same reason that the government has been denying
the city of Jackson its adequate funding
for the last several years.
It's because of racism, right?
You cannot say that we are the capital city,
we have the largest populations
of any county here in the state, right?
You can get into all 82 counties,
Hinds County has the largest sloth of people, right?
Majority of which are black people.
You cannot tell me that your humanity
doesn't allow you to service those people
be it for nothing other than racism, right?
And that is the unfortunate telling of our state,
it is the unfortunate telling of our city,
but it's just been, it's an amalgamation of failure.
You know, it's not just one particular body
or person who's kind of contributed to this.
It has been systemic failure.
It has been institutional failure.
When you talk about state leadership,
when you talk about city leadership, it's all of it.
All of these self-interested leaders have failed
the people here in this capital city of Jackson.
Fixing of Jackson's water infrastructure
will not be an overnight fix.
10 plus years, you know?
And we will let, to be noted, you know,
that the estimated amount of what was going to be needed
to fix Jackson's water infrastructure
is already probably at that point.
So there's gotta be another round of struggling
for more resources to fix Jackson's water infrastructure.
So this one year, two year fix is not gonna happen.
It's gonna be like 10 to 20 years, right, to fix this water.
And the goal is to get it stable
and to keep it clean and safe.
And we can deal with it,
navigate through the other challenges.
And so this is going to require not only the cooperation
of the state, but the federal government
in order to see a long-term fix.
And that's what I would say.
I would say that I see this as a moment that I,
you know, in terms of the support that we're getting,
a moment that I embrace and I'm prayerful, you know.
My position requires optimism, right?
And so I'm optimistic that we'll be able to restore that.
There have been so many residents
who've been very frustrated at the fact that
they've been told that it was okay to consume water,
probably as black as the shirt that you have on, right?
Individuals who have had water to come into their homes,
oily water, water with particles coming out,
dirt coming out of tap,
water that had sulfur smell to it.
You know, just to tell residents
that it was okay to drink that kind of water.
I've been lashed out at, right,
and I'm not a government official.
I don't work for the city of Jackson.
I don't work for the state or the federal government.
My job is only to provide humanitarian assistance
to the community.
Our governor has made no, you know, thought about it,
that he does not care for our mayor.
The previous governor, you know, dealt with
the previous mayor at arms length when he had to.
We have had governors before.
They've worked well with the city leadership.
Those were different governors.
Even though we had those governors at those times,
that is not the majority of the state legislature.
So while your governor may have been one way,
our representatives and our state senators voted the other.
And so we still weren't able to do all the things I think
that were necessary for the city to get everything
that it needed or to move everything forward.
And what you will find is that you have individuals
who place profit over people.
And so they no longer care about sanctity of life
as Mississippi proclaims itself
to be a pro-life state, right?
You would protect an unborn,
but here you have 160,000 plus residents,
majority of your consumer base, predominantly black.
And you wanna push the narrative that
there's been a mistake made,
that E. coli really isn't in the water.
When at that particular time,
folks were getting sick with viruses.
Hospitals were full, not just from flu.
But in this county and the doctors said that
it was a 24-hour virus going on.
Could it have been the water?
Could it have been this E. coli water
that was being used in restaurants to cook food
that made the people sick?
My job and my goal is to connect the dots
to how deadly and how sickly this water can really make you.
It has been proven to make you sick in Flint, Michigan,
in Benton Harbor, in Texas.
You have bad water in Louisiana.
You have bad water all across this country.
But yet majority, a lot of the southern states
are dealing with what Jackson, Mississippi is dealing with
and it's not being talked about.
We have to make certain it's a sustained effort.
We have to make certain that everybody understands
that the residents of Jackson are worthy
of a dependable system.
They're worthy of consistency, they're worthy
to not be humiliated in these type of ways
with our water system itself.
We're gonna continue to push the envelope on this.
We're gonna not always restore water
for the immediate future.
We're gonna make certain that everybody understands
that we're gonna work towards a permanent solution.
