Oscar Romero
As the weather chills, the water struggle has heated up! The Flint water situation went viral a couple of months ago so there's been a lot of work around what our friend Cecily McClellan calls "keeping the main thing the main thing:" this means making sure that the atrocity of governor appointed Emergency Management does not get left out of the media's narration.
Flint residents (a majority poor black city) complained to officials over and over about the taste, smell and horrific effects (sickness, hair loss, etc) of the water, which was switched over to the Flint River in April 2014 in an emergency management cost-cutting measure. The city's water was corrosively lead-tainted for a year and a half before anything was done about it! Meanwhile, the General Motors plant was allowed to transfer back over to Lake Huron/Detroit River water system and bottled water was being trucked into state government buildings.
Our friend Mike Smith (see his photo below) came out to Michigan on business and joined in a protest at the governor's State of the State address in Lansing.
What happened in Flint is truly atrocious. But poor people of color continue to be targeted for water shut-off in Detroit. Lindsay has re-organized 20-30 gallon water deliveries with the grassroots organization We The People of Detroit, drawing largely on volunteer drivers from our church St. Peter's Episcopal. Our friend Luke took a little nap on some of the bottled water that churches all over Metro Detroit have donated in the last month.
We got to spend time with people we love! We celebrated the birth of Cedar Martin Wylie-Fahey with our friends Erinn & Lydia!
Our friend, mentor and boss Elaine Enns came out for a visit!
And Stephen & Shannon Ransom leap-frogged from SoCal to Lawrence, KS (to watch some Jayhawk basketball) over to Detroit for a 48 hour tour!
On February 10, we flew back to California to staff the Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries Kinsler Institute on Women & Trauma in the Gospel of Luke...
…and got to spend some brief time with family in the OC - including, but not limited to: an opportunity to watch Brian Mulligan lead the Cougs to an impressive victory over Trabuco Hills, an adventurous beach day at "The Hole" with our nephew, and treasured times connecting with our families. We also got to caucus with our newlywed friends Josh Lopez ("Jo Lo") & Grecia Reyes ("Grey Rey") at the Staples Center.
We covet your prayers as we start to shift into a Spring and Summer of writing, pastoring, organizing and discernment about the upcoming year (and beyond).
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