April 24, 2020
A Champion for Flint's Poor
Rev Fr. Phillip Schmitter, currently assigned to Christ the King Catholic Church. He has spent nearly 50 years of his life serving Flint's catholic community at a variety of churches. His career has been marked by his passion and devotion to serving the poor. In the finest of Catholic traditions, Father Phil has been a fierce advocate for Flint's minority community on such issues as environmental racism, poverty, hunger and seeking dignity for those who are the least among us. His work is legendary in Flint's minority community. He lived in public housing in Flint for three decades to be closer to the people he wanted to serve. Father Phil currently serves at Christ the King Catholic Church in Flint, Michigan, a church founded by Father Norman DuKette. In this interview Father Phil discusses his life and his career as a priest. He was raised in Mason, Michigan where coincidentally Malcolm X was sent to live as a teenager. Father Phil recounts that his inspiration to serve the minority community by reading the best selling autobiography of Malcolm X. His life history is the epitome of a devoted priest whose love for the people he serves drives him to serve their spiritual needs as well as advocating for social justice. More on the life story of Father Phillip Schmitter' https://www.thehubflint.com/lessons-malcolm-x-made-father-schmitter-champion-diversity-racial-tolerance/ https://nypost.com/2019/12/09/us-catholic-priests-overworked-beset-by-isolation-and-scandal/ http://www.oleantimesherald.com/meditation-gratitude-keep-priest-going/video_b93cbaea-1c60-5460-938a-62255a18dacd.html More on Christ the King Catholic Church and Father DuKette the first black priest in Michigan: https://faithmag.com/black-history-diocese-lansing--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/radiofreeflint/message
👉Subscribe to The Mitten Channel
Join us for the full experience. Subscribe to The Mitten Channel on Substack to receive our latest narrative essays, audio stories, and deep-dive reporting directly in your inbox.
Explore Our Series:
- Radio Free Flint: Narrative storytelling and community perspectives on industrial resilience.
- The Mitten Works: Essential history and analysis of labor and economic policy.
- Flint Justice: Critical insights into the legal and institutional challenges facing our state.
Visit our Mitten Channel website for our complete library of podcasts, videos, and articles.
The Mitten Channel is a production of Radio Free Flint Media, LLC. © 2026 All Rights Reserved.
Visit our website at www.radiofreeflint.media to subscribe to our free newsletter to receive our latest episodes.
Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:19.760 --> 00:00:20.640
Hello, this is Arthur Bush, you're listening to Radio Free Flint. Today's guest is Professor Ben Poley from Kettering University. Ben has wrote a book about the water crisis. Professor Poley embedded himself with a group of Flint water activists during the Flintwater Crisis and discusses his experiences. More importantly, he discusses Flint's capability and capacity at activism, and the consequences of his of the activism that he witnessed and what the abilities are of the people of Flint to actually bring change. It's a very interesting conversation that we have about the future from a political scientist's point of view. I'm sure you'll be fascinated by the conversation and by Professor Pole's conclusions about the people of Flint and its culture. So thank you for listening. Without any further ado, here's Professor Ben Poli.
Thanks very much. It's my pleasure to be here. How did you get in doing a book about the water crisis?
Well, firstly, it was that it was affecting my family personally, and I should say the teen. At that time, there wasn't yet enough water crisis. There had been some issues with water and making some tweaks of the we were not given the impression that there was any serious threat to family's health. So we're determined to use Flin's tap water. We've always been leaders in tap water. We had a three-year-old son at that he was to some extent always come under. So when we started to there was lead in her, and that was a couple of months, that was a big concern for our family. So but we could certainly identify what's going through as people just kind of start to understand, figure out what to do about it on a personal level, but then also figure out what to do about it on a collective level. And that was the piece that really came to interest me because once we had a filter installed or faucet and more or less okay as a I started to realize that crisis really exposed the concerted effort of community members themselves to the issues of water quality, attention research, what was going on placing pressure on public officials to take the situation seriously and respond. Um that got me really intrigued on a couple of firstly, just as a concerned resident and as a bit of an activist myself, um, I was curious to see this kind of social movement that was developed. Um but then the other part of it is that as a scholar, um, I'm interested in social movements in general and particularly useful ideas and tell tell us about you. So I I'm I was actually born in in Madison, so I have Midwest roots, but I grew up in Washington State. My mom was uh in a thing out there, she's actually now the the city washing so she has quite a an uh in city government. Uh my dad is a geologist. Certainly as I was writing it, I was aware that a crisis books, and of course I hadn't read those books yet, the print, so I was having to imagine a little bit what we're up to and to try to stake a claim to my own particular angle on the crisis. And and you know, really I I don't think I I had to work terribly hard to figure out what that was because I mean the whole reason why I ended up deciding the first place is that I ended up in a position for this. I was a resident and a parent who was worried about the safety. But I was a newcomer to the V and still uh bringing a little bit of that outsider's perspective. I also had a foot in this world of water activism, maybe more than a foot ultimately was pretty involved on the activist side, so I was getting to see the crisis for that. But then in April of 2016, I was also invited to a scientific team that was doing research into water quality issues and so I had an opportunity to gain a kind of front row seat to some of the scientists. So um bringing all of those perspectives together, you know, I I think resulted in a pretty advantage in what was happening. And that was part of what I was trying to accomplish in was to get the crisis from a variety of angles and to try to give people a pretty robust and rich analogy to understand what happened. And the first few chapters of the book in particular is offer a number of different possible narratives, a number of different ways of telling the story of the crisis, no one of which is necessarily to the others, bring out different elements, suggest different kinds of lessons that we might take away from the crisis. But the other thing I wanted to do is I really wanted to foreground the perspective of uh water activists and fluence. I wanted, you know, their story really to be the heart of the story. And so their analysis of the crisis, the one that really gets the most attention in the book. Um and I also, to some extent, just try to chronicle the various ways in which they responded to the crisis, drawing from their assessment of what its origins was, what its significance was, and what needed to be done in response to it.
Your book really takes a look at the water crisis activism, but it also morphs, at least by the end of this book, into an assessment of capability of collective action. And at one point in your book, you use the word flint fights back. You describe your activity as fighting back collective action. The assessment of Flint's capability, the fight back, at least with respect to the water crisis, always was fascinating.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was frustrating me a little bit about the way in which the story was being represented, the story of the crisis was being represented after it became big national news, is that it tended to get boiled down to a few exceptional personalities who kind of came along at the right time and found each other, and they were each bringing different things to the table, and it was really their combined efforts that helped to break the story open and you know force people to pay some attention to it. But you know, what I could see happening on on the ground around me was was rather more complicated than that. You don't usually get social change unless there's a larger scale mobilization on the part of people in a community like Flint. And that's exactly what we see. When we go back and look you know, all the way to April of 2014 when the Flint River water started flowing through the pipes, people started raising concerns about that almost immediately, actually before even it happened. There was a steady drumbeat, really, of public concern and outcry and ultimately organizing an activism that created the conditions under which any particular individual was able to have an effect. That really was the story that I wanted to help to tell in the book was a story about all of these people whose names you know you you don't necessarily know, who haven't gotten the same kind of attention, awards, and accolades and credit and so forth, but who collectively came together and created the conditions under which the crisis finally got acknowledged, ultimately, at least to some extent, addressed.
As you covered that aspect of this, your experiences beforehand with working who had been involved in trying to be forward-looking about this charter, adopting a more modern approach and governance. You met many people and you said you and then you had the opportunity to have a real bird's eye view about these people from your work with Isaac and themselves.
Certainly, yes. I mean, I I think that you know, in Flint, there's a real kind of historical sensibility that that people are operating with that's very striking. I mean, Flint, as you know, has a very rich history, and it's one that is still alive in respects, and and there's a lot of pride that people take in aspects of that history, especially this tendency for Flint residents to band together and to stand up for themselves when they feel like they're being exploited or abused in some way. And it you know, it goes all the way back to at the very at the very least, the sit-down strike of 1936-37, this idea that you know, even if we're David fighting Goliath, you know, there are times when you've really gotta put your foot down and stand up for what's right. And you don't necessarily weigh the odds of victory, just throw yourself into that fight. And I think that it's that kind of scrappy mentality that we see uh as being very central to water activist culture as I see it here.
Well, it's it's it's endemic to the culture itself, isn't it? Of the people at Flint, this history that they have of battling the roller coaster in the American economy played out in uh particularly automatic, they do have that what you call scrappiness.
It certainly has. I mean, I think it's worth remembering that when these activists started going to officially sponsored meetings about the water after officials were beginning to admit that there was some, you know, not so insignificant issues with water quality, you know, what they were told at those meetings was that there was absolutely no possibility of the city switching off the Flint River. And so it wasn't even worth having a conversation about. And to some extent, you were betraying just how irrational and stubborn you were by even raising that as you, and just how unreasonable you were, because you weren't willing to have a serious conversation about what should be done with the water.
You know, your voice is obviously part of a choir of those who looked at this crisis and who have come to the same fork in their own. Some of those have been singer-songwriters, troubadours, who have wrote the history of this crisis in song. And one of those, Ashley Gubak, a German who's based in Boston, wrote a beautiful song, Michigan. And the song talks about the gaslighting that was being done by those who were essentially the lyrics of their song or something, putting putting some sand in their eyes. Isn't the notion that you you know don't believe your lying eyes, okay? Don't believe your your taste. Don't believe your common sense. This water that you're drinking is really not what you believe it is, and you're unreasonable.
