Flint Mayor on Water Crisis: ‘Many of Us Believe’ This Is About Environmental Racism

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: 

HOSTIN: "And mayor, this is Sunny Hostin. Certainly, you will have to take care of these children because we know that lead poisoning is forever. It actually drops a child's IQ. You can't mitigate the impact of an irreversible neurotoxin. My question to you is, The New York Times had an article about environmental racism and said that this is why this happened. And let's face it. Flint is only 70 miles from the great lakes. which is the largest group of freshwater bodies in if world. 40% of the people in Flint live in poverty. The city doesn't even have a grocery store. So isn't it true that because the city doesn't have political clout, that is why this happened?"
WEAVER: "Well, that's what many of us believe. It's something that a lot of people don't want to talk about and don't want to deal with because it's always a difficult subject. But what else can we think when you look at what happened? We're in flint, and every place around us is getting clean water. And like you said, we're in the great lakes state. We should have access to water for that switch to be made without due diligence being done, as far as putting in the proper treatment and testing it before you give it to the people, that's a travesty."
HOSTIN: "Are you prepared to say this was environmental racism? That this happened because the citizens of Flint are African-American?"
WEAVER: "Not only African-American. We also have issues, we think it's a class issue, as well because we do have so many unemployed people. So we're look at this as race, as class, and it cuts across the board. And I believe that that's actually why the local NAACP, state, and national have all spoken out about this as well. we believe, had this been a different community, a rich community, that this -- it wouldn't have taken so long for the people's voices to be heard. This has been going on, it will be two years in April that we've been dealing with this. it took a year at least for our voices to be heard. And you talked about some of that. it happened under emergency manager. An emergency manager seems to happen in predominantly African-American communities."