Clean water plays a major role
in our environmental movement here in Mississippi,
particularly here in Jackson,
where for years and years we have fought
to have clean water here in the city of Jackson
and have fought to get new pipes for our neighborhoods
and have fought to get the state to allocate resources
through state funds and through federal funds
to get a whole new system here in Jackson, Mississippi.
Yeah.
You know, since 1997, I can't remember a black mayor
in Jackson not requesting support
for watering infrastructure.
I cannot remember a time when they have not,
our municipal leadership has not said,
"Listen, we need some help with this,"
and have not tried to put band-aids on the problem, right?
So when I think about the water infrastructure issue,
it's not one that I can put blame on
the city necessarily for because I've seen the city try,
not only in this administration,
but I've seen efforts in the past.
I think this administration has had
some more critical problems and so had to make
some serious investments and push even harder.
But I haven't seen a time
when it wasn't something that was asked.
And I remember in 2020 when the city combined with
a few other cities put forth legislation
to fix water infrastructure,
legislation that was for investment in water infrastructure.
It was passed by the state legislature,
but then the governor vetoed it.
This was the same year that we saw
our state flag change, right?
And we saw everything outside of that be vetoed.
And it was so frustrating
to see our state government say that,
you know, this was just something that happened
at the moment that year when we knew that this was something
that was years in the making.
Because I remember as a teenager
growing up in Jackson, boil water notices in the '90s.
So this wasn't a new problem.
And this was something that could have been fixed
30 years ago.
And for our state government to spend
that much time pointing fingers instead of coming up
with solutions was very, very disappointing,
but it was a very, very sad and disappointing time that,
you know, people would use that time to say
this is because of black leadership that this is happening.
Instead of saying this is something
that we could have fixed years ago
and we really need to make sure
that those people have clean and safe water.
The state of Mississippi has kept our local government,
our city leadership, they cut us out,
and only work together when it is, I think, required maybe
is the word I'm looking for.
Like if there's a natural disaster.
And so you have to be in the same space and work together.
Our governor has made no, you know, bones about it
that he does not care for our mayor.
Instead of saying this is something
that we could have fixed years ago
and we really need to make sure that those people
have clean and safe water.
I think that any city that has black leadership,
there's also a problem with taking responsibility,
with providing those needed services
and providing those resources to cities
that are run by black-elected officials.
And we've seen that across the board
in Jackson over the years with water infrastructure,
with public schools, and with every sort of agency
here in the city of Jackson,
but especially our infrastructure.
And so those are the major things
that we've seen our state government,
just lack of the empathy
and lack the responsibility to take care of.
And we know that there are resources
in the federal government that have been sitting there
for cities like Jackson to take advantage of,
and we have to continue to fight, fight, fight
for those resources for Jackson
because our state has said, until there's new leadership,
which from our understanding, it seems to me
when there's no longer black leadership,
our state will not allow those resources
to come into the city of Jackson.
So it really, really took the community bonding together
and coming together to make sure that there was no citizen
that was left out and that every citizen had access
and understood that we had to come together
to make sure every citizen that had a need
to make sure that their need was met.
Yeah, as I said earlier,
my response to that is unchanged, right?
You know, we've made it very clear that we needed support,
that we need support.
And so that remains the position
and we've, you know, drafted different efforts
to accomplish that feat and so we will continue to do that.
Right now in this moment
as we've been asking for that assistance,
asking for that help than we have
more assistance than we've had,
Then we continue to lift that up and appreciate it.
You know, I think there are many reasons.
I think that the most obvious for me
and in my opinion based on my years of growing up here,
being here, is that it's a race issue, right?
Racial equity and justice is a problem, right?
And so I think that's one.
Jackson is a predominantly black city.
Since 1997, we've had black leadership,
and every year since then,
we've seen a decrease in state funding to this city.
And that's no coincidence.
If there is a common denominator, that is,
once we had black leadership,
the money began to dwindle away
from being funded by the state
to receiving very little over a period of time.