I mean, that's really gaslighting and No, I think that's the right term, and in fact, it's a term that was used by multiple water activists talking to me about that. This is one of the reasons why the crisis dragged on for as long as it did.
So you have an administration that wants to tout their greatness and their wonderfulness, telling people that their water's not dirty and telling something's this, and you're looking through. That has an impact on people who already have a culture of, as you referred to, if Flint fights back. Wasn't that kind of stuff just putting a red flag in front of a bull?
For for sure. I mean, at least again, that I that is a mentality that I have encountered quite a bit here in Flint is this kind of indignation that people feel at being treated that way. You know, when it happens to them, they don't just curl up into a ball and say, oh, sorry, I bothered you, right? Instead, they start looking for some kind of workaround. I think that's what happened with these public meetings around water, is that, you know, when when people realized they weren't going to be taken seriously there, um, they didn't give up. They just turned to different kinds of tactics. It wasn't trying to, you know, convince people in positions of power to do the right thing so much as it was pressure and force them to do the right thing. And that meant mustering muscle. And that's something that Flint folks are good at doing.
Yeah, that goes back to the sit-down strikes when the bosses didn't want to meet their demands as we sat down inside the even before that, we asked for reasonable things like bathroom breaks, on the right down, a little heat, ready work, the winter, and more simple things like better hours working. The people didn't take no for an answer, did they?
No, and I I I think that that that's the key, because again, if they had gone to these meetings and they'd taken for granted this idea that switching off of the river was a non-starter, and they they would have put themselves at the mercy of people who were making decisions on the basis of cost, who were making decisions on the basis of convenience, who were not necessarily prioritizing what the people who were drinking the water wanted to prioritize, which was their health and and the public health. Rendering that no, right, is a really important moment within any any social movement because it means to some extent it's not going to work within the confines of the system and the way it defines your issue and your reality. To some extent, residents had to go out and create this other reality by collecting their own evidence of what was going on and making sure that that was so compelling that people ultimately had to come around to their way of seeing things.
Now you described the Flint culture that you observed inside of the water activism as being one of an activist culture that existed in the community as a whole, and you spoke of it in your book as being uh intensive localism. What do you mean by those descriptors?
What I've seen since I've lived in Flint is that we've got a lot of them in community uh organizers and activists who are very, very active. And some of them are active around issues that I think of are of very broad significance. And to some extent, their activism isn't issue-based activism, if I can put it that way. Most of what I see going on in the community is very much grounded in the kinds of needs and concerns that exist among Flint residents and on addressing those needs and concerns. You know, again, that that isn't necessarily true of every activist culture, but a lot of what I've seen here is very much focused on trying to make Flint the best place it can possibly be by focusing intensely on the issues that are are going on right here within our own the experiences which you had and which you're describing tell me that you've met the Flintstones. I'd like to think I have. I mean, um certainly some of the people I've worked with and and gotten to know and friends and and comrades have been here for, if not their whole lives, uh in every case, a very, very long time. You know, I'm thinking about people like Claire McClinton, who was a union organizer, um who is in in some ways, although she doesn't always like being described this way, sort of the matriarch of our uh water active and and pro-democracy activist community here. There are uh people like Claudia Perkins Milton, who was was also involved with the union back in the day, and was uh really a pioneering figure as a black woman within the the union. They are it's it's folks like that who are bringing all of that history to the the the fight, you know, when when they take on uh an issue like water. It's not just water isn't their only point of reference. I mean, they have this whole rich history of organizing and activism that they're drawing from and any number of issues that they've confronted over the years, and they're drawing from that knowledge and experience in doing what they do. So I've learned so much from them. That's been really one of the great kind of revelations of moving here to Flint and and becoming a part of this community, is that it it's been another opportunity to realize how much I have to learn from others.
Let me bring the focus back to the Flint. You write in your book when you're describing what might have gone better in Flint during the water crisis if people had had a more commonality of interest to draw on a greater collective identity. Your book isn't throwing shade on Flint, it's just describing what what was lacking with this particular group of active dealing with the water crisis itself.
But when you talk of being well, and and as Art would put it, you need a a story of us. One of the anyway, in order to mobilize particular issues, you need to have a conception we are, who are people. That's something that doesn't be uh to some extent, you know, identity as a social construct that has to be created. So the the way we tell ourselves starting determining how we're gonna tackle struggle. And so I think having theory helps, and having people like Claudia, who were have been involved for years, to keep bringing that back in and kind of reminding us we are when you look at a guy like uh Charles Reyes III, he's not just that's right, yeah. And you know, Art himself has spent a lot of time studying and deorganizing, uh, got a degree from Harvard, and maybe he has been writing of work for a long time. Inside for many of us, in a community like this, I mean, they they need the kinds of ideas and skills and capacity that folks like that provide. Sometimes we're tension involved in determining what particular story would be told and who's gonna be at the center of it and what kinds of tactic utilize. I mean, it's a it's a messy process. In chapter eight of the last you know, part of what I wanted to try to capture was not only work that people were were doing trying to make that happen, but also in the complication, some of the limitations of that work, because I wanted to tell a story that was honest and that was you know a way for other people looking from the outside in.
One of the grasps you're finding reactive.
When you're talking about plant water crisis, environmental justice struggle, often you're where there's some kind of pressing threat, a substance that is essential for life, whether that be water, air, whether that be the part of injected into this struggle, is that people really did feel like they were fighting for their lives, for the lives of children, for the future of this as a whole. Flint as a city, a city that's been described at times um as a city that's kind of barely hanging on to life. This was a fight, not only on an individual or family level, but really a fight for the community. I think that there was a lot in terms of the way people conceptualized the emergency manager phenomenon, really to that to some extent, because that was sort of a hostile of me that had the dissolved the city, and emergency managers have the power. The precarious future, I think, was very much in those minds with uh their own destoxic substance that could really kill them.
The culture that surrounds a willness. Right or mad hours will be.
Yeah, and and knowing that we in a lot of industrial uh cities where to some extent people have patterns themselves because the state has kind of collapsed, local government is not able to do all of this that we associate with the functioning government, whether that be keeping the parks mode or the trash, fixing the sidewalks, uh you know, to extend the absence that this kind of need for a DIY mentality. But again, I think Flint, that combined with this other deeply embedded in Flint's history, going back to what we were saying before, where when we are facing some kind of threats to our well-being, you know, we're not the kind of people take that sitting down. We are the kind of people who stand up and fight back if the odds are against is that something is different, unique?
I mean, you use words intense local.
I've never heard this be set in some sense as a model for other pieces that are fatal issues because we know that other keys are in it.
Are we saying is that Flint's repairable? It's an object lesson for other people.
That really has been a core theme of Flint's again, going all the way back to the sit-down strike is what uh really jump-started the American labor movement as a whole. You know, what happened here, it had this kind of wildfire type effect of spreading. I think that the the rise and fall of to some extent it encapsulates the whole idea of the American, you know, gone wrong. You know, constant the dynamic um and almost exaggerating in ways that help us to understand what's going on in other countries as well. It's part of universal street of the of the country as a almost like on the cutting edge of that, his showing other countries where they're going.
A lot of people have wrote books, they've done documents about an analogy toward whatever about the this is a city that is full of life on on the way toward recovery. Let's talk about the people at Lynn are the unrealistic.
Sometimes there are objectives set for themselves, the ideals that they're trying to and this do everything oneself. And that's part of what I try, right? There are times that is on making sure that we are the ones liberating ourselves, solving problems as noble as that is, meant that we didn't have all of the capacity to actually tackle the hand. Sometimes people were very much in of outside help, outside research. That's a tricky thing to navigate. You're starting out with that kind of pride. How do you welcome resources that are gonna help you realize what you're trying to accomplish without comproming your autonomy, without inviting other interests in that might clash interests? That's that's a reset of you're looking at at people's insistence on self-governance, you know, this idea that they know best right for them, and that they ought to be the drivers anytime a decision being made that directly impacts their personal lives. There's a lot of that that is not only um that you know people ought to be self-governing, true, just as a matter of fact. People often do have a better sense of you know how water is in their everyday lives than the quote-unquote expert, and how impacting their person than an emergency manager does aside. Sometimes you know, popularly reactive, it's all about tearing down experts and you know these kind of shadowy strings controlling the world that we live in. At its core, I think principles that are harder to argue with. Yeah, I mean, I I saw it firsthand at the water. I mean, remember, I'm coming as a science PhD that I have something to offer full analysis of the situation. And what I realized was that I was another body, it was nothing special uh in terms of how I would really buy up. It wasn't that we're waiting around for for somebody with a fancy degree to come and explain the situation to them. They already felt like they had a pretty and and you know what? They were right. They were way ahead of their under their analysis of what was going on, and that's why again I was saying earlier, I've learned so much. I've learned more from the people I've been working with, that's for sure.
The really essential scribes are rag tag extraordinarily fashioned. I'm gonna set that in. I mean, these aren't just the group side government or people aren't wanting to hang on. These are people who are challenged the system of governments back to the Boston Deep Park. That's right.
