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<h1 id="reader-title">Standing Rock, Flint, and the Color of
Water</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Christopher F. Petrella<strong>
- Co-authored with </strong><strong><a
href="http://africam.berkeley.edu/person/ameer-hasan-loggins">Ameer
Loggins - November 2, 2016</a></strong><em><strong></strong></em><br>
<em><strong>
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<p>While much attention has rightly been paid to those who
are courageously protecting water resources and sacred
land on North Dakota’s <a
href="http://standingrock.org/" target="_blank">Standing
Rock Sioux Reservation</a>, few mainstream
commentators have situated Standing Rock as part of a
larger political struggle for self-determination and
survival. Linking the politics surrounding the Dakota
Access Pipeline project to <a
href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/lead-laced-water-in-flint-a-step-by-step-look-at-the-makings-of-a-crisis"
target="_blank">Flint, Michigan’s lead-poisoning
crisis</a> is critical for understanding how race and
class informs presumed social risk, vulnerability to
premature death, and access to democratic
decision-making.</p>
<p>In the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Army
Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit No. 12 (NWP12) has
fast-tracked construction—circumventing the democratic
will of members of the Standing Rock Sioux community—by
<a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-horn/documents-how-big-oil-pus_b_11922862.html"
target="_blank">exempting the project from certain
environmental inspections</a>. Similarly, the
application of Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law (EML) to
Flint—a majority black city—<a
href="http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/09/michigan-emergency-manager-law/499658/"
target="_blank">authorized the state’s governor
unilaterally to appoint unelected officials to make
decisions</a> about how and where to source cheap
water for the municipality. This sourcing resulted in
widespread lead poisoning.</p>
<p>Both NWP12 (a provision strongly supported by the oil
industry and its lobbyists) and Michigan’s EML
(legislation passed with bipartisan support) constitute
policies that pervert the democratic process. Both serve
the interests of wealthy white men and thwart the
decision-making capacities of communities of color.
These policies beg larger questions: <em><a
href="http://www.aaihs.org/managed-democracy-and-the-illusion-of-politics/"
target="_blank">What is the color of democracy?</a>
Who is presumed to be capable of self-governance? And
which types of communities have the right to avoid <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html?_r=0"
target="_blank">public health risks and increased
vulnerability to premature death</a>?</em></p>
<p>Since March, thousands of tribal nations and <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/why-your-facebook-friends-are-checking-into-standing-rock.html"
target="_blank">non-indigenous allies</a> from across
the country <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/us/dakota-access-pipeline-protest.html"
target="_blank">have gathered at the Standing Rock
Sioux Reservation to protect land and water</a> that
could be destroyed and/or contaminated by the proposed
Dakota Access Pipeline. Many members of the tribe oppose
the pipeline’s construction near their reservation on
the grounds that it threatens their public health and
welfare, water supply, cultural resources, and sacred
sites. If completed, the $3.7 billion pipeline
fabricated by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners would
span nearly 1,200 miles from North Dakota to Illinois
and would transport at least 470,000 barrels of crude
oil per day.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/09/why_the_sioux_battle_against_the_dakota_access_pipeline_is_such_a_big_deal.html"
target="_blank">Members of the Standing Rock Sioux
Tribe have argued</a> that under federal law the U.S.
government should have consulted with them about the
pipeline in the early stages of project development—and
did not. Last July, the Standing Rock Sioux and the
nonprofit <a href="http://earthjustice.org/"
target="_blank">Earthjustice</a> sued the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers in federal court, contending that the
agency had wrongly approved the pipeline without
reasonable consultation. The tribe has also argued that
because the Dakota Access Pipeline would cross right
under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe—the reservation’s
main source of drinking water—a leak or oil spill could
prove disastrous.</p>
<p>According to the <a
href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/616.html"
target="_blank">National Institute of Health</a>, safe
drinking water is presently “unavailable in 13 percent
of American Indian/Alaska Native homes on reservations,
compared with 1 percent of the overall U.S. population.”
