Flint Water Crisis

"I may be delusional, but I’m hoping that some sliver of good can come out of the Flint water crisis. But simply dealing with the latest calamity without having a national conversation about why these bad things happen to places like Flint—and coming up with systematic, long-term solutions—ensures that in five or 10 years we will be right back where we started. Flint’s problems may seem outsized, but they are not isolated and hold dire lessons for the rest of America. A growing number of places throughout the country look a lot like my hometown, defined by persistent poverty, crumbling infrastructure and a populace that feels betrayed and abandoned. If you think your community is immune from these problems, I’d ask you to reconsider. A familiar line I’ve heard more than once around town is a warning we should all heed, regardless of where we live: 'Flint, coming to a city near you.'"

Read the rest of the article in Politico here.

Help Fight Blight

Great discussion with Jennifer White on NPR's Michigan Radio about blight and turning things around in America's cities. Crystal Ashburn-Brown, a resident of Parkbelt Drive in Flint, Michigan, and Douglas Weiland of the Genesee County Land Bank join me in talking about ways to deal with abandoned houses and reviving neighborhoods. Go here to listen.

Litquake

I'll be appearing at the Litquake memoir event which will take place as part of the Off the Richter Scale series during the opening weekend of the Litquake Festival (October 10-18, 2014). The memoir event is scheduled for Saturday October 11. Exact time TBA. The panel will include four memoirists who will each read from their books, followed by Q&A. The event will be moderated by non-fiction writer and memoirist (West of Kabul, East of New York) Tamim Ansary.

Michael Moore on "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City" by Gordon Young

"One can read Teardown and go 'My, my, my! What a horrid town! Thank God I don't live there!' Oh, but you do. Just as the 'Roger & Me Flint' of the 1980s was the precursor to a wave of downsizing that eventually hit every American community, Gordon Young's Flint of 2013, as so profoundly depicted in this book, is your latest warning of what's in store for you — all of you, no matter where you live — in the next decade. The only difference between your town and Flint is that the Grim Reaper just likes to visit us first. It's all here in Teardown, a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once great American city."

— Michael Moore