I think that we're talking about who on one hand, we're very much mated on an level by the threats that the water pose themselves and their family members. We don't want to discount that part of it. A lot of people would argue who do actively deorganizing, that if you don't have that strong element of self-interest, it's gonna be hard to generate a lot of fire to sustain it over time. It was certainly about more than just that. Part of the indignation that people felt at having their water contaminated, it wasn't just what was being done to their own body and the body of their children. It was what was being done to their community. It was this idea of feeling like there didn't matter, that this is the kind of thing you could do to Flint and get away with it. Certainly on that level to fight back, not just on behalf of individually, but on behalf of as a whole. In terms of how that fits our larger national issues. I mean, again, people in Flint, they were offering a kind of of what democracy, how a democratic should function, what that look in practice. And a lot of standing up, trying to not only themselves live up to a certain set of principles, but to make sure that those in the power are due, and they fail to do that, then you know, you take matters on hand. And it's in that sense that I think the the social movements around water can potentially truly be a source of inspiration for other communities.
Man, how do you think the flint stones did in family?
Well, you know, when you think of all of the things that probably have happened, people didn't mobilize the they did, it's a you know fairly long. Now, of course, it's always difficult to counterfactuals to say what would have happened if we removed some variable. I don't know sitting here talking about a flint water crisis at all. If residents hadn't into their own hands and really been as determined as they were to expose what was going on and forced people to acknowledge it. So I think that was really the first thing that they accomplished was to get the crisis recognized as a crisis. Beyond that, when you think about the amount of rises that have come this way in response to the crisis, it's not insignificant. Flint has been the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars that people have fought for and lobbyed. It's important to recognize that those bills don't get passed act of creating pressure around. And so we had activists here that were very much involved in that effort. Right up to the present, you know, we're trying to get all of our lead service lines out of the ground. We have activists who are on the front lines here who are working diligently to make sure that people don't get left behind. You know, we have a big water crisis settlement now. That's all, and again, it's people in the community who are going around making sure that understand that and are signed up for it and are getting the that they deserve. All of that stuff, and we keep going down the list, is a product, a great extent, of residents themselves and the necessary pressure and bringing public attention to the issues. In that sense, I think it's been pretty cool to have accomplished. Does that mean that every movie or that every opportunity was capitalized on on the way? No, of course not, especially in a city like Flint, where we don't have a lot of capacity to begin with, you know, to take on every issue. There were times when I think we probably would have done more as an act of immunity if we'd had more people, if we'd had more money. When you look at just how sick the crisis came, not only Flint, but to the whole country, to the world, it has helped inspire things outside of don't think that it would have happened to that extent without the country people mayor. What do you see as the outcome of the governance? One thing that is of note is that we are placing more empty on treating water as a right people have, you know, fundamental human rights. It's now recognized in our charter uh in declaration of rights at the beginning, and there are a couple of sh is that idea is embedded in certain policies around water. Flint has been very proactive, for example, during COVID to spend water shut off. Hopefully that's something that future, but it's gonna have to be something that you know residentally fight for. It's one thing to have it in the charter, it's another charter to actually get followed. That isn't what we have here, is that we have this governing document that is consulted for all of the the knocks we've had over the past few years. There are a lot going on here to have hope to even be optimistic.
One of the reasons hope has is I think that's right.
Yeah, at the end of the day is that people don't just run away from challenges. You know, I've met some are never going. Flint is their home. They know that a a lot to about weather and that good work to be done here, and that there are good things happening the time. I mean, we don't always get that side of in fact, we almost never get that side of, you know, it's not like wallowing spare day in and day out. I mean, in their lives and trying to make things happen and having little victories and having little setbacks in the way that in any other community, except again, as you say here, that fighting's especially strong. And we've got a lot of in the book, that's kind of where I did this. I I definitely did not want to make it sound like easy for David to fight Goliath. That David is always on the right side of every issue because he's David. I mean, you know, you again, without trying to turn it into some sort of uh caricature of the the little guys and gals fighting the system, that there's a lot more complexity to it than that.
Well, the water was brown, smelled like marine, still the city officials said the water was clean. People broke out in rashes, so we're losing their hair, they can blame to the mare, but he just didn't care. He said,ghty.
00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:23.600
This is Arthur Bush here on Radio Frequent.
00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:27.359
We have a great show today for a change.
00:00:27.359 --> 00:00:34.320
We have Father Phil Schmitter from Christ the King Catholic Church in uh Flint, Michigan.
00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:35.520
Welcome, Father.
00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:36.719
Thank you very much.
00:00:36.719 --> 00:00:37.840
It's good to be here.
00:00:38.079 --> 00:00:51.439
Okay, well, I'm gonna try a few things I've never tried before, which is to uh talk to you at the same time that we uh have a couple slides here so we can get right away to your history.
00:00:51.439 --> 00:01:00.560
First of all, tell us about Christ the King Catholic Church and why it's a historic church in Flint and in Michigan for that matter.
00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:01.520
Tell us about it.
00:01:01.759 --> 00:01:02.719
Well, yes, it is.
00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:11.439
Uh it was founded in 1929 by Father Norman Duquette, who was a man who wanted to be a priest.
00:01:11.439 --> 00:01:26.000
He was African American, and there had been three African American priests before him, but generally speaking, it wasn't in the mind of people to be ordaining African American men.
00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:37.200
And so, fortunately, in Detroit, where he was, he um met a priest actually that later was in our diocese.
00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:45.439
Uh everything where we are now, where I am in Flint, was a part of the Archdiocese of Detroit for a long time.
00:01:45.439 --> 00:02:03.200
And so this priest, senior John Gabriels, who later was a famous pastor in uh Lansing at Resurrection Church, said, you know, I think it's a really good idea that we ordain black men if they're qualified and have the training among.
00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:07.359
And so he was kind of a catalyst that helped this to occur.
00:02:07.359 --> 00:02:16.240
But Father Duquet was very bright, did well in his studies and so on, but he had applied many times to go to seminaries and they wouldn't do it.
00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:32.400
And finally, Loris College, if I remember it's in Iowa, uh, was willing to take him in and he had this training and uh did very well, and so he was ordained uh a Catholic priest in 1926.
00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:41.840
And then later the Bishop of Detroit wanted to send him to Flint to minister to African American Catholics.
00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:48.800
So he came up here and started a parish called Christ the King and Flint.
00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:55.439
And so we just celebrated our 90th anniversary in November on the Feast of Christ the King.
00:02:55.439 --> 00:03:11.199
And it's been a haven for African American Catholics where the special thing is to really enjoy nurture the wonderful tradition of African American spirituality.
00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:22.560
So the music has got a very good African American or black flavor and the warmth of think of the church and the joy and the energy.
00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:33.280
Like a uh I've had a lot of what we would call at other parishes, funerals, and for them, for African American folk that I've come to love and know, it's a homegrown.
00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:41.039
And so it's it's there is a sadness about it, but also a wonderful joy and faith and trust.
00:03:41.039 --> 00:03:57.439
And so I, as Phil Schmitter, as a man trying to learn my faith better, have received the blessing of uh experiencing their realization that God is worthy to be praised.
00:03:57.439 --> 00:04:02.000
They don't grumble and mumble saying, Oh heck, why do I have to go to church?
00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:08.159
But it's like God is worthy to be praised, so I'm gonna go there and I'm gonna be in there with two feet.
00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:14.560
And so worship is I just appreciate the spirit of our Catholic Christians.
00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:37.680
We have, it's not all African American, it's I don't know, maybe 80% African American members, but there's some folks that appreciate the being in solidarity with African American Christians and appreciate the dynamic joy and passion of the names.
00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:40.959
And so I'm just I am so grateful to be.
00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:50.879
I applied once years ago in 1978 to be the pastor, and I didn't get it at that time, but uh it's just a wonderful place to be.
00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:56.720
I always say I am the luckiest priest in the diocese, and that's because I'm here.
00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:10.480
So uh Father Phil, uh in reading about uh of course I've known you for the better part of two deck, two and a half decades, uh almost three.
00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:28.560
Uh I I did a little background check on you today, and uh I found your name in the uh New York Post, uh in a newspaper way in Olin, New York, which is upstate New York.
00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:36.879
You have been uh someone who many people around the country have the utmost respect for.
00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:41.839
In fact, one priest up there in Olin, New York said, the real deal.
00:05:41.839 --> 00:05:44.000
You are the real employee.
00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:50.639
And uh they talk about you as somebody who's been devoted to the poor and the dispossessed.
00:05:50.639 --> 00:05:53.839
You've lived in Flint all these years.
00:05:53.839 --> 00:05:59.839
Uh, and uh the other day you shared with me that you've been you've lived in public house.
00:05:59.839 --> 00:06:12.399
I, you know, all the years I've known you, I I uh wasn't really sure where you lived exactly, but uh I was uh really taken back when you told me that you lived in public housing for all these years.
00:06:12.399 --> 00:06:16.079
Tell us about that and tell us about your service to the poor.
00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:27.759
Well, it it kind of I came to Flint uh when Bishop Zaleski was the bishop, and I had grown up in the town of Mason, which was a nice community to grow up in.
00:06:27.759 --> 00:06:34.639
And um and I said to the bishop, I think I need to be in a city in a big parish and see if I like it.
00:06:34.639 --> 00:06:43.120
Or my image was it's gonna be like a big factory, and it'll be both kind of boring, and uh, I don't know what I thought, but I was a little uneasy.
00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:52.639
So he sent me the Holy Redeemer in Burton, which at that time was probably as large as any parish in the diocese, a couple thousand families.
