“Water is Life!”
is more than a slogan
A Round Table Discussion
<span><strong>Watch Video </strong></span>
Presented on March 27, 2021
Who? You and the following panelists:
From Flint, Michigan, the city that poisoned its residents with lead — Vicki Marx, resident of Flint for 15 years, and activist since 2015, member of the Democracy Defense League of Flint and a fighter for justice and clean water
From Detroit, Michigan, – Valerie Jean Blakely –lives on the north end of Detroit, fighting water shutoffs and for water affordability, activist with Detroit People’s Water Board and We The People of Detroit
From the fight to stop Line 5 under the Mackinac Straits — Andrea Pierce, member of the Little Traverse Band of Odawa Indians and Idle No More Michigan, fighting to stop and prevent further Enbridge oil spills
From Chicago, Illinois — Cailie Kafura, direct action organizer for Rising Tide, Chicago, Conflict Palm Oil activist, and activist against extractive industries polluting waters.
From Jackson, Mississippi, — Rukia Lumumba, manages the mayoral re-election campaign for her brother, Chokwe Antar Lumumba in Jackson, where the storm damage has forced people to boil their water for more than a month. She is also a co-leader of the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives and a member of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
From the world of inspiration and poetic invocation:
Negwes White — Chippewa and Navajo, from Chicago, spoken word poet who represented Team Lynx in Louder Than A Bomb
Katrina Brooks Flores– also known as El La Katrina — is a Xicanx multimedia, multipractice artist and activist, born in Wisconsin, with rootedness in visual arts and hip hop cultural practice, through Bgirling and spoken word.
Facilitated by Patrick Baranovskis, member of the LRNA, activist with Sunrise and with the Chicago Union of the Homeless; and Dr. Maria Jesu Estrada, professor at Harold Washington College, poet and novelist, and local union leader.
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For every one of us, globally, water it is a matter of life or death. What has happened to Flint, MI over the past 6 years has brought to the forefront of US consciousness how government officials betray the interests of the people. Going back generations, the indigenous peoples of the Southwest have experienced this as government-sponsored uranium tailings pollute their water. As millions of people from Texas to Mississippi boil their water to drink as a result of privatizing public utilities in the wake of the latest winter storms. As native American water protectors fight to stop oil pipelines crossing waterways from the upper Mississippi to Lake Huron. And as water affordability becomes a major question in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago. We are going to focus on Chicago, at the tip of the Great Lakes Region, to address a matter of our survival globally; we are going to look at how a public resource is increasingly becoming subject to the control of the corporate private property. People active in battles at the grassroots will bring their experience to the table, in order to think about the next steps and solutions. If anything has a capacity to unify us it is the common requirement that water is life. At a rally commemorating the oil spill at Line 3 near Grand Rapids, MN, a water protector said “with the approaching trial of Derek Chauvin, we uplift the interconnectedness of the struggle to protect treaty rights, clean waters, sacred space, and Indigenous sovereignty with the right of all people to live in a world free of oppression and destruction of the earth.”
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