Moreover, the tribe points out that <a
href="http://heavy.com/news/2016/09/dakota-access-pipeline-map-route-protests-dogs-state-north-dakota-illinois-south-iowa-counties-standing-rock-native-american-jill-stein/"
target="_blank">the pipeline’s original path</a> was
supposed to go farther north, near Bismarck, but state
and federal officials rejected that route out of concern
that a leak might harm the state capital’s drinking
water.</p>
<p>According to federal pipeline regulators the Bismarck
route would have traversed land considered a “high
consequence area,” a designation reserved for zones
determined to have “the most significant adverse
consequences in the event of a pipeline spill.”</p>
<p>This is significant for the following reason:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Water politics is always raced
& classed:</p>
<p>Bismarck = 95% white | poverty 12%</p>
<p>Standing Rock Sioux Reservation = poverty 43%<a
href="https://twitter.com/LeftSentThis">@LeftSentThis</a>
<a href="https://t.co/iveQQ3xwsz">pic.twitter.com/iveQQ3xwsz</a></p>
<p>— Christopher Petrella (@CFPetrella) <a
href="https://twitter.com/CFPetrella/status/791754057715163136">October
27, 2016</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>To be sure, the language of “high consequence areas,”
serves as a politically vacuous euphemism for high
consequence lives, people, and bodies. These raced and
classed demographic realities beg the questions:<em> <a
href="http://www.aaihs.org/joseph-the-radical-democracy-of-the-movement-for-black-lives/"
target="_blank">Whose lives matter?</a> Whose
historic use of land and water matter? And whose
health matters?</em></p>
<p>One could ask the same questions of Flint, Michigan.</p>
<p>Whereas members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe were
not consulted in the initial stages of the Dakota Access
Pipeline planning process, many citizens of Flint,
Michigan—a majority-black city—were subjected to a
lead-tainted water supply and stripped of their civic
power, representative government, and legal recourse in
an effort to save the city from financial default.</p>
<p>Residents of Flint, 57 percent of whom are black and 42
percent of whom live below the poverty line, were
deprived of the basic right to govern their city from
2011-2015 by <a
href="http://michiganradio.org/post/how-did-we-get-here-look-back-michigans-emergency-manager-law"
target="_blank">Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law</a>
(EML). The provision empowers the governor with the
authority to appoint unelected officials to control any
city determined to be in “fiscal crisis.” The emergency
manager has the power to “renegotiate contracts,
liquidate assets, suspend local government [and]
unilaterally draft policy.”</p>
<p>In 2013, Flint residents filed a lawsuit challenging
the constitutionality of Michigan’s EML on the basis
that most appointments have come in cities in which most
of the residents are people of color. A federal appeals
court upheld the state’s EML in 2016 by arguing that
citizens have “no fundamental right” to elect local
government officials. The court also found that the law
appeared to be applied with colorblind intentions and
was “facially entirely neutral with respect to race.”
The outcome of these policies, however, strongly suggest
otherwise. In theory, emergency financial managers are
supposed to assist municipalities based on a unbiased
evaluation of their financial circumstances—but
majority-white communities facing similar fiscal
challenges have not been subject to the same levels of
unwanted political imposition.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Flint Michigan <br>
Population: 99K<br>
Racial Makeup: black, 57%; white, 37%; others, 6%<br>
Residents Below Poverty Line: 42% <a
href="https://t.co/SYM9zEUKl7">pic.twitter.com/SYM9zEUKl7</a></p>
<p>— LEFT (@LeftSentThis) <a
href="https://twitter.com/LeftSentThis/status/728127895781056518">May
5, 2016</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ideologically, the EML law rests on the assumption that
residents of predominantly- black cities are
ill-equipped to manage their own local democracies, as
six unelected managers have been assigned to govern
Flint over the past 13 years. One should ask if the same
in <em>loco parentis </em>form of governance would be
applied to majority-white cities in Michigan with the
same zeal? To date, Allen Park, Michigan seems to be the
singular majority-white city in the state to have come
under the supervision of an emergency manager.</p>
<p>A similar question could be posed to the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers and political leaders in North
Dakota’s capital of Bismarck: would an oil pipeline of
great economic significance ever be allowed to traverse
a local water source in a relatively affluent city that
is 95 percent white?</p>
<p>Though it would be wrong to suggest that Standing Rock
is the new Flint, the struggles over access to
democratic decision-making power are strikingly similar,
as is the raced and classed (in)ability to eschew
exposure to environmental health-risks and vulnerability
to premature death.</p>
<p>The political battles at Standing Rock and in Flint are
not just about clean water. Rather, access to clean
water serves as a powerful litmus test for <a
href="http://www.aaihs.org/policy-and-possibility-in-the-movement-for-black-lives-platform/"
target="_blank">evaluating access to full and
non-negotiable democratic participation.</a> The fight
over the color of water—that is, its racialized policy
antecedents—provides a deep challenge to the parameters
and possibilities of self-determination and survival in
a political space hostile to communities of color. The
truth is that the very assumptions of social worth
undergirding the decision to divert the Dakota Access
Pipeline from Bismarck to Standing Rock are the very
same assumptions that inform the decision to source
Flint water from a polluted river.</p>
<p>Linking these battles over political recognition,
entrance to democratic participation, and access to
basic public goods such as clean drinking water brings
into relief the necessity of <a
href="http://www.aaihs.org/rebuilding-the-robesonian-labor-movement/"
target="_blank">coalition-building</a> and the
acknowledgment of shared interests. We must contest
these <span class="st">race- and class-based </span>injustices
from Flint to Standing Rock and beyond.</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="http://www.christopherfrancispetrella.net/"><strong>Christopher
Petrella</strong></a> is a Lecturer in American
Cultural Studies at Bates College. His work explores the
intersections of race, state, and criminalization. He
completed a Ph.D. in African Diaspora Studies from the
University of California, Berkeley. Follow him on
Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/CFPetrella">@CFPetrella</a>.</p>
<p><a
href="http://africam.berkeley.edu/person/ameer-hasan-loggins"
target="_blank"><strong>Ameer Loggins</strong></a> is
a Ph.D. Candidate in African Diaspora Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley. His work examines
black representation in media. Follow him on Twitter <a
href="https://twitter.com/LeftSentThis"
target="_blank">@LeftSentThis</a>.</p>
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