00:06:52.639 --> 00:07:09.279
And uh I came to Flint uh on Labor Day of 1970, and I was a deacon at the time, so I served in the parish as a deacon and did baptisms and helped with various things I could preach and do some weddings and so forth.
00:07:09.279 --> 00:07:11.920
And I just loved the people.
00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:13.519
I just fell in love with Flint.
00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:29.120
And my first week here I was at a meeting, and Father Mike Madarazzo, who was the pastor of Christ the King, was at this meeting, and we just kind of became friends, and I came over to Christ the King to his house, and Father Duquet, although retired, was still living there.
00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:37.680
So I got to meet him in 1970 and know him until he died in 1980, and I just loved being there.
00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:42.959
And so after I was ordained in 1971, I then went to St.
00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:44.480
Luke's, and St.
00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:48.079
Luke's was kind of an experimental thing.
00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:59.600
It was connected with Sacred Heart and Christ the King, and they would the priests would trade places sometimes, and they never exchanged money, but they tried to work collaborate on program.
00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:20.720
So and so after one year, I was then sent to Holy Rosary on the east side of and after I'd and and and as I was living this life as a priest and as an associate at that time, I the houses that I lived in were much nicer than the houses I grew up with.
00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:23.439
And I was kind of uncomfortable with that.
00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:25.040
Like, why is that?
00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:27.199
This doesn't make any sense.
00:08:27.199 --> 00:08:32.480
So I had some just kind of unusual experiences that made me curious.
00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:48.639
I became aware of on Carpenter Road there uh a large housing uh run by public housing in Flint, a place called River Park, and then there was another place next door called River Village that, or no, I'm sorry, Ridgecrest.
00:08:48.639 --> 00:08:49.759
Ridgecrest.
00:08:49.759 --> 00:09:02.639
And most of the people were there on some kind of assistance, and uh it was not uh it was not uh super high quality housing, but it was adequate, I guess I would say.
00:09:02.639 --> 00:09:12.240
And I felt attracted to go in there, be there, and try to try to come to really know what's it like in the black community in Flint.
00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:24.639
I figured the best way to do that is to live there and not I mean there can be a world between a rectory and you know the distance to the the houses in the neighborhood.
00:09:24.639 --> 00:09:30.559
So like I live in Christ the King's rectory because it's like everybody else's house in the neighborhood.
00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:37.840
It's a little house that that I enjoy living in, but it's like everybody else's, it is a really nice sort of thing.
00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:45.120
And uh so I lived there for 30 years, and I found, first of all, the people are people.
00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:55.519
Most of my neighbors were African American, and I just loved the the fellowship, I loved the spirit, I love the hope that the poor had.
00:09:55.519 --> 00:10:09.200
I mean, many of these folks have been through very difficult lives and and didn't have much, but they still had a great spirit about them, but I admired and I'm very grateful.
00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:17.360
I I will, unless I live to be 100 or 110, it will be the longest I will have ever lived any year in my life.
00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:18.000
Wow.
00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.840
Well you've you've been a priest for 50 years, right?
00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:28.559
Oh, I I yeah I'll be 49 years, December 27th, and then 50 in 2023.
00:10:28.559 --> 00:10:30.559
So be the good Lord willing.
00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:54.720
Now, one of the things that uh I also have come to respect and admire about you is your willingness to engage uh not just government officials but the public about issues that uh profoundly affect uh the poor and dispossessed.
00:10:54.720 --> 00:11:02.879
And and having lived in public housing for three decades, now I I see where that passion comes from.
00:11:03.120 --> 00:11:10.879
And you just just while I was just while I was living there, there was kind of an onslaught of things generally.
00:11:10.879 --> 00:11:21.919
Cities and counties and towns want to put their worst stuff that nobody else would want to live by next to the poorest of the people in their in their area.
00:11:21.919 --> 00:11:42.559
So when I grew up in Mason, we had a town dump that was a smelly, disgusting place, and the housing there was terrible, and uh it just wasn't uh good housing, and people that lived there were kind of on the edge, they didn't have a lot of money and stuff, and there was a lot of insecurity.
00:11:42.559 --> 00:12:10.480
And so then when I was in River Park for those 30 years, they wanted to build various facilities, like when they moved uh Genesis out of Flint, which I was sad about, and moved it to the Grand Blanc Holly area, they wanted to put a a particular company wanted to take the uh medical waste incinerator and put that on the north end of Flint, right across the street from Carpenter Old School.
00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:16.399
And and what they would always kind of fudge the truth a little bit, folks that wanted to do that stuff.
00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:34.000
They would so, for example, when they put that uh Genesee power station up there, which I always call the incinerator, uh they they had a big aerial view of the land and they showed Carpenter Road was the bottom and said it's vacant across the street.
00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.159
Well, that's that was not true.
00:12:36.159 --> 00:12:45.440
On the other side from that land was uh public housing where I lived and Ridgecrest, which was also low-income housing.
00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:57.039
There were some uh mobile home parks that were trying to really keep a decent uh decent housing, but but you know, not and there was rental homes and Carpenter Old School was there.
00:12:57.039 --> 00:13:07.200
And I just thought, why would you build polluting terrible stuff right next to where kids go to school and where neighborhoods are trying to live life?
00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:22.480
And even there was an effort to put a prison right next to uh the public housing that there would be like razor wire, and and some people thought, boy, this is gonna be a great thing because those kids will get up and they'll see that prison.
00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:40.639
I I think they probably unconsciously uh won't deal with color here, but you know, but you can guess who kind of thought, boy, that might be a good thing, and well, we'll have this prison, and that'll be jobs, and but it'll also keep those people quote unquote in their place, everything.
00:13:40.639 --> 00:13:49.120
And so uh Ruben Burks, who just recently died, I didn't know well, but I knew him a little bit from kind of union stuff.
00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:53.039
And so I called Ruben, I said, Man, I need help here.
00:13:53.039 --> 00:13:54.320
We we need some help here.
00:13:54.320 --> 00:13:56.799
And that was when I was also involved at the St.
00:13:56.799 --> 00:13:58.399
Francis Fair Center.
00:13:58.399 --> 00:14:10.320
And so he came to a meeting, and I don't know what he said or did to everybody at that meeting, but suddenly there wasn't going to be a pr a jail or prison up there right next to public housing.
00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:14.639
And and and at that same time they also had put a compost heap.
00:14:14.639 --> 00:14:26.320
They took all the leaves and crap from the city of Flint and they brought it up and they put it right next, I mean, right next to Ridgecrest apartments and river park.
00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:29.279
And it's and when it starts to decay, it stinks.
00:14:29.279 --> 00:14:32.879
And why anyone would even think to do such a thing?
00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:40.320
That's just how far on the margins many of our citizens are, and often it's a matter of race and class.
00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:45.039
And so I got involved in that issue and stuck with it for for years and years.
00:14:45.519 --> 00:14:52.559
And and at some point, uh, your group uh that you organized along with Sister Joanne, who was also quite involved.
00:14:52.559 --> 00:14:53.120
Your stuff is.
00:14:53.120 --> 00:15:00.240
Yes, and uh you ended up in court with this issue with the incinerator.
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:13.600
We we did sue um, it was on behalf of the neighborhood group and and the flint double nAACP uh at that time it was um e hill, Mrs.
00:15:13.600 --> 00:15:13.759
E.
00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:20.799
Hill Deloney was the president of that, and and there was a group of people that were so upset by these things coming in.
00:15:20.799 --> 00:15:25.120
And so we sued the state and the county and the township.
00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:37.200
I forget, but anyway, we won in Judge Archie Eamon's courtroom, but then on appeal, we lost when we went into Lance to the appeals court.
00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:44.000
But it was it was a victory, but then we filed a civil rights appeal with the EPA.
00:15:44.000 --> 00:16:04.320
They had a thing where you were supposed if you filed a civil rights appeal, if you thought there was some racism, that you would uh you they would look at that, they would investigate it, and and the rules of the EPA was in 180 days they would render a decision.
00:16:04.320 --> 00:16:13.039
And so they never rendered a decision in that appeal, which was around 1993 or four.
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:27.200
They never rendered a decision until the day that the Obama administration was going to leave office in January of 2016, it was about 25 years, and you would say, What?
00:16:27.200 --> 00:16:28.559
What's that about?
00:16:28.559 --> 00:16:49.360
So then later, the prayer center was involved in a lawsuit against the uh EPA saying, if you have made these rules for civil rights appeals and you don't act on them in 25 years, that's probably a little excessive length of time to be deciding whether there was racism.
00:16:49.360 --> 00:17:11.039
And there was, I mean, I was in these hearings where where like uh Floyd Clack wanted to testify, and another woman uh that they needed to get back to Flint and they wanted to testify out of order, and um they wouldn't allow that, but there were two other white folk that they allowed to testify.
00:17:11.039 --> 00:17:21.680
And of course they're saying there's no race involved in these, but but I mean on on the face, you would say, wait a minute, how come those two folks were able to testify?
00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:28.000
But the black folk weren't allowed to testify, and and Floyd Black at the time was a state repair.
00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:33.279
Like, how could he not be able to do that and then get over to a boat in the Capitol?
00:17:33.279 --> 00:17:46.799
So we were and then the other thing was we kept saying you have hearings all over creation, but you don't have hearings in uh you're not having hearings right where the people are.
00:17:46.799 --> 00:18:02.880
So they finally had a hearing at Carpenter Road School, and when they came in, here's the folks, you know, from the neighborhood, and they had these armed guards around, and they didn't have them in other areas of the city when they would have hearings.
