Wake up, America: Detroit’s people need help

The media magicians have pulled their greatest switcheroo yet: convincing the nation to care more about the Ebola virus than violations of basic human rights happening in Detroit. The following is intended to reverse that trend.

Marissa Renteria | Daily Trojan

You read that right, by the way: Detroit. Not Baghdad, Kabul, Damascus or Guantanamo. Detroit, Michigan — an American city that is now in the business of denying poor people their fundamental right to drinking water. The good folks in TV land are reporting on a virus that has killed fewer Americans than Kim Kardashian has had husbands, and it has regrettably distracted citizens from events like the World Series or the midterm elections, which might be excusable. But this isn’t.

Here are the facts: In July, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department began shutting off water supply for thousands of people with unpaid or underpaid bills, despite the efforts to gradually pay off their outstanding debt. The shutoffs began happening when Detroit’s water company started discussing a possible shift from public to private hands to save the city from bankruptcy, but the profit-over-people mentality quickly began ruining lives, and as of today, nearly 10,000 households in the city don’t have running water. In July, the community reached out to the United Nations (yes, the actual United Nations), which quickly condemned the actions and sent two officials to hear testimony in Detroit this week, who were “shocked, impressed by the proportions of the disconnections and by the way that it is affecting the weakest, the poorest and the most vulnerable.”

Let’s also not forget that 80 percent of Detroit’s population is African-American, which possibly qualifies the water disaster as discrimination under international law. Even worse, when residents sued the city, bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes threw the case out and ruled that there was no “enforceable right” to clean drinking water. Residents who don’t have water now rely on groups like We the People of Detroit, which describes itself as a grassroots organization that delivers buckets of water through its “Water Board Coalition” to the families experiencing a shutoff. Meanwhile, though residents have seen their water shut off for outstanding debts, organizations like the Detroit Red Wings hockey team and the Lions football team haven’t lost a single drop despite having racked up thousands in debt.

One school in Detroit is even opening at 5 a.m. so its students can shower. Little kids can’t complain to teachers about water shutoffs, though, because the teachers would be legally required to report it to child protective services, which could then remove the children from their parents because of “neglect.”

Let’s get this straight: Citizens of the United States of America are being forced to endure third-world conditions, and the United Nations is conducting an investigation to get to the bottom of it. People are having their water delivered to them in the same way we deliver food aid to North Korea or Pakistan. They are the poorest of the poor, they are non-white, and they need and deserve our voices. Why aren’t they getting them?

Detroit needs two things: In the short term, the federal government should declare a state of emergency and immediately appropriate funds to bring water relief to the people. In the long term, Detroit’s water distribution should stay in public hands, which a white paper published by Corporate Accountability International (CAI) says will decrease water prices. In addition, the U.S. policy of uniform unit water pricing (where everyone pays the same) should be revisited in Detroit. It’s an abomination that the Detroit Lions football team pays the same rate for water that poor folks below the poverty line do, purely because it is a commercial rather than residential user. The proposal to charge the Lions, Redwings and other entities more for water should not be confused with suggesting that rich people should pay more for water, but rather to suggest that those who consume more of a scarce resource should have to pay more for it to offset the crushing burden that is faced by people who need comparatively little water, but need water nonetheless.

Unfortunately, none of that will happen. The media and midterm-obsessed politicians in this country have decided that a U.N. investigation in America’s living room is, shockingly, not going to be their politically sexy cause célèbre. That’s where we come in.

In late July and August, the Ice Bucket Challenge made waves in this country as a social media trend where people filmed themselves dumping ice water on their heads to raise funds and awareness for those afflicted by Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS. If a campaign like that can raise over $100 million and a Kickstarter request for potato salad ingredients can make $55,000, the armchair activists around this country can do something for Detroit.

So wake up USC, college students and bloggers around the country: It only takes one creative Facebooker or YouTuber to get people to care about these poor folks. This, like Kony 2012, the Occupy Movement and the Ice Bucket Challenge can and should be the next cause that the citizens of this great nation take up. Not only because they can, but also because it is too important a matter to be left to the politicians and media to get right.

Nathaniel Haas is a junior majoring in political science and economics. His column, “State of the Union,” runs Fridays.