But I also think that the other issue,
and I think it affects Jackson, but this whole state
is the reality that our state government
does not understand the importance,
does not respect climate and climate change,
and does not understand that infrastructure
just like you care about your home
and you wanna ensure that your home's foundation is solid.
You have to see that for the city and for all your cities.
Infrastructure, our roads matter,
our pipes matter, maintaining basic water systems matter.
And I don't think that it mattered to them enough, right,
to really dedicate the funding towards fixing these issues
before it became so bad that now we're all rushing
to catch up to be healthy, to be in a better place, so.
So there are a number of things.
I think Jackson being over 80% black,
you can see it firsthand.
Many of our neighborhoods, you know,
the roads are torn up due to infrastructure failure.
Trash is everywhere.
You know, we deal with the brought of the creeks
that have garbage and pollution in them.
The whole world knows now that
the water in Jackson wasn't safe.
It hasn't been safe for a long time.
And I know that we are not unique in these struggles.
There are rural communities,
predominantly black communities
and communities of color all over the United States
and all over the world that are dealing with
some of the same things.
I do know that in a state that has not supported
education and healthcare and a number of other things
that when you pile on environmental racism,
it can cause disastrous consequences.
Everything is processed in time,
but sometimes process don't move fast enough.
And you know, what we've seen here is constant failure,
you know, no matter where we look.
The federal government I think did its part.
It made sure the funds were here.
The state government has to do its part though
to ensure that that money reaches the community
that needs it and deserves it,
that it has been allocated for, right?
You know, for the longest time, you know,
Jackson has kind of been a stepchild, if you will, right,
of the tri-state area, and it's the capital city.
And one can only to resolve in that fact
in because it's the blackest city
here in the state of Mississippi.
It's in the blackest county in Mississippi.
Jackson has a 83% African-American population.
Hinds County has a 64% African-American population.
And yet the people who are making decisions
about the quality of life at Hinds County in Jackson
don't look like the majority of the people
who live in this city, and that's a problem.
And it's not necessarily just about what happens
with that state leadership and in our city-elected leaders.
I mean, we had great, wonderful projects
that were about to be pushed through.
Was it two years ago?
And he vetoed, our governor vetoed every single one of them.
That would've brought millions upon millions of dollars
to this city because Jackson needs to get
its water under control and its crime under control.
Money, which is what would've been generated
by those wonderful projects that those people spent
hours and hours and hours developing,
can help combat both of those two issues,
and he vetoed them.
So yeah.
I'm waiting for these next few years to be over with
so we can elect a new governor.
Well, you know, being a daughter of Mississippi soil,
you can't survive here if you don't have hope.
And it is the hope that comes from everyday people
that make it possible for me to do the work that I do.
It is that sense of resilience, the tenacity, you know,
the optimism that we still have.
We can't lose hope, 'cause if you do that,
then we might as well die, right?
And in Mississippi, we never say die.
♪ In a world where lies divide ♪
♪ Sometimes you have to face the tide ♪
♪ Where rivers run with tainted streams ♪
♪ Justice emerge from shattered dreams ♪
♪ So we raise our voices ♪
♪ And the men change ♪
♪ So no more fighting ♪
♪ And no more pain ♪
♪ Can you hear the cries in the air ♪
♪ A battle for justice that we can't bear ♪
♪ We can't bear ♪
♪ Poisoned water, a silent fight ♪
♪ In this unfair world, we seek what's right, oh, whoa ♪
♪ We stand united, oh ♪
♪ For justice, we fight, mm ♪
♪ To heal the waters, oh ♪
♪ And bring back the light, mm ♪
♪ Raise your voice ♪
♪ To heal the waters ♪
♪ Can you hear the cries in the air ♪
♪ A battle for justice that we can't bear ♪
♪ We can't bear ♪
♪ Poisoned water, a silent fight ♪
♪ In this unfair world, we seek what's right, oh, whoa ♪
♪ Mm ♪
♪ We seek what's right, mm ♪