00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:07.279
And so, you know, most of the predominant group there were African American.
00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:13.119
It's kind of like saying, Oh, you gotta have armed guards around when African Americans want to speak up for themselves.
00:18:13.119 --> 00:18:17.759
Well, you know, maybe some don't realize it, but that that's called racism.
00:18:17.759 --> 00:18:36.079
And so we, you know, so that was so we told our story in in the federal court in Oakland, California, in conjunction with some other areas around the country that were ignored, and they decided, yes, that was racist, and it shouldn't have been handled that way.
00:18:36.640 --> 00:18:40.559
And you're so ultimately you prevailed eventually.
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:46.400
Ultimately we prevailed, although it was a it was kind of a painful, difficult thing.
00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:56.559
I mean, I want to I want to be out loving people and doing, you know, you know, baptize and preach, and and you know, I I do a lot of that, of course, too.
00:18:56.559 --> 00:19:46.799
But there are these justice issues that have a long tradition in the Catholic Church from Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century, where he realized that industrialization was beginning to dehumanize people, and so you know, there weren't enough vacations, there people were being injured on the job, child children were being made to work from earliest not getting an education because they had to work in factories and stuff, and so he began to develop the right, he affirmed the right to organize, the right to just wages, the right to having adequate food and you know salary that would help help you to have enough of a life that you could really feed your family and have decent shelter.
00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:56.880
And so uh so that particular part of the gospel was something that I mean and and the seeds of that is in the gospel.
00:19:56.880 --> 00:20:03.200
So for me, that became a substantial part of kind of what I did.
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:20.079
So, Father Phil, um one of the things that concerns a lot of people at this time is the uh fact that they're in their homes and they're isolated and so forth.
00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:29.359
And uh you have also had a long time to think about these kinds of issues.
00:20:29.359 --> 00:20:58.799
One of them obviously goes back to the questions of of you know how it what it's like to be a priest in this time and and and age, and you know, having the uh sex uh scandal in the church and other things of that nature uh have obviously created a lot of of consternation by uh people in this country and people around the world.
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:12.400
And I again, every time I read more about what you've been up to, and and I thought I knew you pretty well, I just can't get over the things that you say that are so true.
00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:21.920
Tell my listeners here a little bit about how you view that situation and how it's been handled.
00:21:23.519 --> 00:21:26.720
Well, you know, it's a it is a terrible tragedy.
00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:35.200
I mean, I know people that were abused, and I one time I had a man uh talk to me after a funeral.
00:21:35.200 --> 00:21:50.799
I was there for the wake service that evening, before a funeral, I should say, and he was just terribly disturbed, and I knew this big family from a long time before him.
00:21:50.799 --> 00:22:14.000
And uh as we talked, it became apparent that he had been abused by a priest, and I was so sad, and he said, you know, and he had a fairly recent baby, maybe a month or two older, and he said, I want to get the baby baptized, but I can't physically, and he had a great deal of faith, but he said, I can't physically go into a church, I become ill.
00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:17.279
And I said, Oh, I'm so sorry, so sorry.
00:22:17.279 --> 00:22:24.240
I said, Well, you know, how about if we have the baptism someplace other than in a church?
00:22:24.240 --> 00:23:09.759
If that's I mean, having your baby baptized is the important thing here, and the wound that you have suffered because the priest has hurt you, we need to do whatever we can to uh take care of that, and and and so so we went to uh it was actually in his backyard, we had a mass in his backyard that we baptized the baby, which isn't the usual place that you do that, however, uh given these extraneous circumstances and his suffering as a victim of this, and so the good news was that later when he went to he began to be able to go to church again later in his life, and he's now very active in a parish.
00:23:09.759 --> 00:23:18.720
But when he went and complained about this abuse to his pastor, it turned out that his pastor kind of didn't pay much attention to him.
00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:32.079
And it later turned out, and I knew who the pastor was, it just seemed odd, like why would he not take that seriously compassion that will have turned out that person had done some behavior that was inappropriate for some.
00:23:32.079 --> 00:23:48.240
And so I you know, when I when I was in the seminary and I look back at the men who have made these terrible moral and ethical and evil things, I I there's no pattern to it.
00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:51.200
I mean, I just say, Oh, I thought I knew that person.
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:54.400
I played tennis with this car, I studied with this person.
00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:56.559
You know, what how did that happen?
00:23:56.559 --> 00:23:59.599
So I you know, I can't account for it.
00:23:59.599 --> 00:24:21.759
And I in and in the years that this was becoming, we were becoming a little aware of it, there was no real good knowledge of the fact that it's very difficult to treat, that you that you can't have folks that have done that behavior around children, you know, they have to be protected.
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:29.599
So uh so there were a lot of mistakes made where they would be more concerned about the uh image of the Catholic Church.
00:24:29.599 --> 00:24:32.640
It'll make the church look bad if we do this et cetera.
00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:38.160
And and they would just move them to another parish and to another parish and that kind of stuff.
00:24:38.160 --> 00:24:49.279
So that stuff went on for a while, and then finally people began to say loudly enough and began to legally uh speak out in terms of prosecution and things.
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:52.000
This this can't go on, this has to be different.
00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:56.640
So I am very pleased when Bishop Boyer came back to the diocese.
00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:07.279
The first time he met with the priests in our big convocation that we have every year, he just said, you know, this is something we gotta really take care of.
00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:15.440
And I don't ever one of the I just remember him saying, I don't ever want to hear any of you ever say it was the victims' fault.
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:18.079
He said, I don't ever want to hear that from anybody.
00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:20.079
They are the victims.
00:25:20.079 --> 00:25:31.039
We have this place of authority and power, and we have to be really respectful, not violate children or or teenagers or or whatever.
00:25:31.039 --> 00:25:32.240
We we can't be here.
00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:33.359
That's right.
00:25:33.359 --> 00:25:38.960
Well, Father Phil, I want to ask another question, more of a personal uh question.
00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:58.160
Uh obviously, you're a man with strong faith, um and uh and you you've been someone who's lived in a city with uh with actually which is still ongoing, uh two major public uh health crises underway.
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:08.480
One is which we have poisoned water, and the other is that we have uh um we have the coronavirus.
00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:46.799
But during your time in especially in recent years, going through that where people are obviously very distressed by the by the fact that you're um you know, they're distressed by not just the fear that they face every day, but you have to be personally affected by some of this, you know, the stress of living with people who have been, you know, basically society's outcasts in many in many respects, and people who just have not been respected as human beings.
00:26:46.799 --> 00:27:02.480
Then you have this issue with the priests uh and you know engaging in uh you know despicable behavior, which reflects on which reflects on the entire church, not just on each priest.
00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:06.880
And and I guess how do you have the strength to deal with all this?
00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:14.559
Well, first of all, if the if I uh prayer is is uh really really important.
00:27:14.559 --> 00:27:17.039
It's important to everybody.
00:27:17.039 --> 00:27:24.880
And I have to say, you know, at Christ the King, Christ the King parish is a very prayerful, prayerful parish.
00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:51.920
And we all need our individual prayer life over and above, or maybe as a foundation for our life of worship and publicly getting together and something and so it's really important that we have a relationship with God, with Christ, that when we act, that we're trying to say, how does what I'm doing reflect the life of Jesus?
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:53.119
I'm supposed to imitate him.
00:27:53.119 --> 00:27:56.240
That's what we all have as Christians we're supposed to do.
00:27:56.240 --> 00:28:08.319
And so when I see terrible mistakes made, I feel very badly for the victim, and I'm grateful that I'm in a time where we've begun to respond to that.
00:28:08.319 --> 00:28:14.559
But one of the things is to communicate with people, to hear their sadness, their hurt, their anger.
00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:34.400
When I was at Sacred Heart back in 2002, I guess, is when the Catholic Church in the United States was getting together and developing guidelines of how to handle these situations and what to do with the priests and how to deal lovingly with victims and all that stuff.
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:44.799
So we had a couple of masses where during the sermon time I spoke about it a little bit and then I invited feedback from people trying to dialogue.
00:28:44.799 --> 00:28:51.440
And then afterwards we had a social worker to one of them was Sister Joanne Schlaverina.
00:28:51.440 --> 00:29:10.640
And just if people wanted to talk, you know, to be able to discuss and get that stuff out, and they were that is kind of you know, Jesus would say what you would talk about light and darkness, and that we're a religion of the light.
00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:12.559
We're supposed to bring things in light.
00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:26.400
Obviously, this kind of behavior wasn't of the light because it was always hidden, and let's not talk about it and so when you bring it to the light, then you can deal with it and get feelings out and stuff.
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:28.240
And so it felt very sad.
00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:59.839
I mean, there's friends of mine that were in trouble with these kinds of behaviors, and and I wanted to be very faithful to ministering to the victims, but on the other hand, we are a religion of redemption, and so I wouldn't want that person to be back ministering with children again, but I also want that person to be dealt with as the the perpetrator as a human being, so you know I think that's the other thing is that we sometimes have just said this is a totally evil bad person.
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:18.319
I can talk to you for hours because you have so much to share with uh the public and uh sometimes I don't think we get enough of that.
00:30:18.319 --> 00:30:21.119
Especially when I think about the work you've done.
00:30:21.119 --> 00:31:02.319
There's just so many things that you can do in the jail industry and largely a part of the cannon a very important part of the life now.
