Jackson residents vow to fight until taps run clean
During Moral Monday march & rally, Jackson residents vow to fight until they have clean water
From a stage with the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion looming in the background, poor and low-income people of every race and creed shared their stories of suffering from the lack of clean water in Jackson, vowing not to give up until their taps run clear and safe.
“I did not choose this life to not have no water. It chose me, “ Jackson resident Deneka Samuels said Monday. “But I’m here standing today. I will fight. And I will fight for clean water. I will not take it no more. No more!”
Ms. Samuels spoke Monday, Sept. 26, during the Moral Monday march and rally led by the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign and the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition. Bishop William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, told the crowd of hundreds that the organization was there not to take over but to stand with the impacted people.
He reviewed the history of Moral Mondays, which began in April 2013 in North Carolina with 17 people. By the end of the summer, 15,000 people were attending the programs and about 1,000 had been arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience.
“If it happened in North Carolina, it sure can happen right here in Mississippi,” he said, vowing that the campaign will return to Jackson to continue to pressure state officials, including Gov. Tate Reeves, and federal officials to fix the infrastructure of the water system in Jackson, the state’s capital city.
Brooke Floyd, a mother of twins and an educator, said one outcome of the water crisis is that schools have to close, putting “even more of a demand on our already overwhelmed families.”
“I know all too well the strain that Jackson’s water crisis and continuing water and sewer issues have put on all of our families,” she said. “The added stress of having to boil water just to cook and wash dishes, the added cost of having to purchase drinking water for our families. For some of us, those costs combined with added plumbing costs due to the city’s aging infrastructure have been in the thousands. The stress of having to worry if water is safe while pregnant and during our children’s developmental years can be overwhelming.”
Dr. Scott Crawford, who has progressive multiple sclerosis and uses a motorized wheelchair, said disabled people, the elderly and those who have to use public transit, must rely on friends and families to bring them cartons and cases of water that are too heavy for them to carry.
“We’re grateful for the outpouring of concern from around the country,” he said. “But make no mistake. This crisis is not over. We still have a fragile water system that teeters on the edge of collapse. One hard freeze this winter is all it will take to break our water system again.”
Gov. Reeves was criticized for saying recently: “It is a great day to be in Hattiesburg. It’s also, as always, a great day to not be in Jackson.”
The water crisis, which is one of many in Jackson over the past few decades because of the city’s infrastructure issues, left about 175,000 residents without safe drinking water. The most recent one began at the end of August when a historic rainfall caused a severe drop in water pressure.
A boil water advisory eventually was lifted then reinstated for parts of the city.
Forty-eight percent of people, or 1.3 million residents, in Mississippi are poor or low-income. That includes 58% of children (417,000), 52% of women (792,000), 65% of Black people (708,000), 66% of Latinx people (54,000), and 39% of White people (649,000).
Thinking about these realities, Bishop Barber concluded:
“It is immoral, it is sinful, it is a violation of equal protection under the law, and a violation of human rights to have a governor who demeans Jackson, seemingly lies on Jackson and to the nation about Jackson rather than joining hands with Jackson to clean the water, free the land, and keep it public.
“It is immoral, it is sinful, it is a violation of equal protection under the law, and a violation of human rights to refuse money that the people of Jackson were willing to tax themselves in order to fix the system – to raise money, their own money to fix the water system – for the governor and extremist lawmakers in Mississippi, to vote that that money cannot be used.
“It is immoral, it is sinful, it is a violation of equal protection under the law, and a violation of human rights for this state governor to be seemingly caught up with Brett Favre in a scandal to rob money designed to help poor and low-income people, and use it for their own pet projects while mothers and children, and the sick and the disabled of every race, creed and color and the ones being hit the hardest by this ongoing water crisis.”