00:31:02.319 --> 00:31:14.799
I appreciate your time.
00:31:14.799 --> 00:32:03.839
Thank you.
00:32:03.839 --> 00:32:07.200
This is Arthur Bush for radio free plan over and out.
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:12.000
We'll see you next time in another exciting and interesting episode.
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:48.000
Carrying crows coming home to roost over at the wet, you know something went wrong.
00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:50.319
Take the children and run.
00:32:50.319 --> 00:33:04.319
Go back to your factories, go back to your home.
00:33:04.319 --> 00:33:09.279
Don't get excited, go to the jacco.
00:33:09.279 --> 00:33:11.519
Don't boss it.
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:37.039
There's nothing to do, except to spell.
00:33:37.039 --> 00:33:48.480
And they may come in visitors, but they won't drink the rock.
00:33:48.480 --> 00:34:27.280
And you're sixty years old.
00:34:27.280 --> 00:34:43.760
You make a deal with the devil, and your prophets on the fold, but twenty years down the line, and that little girl is in the prime of her life, and everyone's tells grow wide.
00:34:43.760 --> 00:35:05.360
I saw people lined up in the morning haste To find enough water to get through a day.
00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:31.360
It's the lasting legacy of greed and neglect, and we know the truth, and we won't forget Children Take the Children Right Children.
00:00:19.760 --> 00:00:20.640
Thanks very much. It's my pleasure to be here. How did you get in doing a book about the water crisis?
Well, firstly, it was that it was affecting my family personally, and I should say the teen. At that time, there wasn't yet enough water crisis. There had been some issues with water and making some tweaks of the we were not given the impression that there was any serious threat to family's health. So we're determined to use Flin's tap water. We've always been leaders in tap water. We had a three-year-old son at that he was to some extent always come under. So when we started to there was lead in her, and that was a couple of months, that was a big concern for our family. So but we could certainly identify what's going through as people just kind of start to understand, figure out what to do about it on a personal level, but then also figure out what to do about it on a collective level. And that was the piece that really came to interest me because once we had a filter installed or faucet and more or less okay as a I started to realize that crisis really exposed the concerted effort of community members themselves to the issues of water quality, attention research, what was going on placing pressure on public officials to take the situation seriously and respond. Um that got me really intrigued on a couple of firstly, just as a concerned resident and as a bit of an activist myself, um, I was curious to see this kind of social movement that was developed. Um but then the other part of it is that as a scholar, um, I'm interested in social movements in general and particularly useful ideas and tell tell us about you. So I I'm I was actually born in in Madison, so I have Midwest roots, but I grew up in Washington State. My mom was uh in a thing out there, she's actually now the the city washing so she has quite a an uh in city government. Uh my dad is a geologist. Certainly as I was writing it, I was aware that a crisis books, and of course I hadn't read those books yet, the print, so I was having to imagine a little bit what we're up to and to try to stake a claim to my own particular angle on the crisis. And and you know, really I I don't think I I had to work terribly hard to figure out what that was because I mean the whole reason why I ended up deciding the first place is that I ended up in a position for this. I was a resident and a parent who was worried about the safety. But I was a newcomer to the V and still uh bringing a little bit of that outsider's perspective. I also had a foot in this world of water activism, maybe more than a foot ultimately was pretty involved on the activist side, so I was getting to see the crisis for that. But then in April of 2016, I was also invited to a scientific team that was doing research into water quality issues and so I had an opportunity to gain a kind of front row seat to some of the scientists. So um bringing all of those perspectives together, you know, I I think resulted in a pretty advantage in what was happening. And that was part of what I was trying to accomplish in was to get the crisis from a variety of angles and to try to give people a pretty robust and rich analogy to understand what happened. And the first few chapters of the book in particular is offer a number of different possible narratives, a number of different ways of telling the story of the crisis, no one of which is necessarily to the others, bring out different elements, suggest different kinds of lessons that we might take away from the crisis. But the other thing I wanted to do is I really wanted to foreground the perspective of uh water activists and fluence. I wanted, you know, their story really to be the heart of the story. And so their analysis of the crisis, the one that really gets the most attention in the book. Um and I also, to some extent, just try to chronicle the various ways in which they responded to the crisis, drawing from their assessment of what its origins was, what its significance was, and what needed to be done in response to it.
Your book really takes a look at the water crisis activism, but it also morphs, at least by the end of this book, into an assessment of capability of collective action. And at one point in your book, you use the word flint fights back. You describe your activity as fighting back collective action. The assessment of Flint's capability, the fight back, at least with respect to the water crisis, always was fascinating.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that was frustrating me a little bit about the way in which the story was being represented, the story of the crisis was being represented after it became big national news, is that it tended to get boiled down to a few exceptional personalities who kind of came along at the right time and found each other, and they were each bringing different things to the table, and it was really their combined efforts that helped to break the story open and you know force people to pay some attention to it. But you know, what I could see happening on on the ground around me was was rather more complicated than that. You don't usually get social change unless there's a larger scale mobilization on the part of people in a community like Flint. And that's exactly what we see. When we go back and look you know, all the way to April of 2014 when the Flint River water started flowing through the pipes, people started raising concerns about that almost immediately, actually before even it happened. There was a steady drumbeat, really, of public concern and outcry and ultimately organizing an activism that created the conditions under which any particular individual was able to have an effect. That really was the story that I wanted to help to tell in the book was a story about all of these people whose names you know you you don't necessarily know, who haven't gotten the same kind of attention, awards, and accolades and credit and so forth, but who collectively came together and created the conditions under which the crisis finally got acknowledged, ultimately, at least to some extent, addressed.
As you covered that aspect of this, your experiences beforehand with working who had been involved in trying to be forward-looking about this charter, adopting a more modern approach and governance. You met many people and you said you and then you had the opportunity to have a real bird's eye view about these people from your work with Isaac and themselves.
Certainly, yes. I mean, I I think that you know, in Flint, there's a real kind of historical sensibility that that people are operating with that's very striking. I mean, Flint, as you know, has a very rich history, and it's one that is still alive in respects, and and there's a lot of pride that people take in aspects of that history, especially this tendency for Flint residents to band together and to stand up for themselves when they feel like they're being exploited or abused in some way. And it you know, it goes all the way back to at the very at the very least, the sit-down strike of 1936-37, this idea that you know, even if we're David fighting Goliath, you know, there are times when you've really gotta put your foot down and stand up for what's right. And you don't necessarily weigh the odds of victory, just throw yourself into that fight. And I think that it's that kind of scrappy mentality that we see uh as being very central to water activist culture as I see it here.
Well, it's it's it's endemic to the culture itself, isn't it? Of the people at Flint, this history that they have of battling the roller coaster in the American economy played out in uh particularly automatic, they do have that what you call scrappiness.
It certainly has. I mean, I think it's worth remembering that when these activists started going to officially sponsored meetings about the water after officials were beginning to admit that there was some, you know, not so insignificant issues with water quality, you know, what they were told at those meetings was that there was absolutely no possibility of the city switching off the Flint River. And so it wasn't even worth having a conversation about. And to some extent, you were betraying just how irrational and stubborn you were by even raising that as you, and just how unreasonable you were, because you weren't willing to have a serious conversation about what should be done with the water.
You know, your voice is obviously part of a choir of those who looked at this crisis and who have come to the same fork in their own. Some of those have been singer-songwriters, troubadours, who have wrote the history of this crisis in song. And one of those, Ashley Gubak, a German who's based in Boston, wrote a beautiful song, Michigan. And the song talks about the gaslighting that was being done by those who were essentially the lyrics of their song or something, putting putting some sand in their eyes. Isn't the notion that you you know don't believe your lying eyes, okay? Don't believe your your taste. Don't believe your common sense. This water that you're drinking is really not what you believe it is, and you're unreasonable.
I mean, that's really gaslighting and No, I think that's the right term, and in fact, it's a term that was used by multiple water activists talking to me about that. This is one of the reasons why the crisis dragged on for as long as it did.
So you have an administration that wants to tout their greatness and their wonderfulness, telling people that their water's not dirty and telling something's this, and you're looking through. That has an impact on people who already have a culture of, as you referred to, if Flint fights back. Wasn't that kind of stuff just putting a red flag in front of a bull?
For for sure. I mean, at least again, that I that is a mentality that I have encountered quite a bit here in Flint is this kind of indignation that people feel at being treated that way. You know, when it happens to them, they don't just curl up into a ball and say, oh, sorry, I bothered you, right? Instead, they start looking for some kind of workaround. I think that's what happened with these public meetings around water, is that, you know, when when people realized they weren't going to be taken seriously there, um, they didn't give up. They just turned to different kinds of tactics. It wasn't trying to, you know, convince people in positions of power to do the right thing so much as it was pressure and force them to do the right thing. And that meant mustering muscle. And that's something that Flint folks are good at doing.
Yeah, that goes back to the sit-down strikes when the bosses didn't want to meet their demands as we sat down inside the even before that, we asked for reasonable things like bathroom breaks, on the right down, a little heat, ready work, the winter, and more simple things like better hours working. The people didn't take no for an answer, did they?
No, and I I I think that that that's the key, because again, if they had gone to these meetings and they'd taken for granted this idea that switching off of the river was a non-starter, and they they would have put themselves at the mercy of people who were making decisions on the basis of cost, who were making decisions on the basis of convenience, who were not necessarily prioritizing what the people who were drinking the water wanted to prioritize, which was their health and and the public health. Rendering that no, right, is a really important moment within any any social movement because it means to some extent it's not going to work within the confines of the system and the way it defines your issue and your reality. To some extent, residents had to go out and create this other reality by collecting their own evidence of what was going on and making sure that that was so compelling that people ultimately had to come around to their way of seeing things.
Now you described the Flint culture that you observed inside of the water activism as being one of an activist culture that existed in the community as a whole, and you spoke of it in your book as being uh intensive localism. What do you mean by those descriptors?
What I've seen since I've lived in Flint is that we've got a lot of them in community uh organizers and activists who are very, very active. And some of them are active around issues that I think of are of very broad significance. And to some extent, their activism isn't issue-based activism, if I can put it that way. Most of what I see going on in the community is very much grounded in the kinds of needs and concerns that exist among Flint residents and on addressing those needs and concerns. You know, again, that that isn't necessarily true of every activist culture, but a lot of what I've seen here is very much focused on trying to make Flint the best place it can possibly be by focusing intensely on the issues that are are going on right here within our own the experiences which you had and which you're describing tell me that you've met the Flintstones. I'd like to think I have. I mean, um certainly some of the people I've worked with and and gotten to know and friends and and comrades have been here for, if not their whole lives, uh in every case, a very, very long time. You know, I'm thinking about people like Claire McClinton, who was a union organizer, um who is in in some ways, although she doesn't always like being described this way, sort of the matriarch of our uh water active and and pro-democracy activist community here. There are uh people like Claudia Perkins Milton, who was was also involved with the union back in the day, and was uh really a pioneering figure as a black woman within the the union. They are it's it's folks like that who are bringing all of that history to the the the fight, you know, when when they take on uh an issue like water. It's not just water isn't their only point of reference. I mean, they have this whole rich history of organizing and activism that they're drawing from and any number of issues that they've confronted over the years, and they're drawing from that knowledge and experience in doing what they do. So I've learned so much from them. That's been really one of the great kind of revelations of moving here to Flint and and becoming a part of this community, is that it it's been another opportunity to realize how much I have to learn from others.
Let me bring the focus back to the Flint. You write in your book when you're describing what might have gone better in Flint during the water crisis if people had had a more commonality of interest to draw on a greater collective identity. Your book isn't throwing shade on Flint, it's just describing what what was lacking with this particular group of active dealing with the water crisis itself.
But when you talk of being well, and and as Art would put it, you need a a story of us. One of the anyway, in order to mobilize particular issues, you need to have a conception we are, who are people. That's something that doesn't be uh to some extent, you know, identity as a social construct that has to be created. So the the way we tell ourselves starting determining how we're gonna tackle struggle. And so I think having theory helps, and having people like Claudia, who were have been involved for years, to keep bringing that back in and kind of reminding us we are when you look at a guy like uh Charles Reyes III, he's not just that's right, yeah. And you know, Art himself has spent a lot of time studying and deorganizing, uh, got a degree from Harvard, and maybe he has been writing of work for a long time. Inside for many of us, in a community like this, I mean, they they need the kinds of ideas and skills and capacity that folks like that provide. Sometimes we're tension involved in determining what particular story would be told and who's gonna be at the center of it and what kinds of tactic utilize. I mean, it's a it's a messy process. In chapter eight of the last you know, part of what I wanted to try to capture was not only work that people were were doing trying to make that happen, but also in the complication, some of the limitations of that work, because I wanted to tell a story that was honest and that was you know a way for other people looking from the outside in.
One of the grasps you're finding reactive.
When you're talking about plant water crisis, environmental justice struggle, often you're where there's some kind of pressing threat, a substance that is essential for life, whether that be water, air, whether that be the part of injected into this struggle, is that people really did feel like they were fighting for their lives, for the lives of children, for the future of this as a whole. Flint as a city, a city that's been described at times um as a city that's kind of barely hanging on to life. This was a fight, not only on an individual or family level, but really a fight for the community. I think that there was a lot in terms of the way people conceptualized the emergency manager phenomenon, really to that to some extent, because that was sort of a hostile of me that had the dissolved the city, and emergency managers have the power. The precarious future, I think, was very much in those minds with uh their own destoxic substance that could really kill them.
The culture that surrounds a willness. Right or mad hours will be.
Yeah, and and knowing that we in a lot of industrial uh cities where to some extent people have patterns themselves because the state has kind of collapsed, local government is not able to do all of this that we associate with the functioning government, whether that be keeping the parks mode or the trash, fixing the sidewalks, uh you know, to extend the absence that this kind of need for a DIY mentality. But again, I think Flint, that combined with this other deeply embedded in Flint's history, going back to what we were saying before, where when we are facing some kind of threats to our well-being, you know, we're not the kind of people take that sitting down. We are the kind of people who stand up and fight back if the odds are against is that something is different, unique?
I mean, you use words intense local.
I've never heard this be set in some sense as a model for other pieces that are fatal issues because we know that other keys are in it.
Are we saying is that Flint's repairable? It's an object lesson for other people.
That really has been a core theme of Flint's again, going all the way back to the sit-down strike is what uh really jump-started the American labor movement as a whole. You know, what happened here, it had this kind of wildfire type effect of spreading. I think that the the rise and fall of to some extent it encapsulates the whole idea of the American, you know, gone wrong. You know, constant the dynamic um and almost exaggerating in ways that help us to understand what's going on in other countries as well. It's part of universal street of the of the country as a almost like on the cutting edge of that, his showing other countries where they're going.
A lot of people have wrote books, they've done documents about an analogy toward whatever about the this is a city that is full of life on on the way toward recovery. Let's talk about the people at Lynn are the unrealistic.
Sometimes there are objectives set for themselves, the ideals that they're trying to and this do everything oneself. And that's part of what I try, right? There are times that is on making sure that we are the ones liberating ourselves, solving problems as noble as that is, meant that we didn't have all of the capacity to actually tackle the hand. Sometimes people were very much in of outside help, outside research. That's a tricky thing to navigate. You're starting out with that kind of pride. How do you welcome resources that are gonna help you realize what you're trying to accomplish without comproming your autonomy, without inviting other interests in that might clash interests? That's that's a reset of you're looking at at people's insistence on self-governance, you know, this idea that they know best right for them, and that they ought to be the drivers anytime a decision being made that directly impacts their personal lives. There's a lot of that that is not only um that you know people ought to be self-governing, true, just as a matter of fact. People often do have a better sense of you know how water is in their everyday lives than the quote-unquote expert, and how impacting their person than an emergency manager does aside. Sometimes you know, popularly reactive, it's all about tearing down experts and you know these kind of shadowy strings controlling the world that we live in. At its core, I think principles that are harder to argue with. Yeah, I mean, I I saw it firsthand at the water. I mean, remember, I'm coming as a science PhD that I have something to offer full analysis of the situation. And what I realized was that I was another body, it was nothing special uh in terms of how I would really buy up. It wasn't that we're waiting around for for somebody with a fancy degree to come and explain the situation to them. They already felt like they had a pretty and and you know what? They were right. They were way ahead of their under their analysis of what was going on, and that's why again I was saying earlier, I've learned so much. I've learned more from the people I've been working with, that's for sure.
The really essential scribes are rag tag extraordinarily fashioned. I'm gonna set that in. I mean, these aren't just the group side government or people aren't wanting to hang on. These are people who are challenged the system of governments back to the Boston Deep Park. That's right.
I think that we're talking about who on one hand, we're very much mated on an level by the threats that the water pose themselves and their family members. We don't want to discount that part of it. A lot of people would argue who do actively deorganizing, that if you don't have that strong element of self-interest, it's gonna be hard to generate a lot of fire to sustain it over time. It was certainly about more than just that. Part of the indignation that people felt at having their water contaminated, it wasn't just what was being done to their own body and the body of their children. It was what was being done to their community. It was this idea of feeling like there didn't matter, that this is the kind of thing you could do to Flint and get away with it. Certainly on that level to fight back, not just on behalf of individually, but on behalf of as a whole. In terms of how that fits our larger national issues. I mean, again, people in Flint, they were offering a kind of of what democracy, how a democratic should function, what that look in practice. And a lot of standing up, trying to not only themselves live up to a certain set of principles, but to make sure that those in the power are due, and they fail to do that, then you know, you take matters on hand. And it's in that sense that I think the the social movements around water can potentially truly be a source of inspiration for other communities.
Man, how do you think the flint stones did in family?
Well, you know, when you think of all of the things that probably have happened, people didn't mobilize the they did, it's a you know fairly long. Now, of course, it's always difficult to counterfactuals to say what would have happened if we removed some variable. I don't know sitting here talking about a flint water crisis at all. If residents hadn't into their own hands and really been as determined as they were to expose what was going on and forced people to acknowledge it. So I think that was really the first thing that they accomplished was to get the crisis recognized as a crisis. Beyond that, when you think about the amount of rises that have come this way in response to the crisis, it's not insignificant. Flint has been the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars that people have fought for and lobbyed. It's important to recognize that those bills don't get passed act of creating pressure around. And so we had activists here that were very much involved in that effort. Right up to the present, you know, we're trying to get all of our lead service lines out of the ground. We have activists who are on the front lines here who are working diligently to make sure that people don't get left behind. You know, we have a big water crisis settlement now. That's all, and again, it's people in the community who are going around making sure that understand that and are signed up for it and are getting the that they deserve. All of that stuff, and we keep going down the list, is a product, a great extent, of residents themselves and the necessary pressure and bringing public attention to the issues. In that sense, I think it's been pretty cool to have accomplished. Does that mean that every movie or that every opportunity was capitalized on on the way? No, of course not, especially in a city like Flint, where we don't have a lot of capacity to begin with, you know, to take on every issue. There were times when I think we probably would have done more as an act of immunity if we'd had more people, if we'd had more money. When you look at just how sick the crisis came, not only Flint, but to the whole country, to the world, it has helped inspire things outside of don't think that it would have happened to that extent without the country people mayor. What do you see as the outcome of the governance? One thing that is of note is that we are placing more empty on treating water as a right people have, you know, fundamental human rights. It's now recognized in our charter uh in declaration of rights at the beginning, and there are a couple of sh is that idea is embedded in certain policies around water. Flint has been very proactive, for example, during COVID to spend water shut off. Hopefully that's something that future, but it's gonna have to be something that you know residentally fight for. It's one thing to have it in the charter, it's another charter to actually get followed. That isn't what we have here, is that we have this governing document that is consulted for all of the the knocks we've had over the past few years. There are a lot going on here to have hope to even be optimistic.
One of the reasons hope has is I think that's right.
Yeah, at the end of the day is that people don't just run away from challenges. You know, I've met some are never going. Flint is their home. They know that a a lot to about weather and that good work to be done here, and that there are good things happening the time. I mean, we don't always get that side of in fact, we almost never get that side of, you know, it's not like wallowing spare day in and day out. I mean, in their lives and trying to make things happen and having little victories and having little setbacks in the way that in any other community, except again, as you say here, that fighting's especially strong. And we've got a lot of in the book, that's kind of where I did this. I I definitely did not want to make it sound like easy for David to fight Goliath. That David is always on the right side of every issue because he's David. I mean, you know, you again, without trying to turn it into some sort of uh caricature of the the little guys and gals fighting the system, that there's a lot more complexity to it than that.
Well, the water was brown, smelled like marine, still the city officials said the water was clean. People broke out in rashes, so we're losing their hair, they can blame to the mare, but he just didn't care. He said,ghty.
00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:23.600
00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:27.359
00:00:27.359 --> 00:00:34.320
00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:35.520
00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:36.719
00:00:36.719 --> 00:00:37.840
00:00:38.079 --> 00:00:51.439
00:00:51.439 --> 00:01:00.560
00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:01.520
00:01:01.759 --> 00:01:02.719
00:01:02.719 --> 00:01:11.439
00:01:11.439 --> 00:01:26.000
00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:37.200
00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:45.439
00:01:45.439 --> 00:02:03.200
00:02:03.200 --> 00:02:07.359
00:02:07.359 --> 00:02:16.240
00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:32.400
00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:41.840
00:02:41.840 --> 00:02:48.800
00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:55.439
00:02:55.439 --> 00:03:11.199
00:03:11.199 --> 00:03:22.560
00:03:22.560 --> 00:03:33.280
00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:41.039
00:03:41.039 --> 00:03:57.439
00:03:57.439 --> 00:04:02.000
00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:08.159
00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:14.560
00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:37.680
00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:40.959
00:04:40.959 --> 00:04:50.879
00:04:50.879 --> 00:04:56.720
00:04:57.040 --> 00:05:10.480
00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:28.560
00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:36.879
00:05:36.879 --> 00:05:41.839
00:05:41.839 --> 00:05:44.000
00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:50.639
00:05:50.639 --> 00:05:53.839
00:05:53.839 --> 00:05:59.839
00:05:59.839 --> 00:06:12.399
00:06:12.399 --> 00:06:16.079
00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:27.759
00:06:27.759 --> 00:06:34.639
00:06:34.639 --> 00:06:43.120
00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:52.639
00:06:52.639 --> 00:07:09.279
00:07:09.279 --> 00:07:11.920
00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:13.519
00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:29.120
00:07:29.120 --> 00:07:37.680
00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:42.959
00:07:42.959 --> 00:07:44.480
00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:48.079
00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:59.600
00:07:59.600 --> 00:08:20.720
00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:23.439
00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:25.040
00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:27.199
00:08:27.199 --> 00:08:32.480
00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:48.639
00:08:48.639 --> 00:08:49.759
00:08:49.759 --> 00:09:02.639
00:09:02.639 --> 00:09:12.240
00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:24.639
00:09:24.639 --> 00:09:30.559
00:09:30.559 --> 00:09:37.840
00:09:37.840 --> 00:09:45.120
00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:55.519
00:09:55.519 --> 00:10:09.200
00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:17.360
00:10:17.600 --> 00:10:18.000
00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.840
00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:28.559
00:10:28.559 --> 00:10:30.559
00:10:31.519 --> 00:10:54.720
00:10:54.720 --> 00:11:02.879
00:11:03.120 --> 00:11:10.879
00:11:10.879 --> 00:11:21.919
00:11:21.919 --> 00:11:42.559
00:11:42.559 --> 00:12:10.480
00:12:10.480 --> 00:12:16.399
00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:34.000
00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.159
00:12:36.159 --> 00:12:45.440
00:12:45.440 --> 00:12:57.039
00:12:57.039 --> 00:13:07.200
00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:22.480
00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:40.639
00:13:40.639 --> 00:13:49.120
00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:53.039
00:13:53.039 --> 00:13:54.320
00:13:54.320 --> 00:13:56.799
00:13:56.799 --> 00:13:58.399
00:13:58.399 --> 00:14:10.320
00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:14.639
00:14:14.639 --> 00:14:26.320
00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:29.279
00:14:29.279 --> 00:14:32.879
00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:40.320
00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:45.039
00:14:45.519 --> 00:14:52.559
00:14:52.559 --> 00:14:53.120
00:14:53.120 --> 00:15:00.240
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:13.600
00:15:13.600 --> 00:15:13.759
00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:20.799
00:15:20.799 --> 00:15:25.120
00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:37.200
00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:44.000
00:15:44.000 --> 00:16:04.320
00:16:04.320 --> 00:16:13.039
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:27.200
00:16:27.200 --> 00:16:28.559
00:16:28.559 --> 00:16:49.360
00:16:49.360 --> 00:17:11.039
00:17:11.039 --> 00:17:21.680
00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:28.000
00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:33.279
00:17:33.279 --> 00:17:46.799
00:17:46.799 --> 00:18:02.880
00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:07.279
00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:13.119
00:18:13.119 --> 00:18:17.759
00:18:17.759 --> 00:18:36.079
00:18:36.640 --> 00:18:40.559
00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:46.400
00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:56.559
00:18:56.559 --> 00:19:46.799
00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:56.880
00:19:56.880 --> 00:20:03.200
00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:20.079
00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:29.359
00:20:29.359 --> 00:20:58.799
00:20:58.799 --> 00:21:12.400
00:21:12.400 --> 00:21:21.920
00:21:23.519 --> 00:21:26.720
00:21:26.720 --> 00:21:35.200
00:21:35.200 --> 00:21:50.799
00:21:50.799 --> 00:22:14.000
00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:17.279
00:22:17.279 --> 00:22:24.240
00:22:24.240 --> 00:23:09.759
00:23:09.759 --> 00:23:18.720
00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:32.079
00:23:32.079 --> 00:23:48.240
00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:51.200
00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:54.400
00:23:54.400 --> 00:23:56.559
00:23:56.559 --> 00:23:59.599
00:23:59.599 --> 00:24:21.759
00:24:21.759 --> 00:24:29.599
00:24:29.599 --> 00:24:32.640
00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:38.160
00:24:38.160 --> 00:24:49.279
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:52.000
00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:56.640
00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:07.279
00:25:07.279 --> 00:25:15.440
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:18.079
00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:20.079
00:25:20.079 --> 00:25:31.039
00:25:31.039 --> 00:25:32.240
00:25:32.799 --> 00:25:33.359
00:25:33.359 --> 00:25:38.960
00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:58.160
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:08.480
00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:46.799
00:26:46.799 --> 00:27:02.480
00:27:02.480 --> 00:27:06.880
00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:14.559
00:27:14.559 --> 00:27:17.039
00:27:17.039 --> 00:27:24.880
00:27:24.880 --> 00:27:51.920
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:53.119
00:27:53.119 --> 00:27:56.240
00:27:56.240 --> 00:28:08.319
00:28:08.319 --> 00:28:14.559
00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:34.400
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:44.799
00:28:44.799 --> 00:28:51.440
00:28:51.440 --> 00:29:10.640
00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:12.559
00:29:12.559 --> 00:29:26.400
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:28.240
00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:59.839
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:18.319
00:30:18.319 --> 00:30:21.119
00:30:21.119 --> 00:31:02.319
00:31:02.319 --> 00:31:14.799
00:31:14.799 --> 00:32:03.839
00:32:03.839 --> 00:32:07.200
00:32:07.200 --> 00:32:12.000
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:48.000
00:32:48.000 --> 00:32:50.319
00:32:50.319 --> 00:33:04.319
00:33:04.319 --> 00:33:09.279
00:33:09.279 --> 00:33:11.519
00:33:11.519 --> 00:33:37.039
00:33:37.039 --> 00:33:48.480
00:33:48.480 --> 00:34:27.280
00:34:27.280 --> 00:34:43.760
00:34:43.760 --> 00:35:05.360
00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:31.360
