If you’ve seen photos of the water currently flowing into people’s homes in Flint, Michigan, then you know the ugly brown substance the residents have to deal with is not fit for man or beast. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has said he will solve the problem, but when you consider that officials working for him created it, that promise sounds hollow and far too late to truly help.
Numerous people, including Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have called on Governor Snyder to resign post haste. And now actor Matt Damon, who has long been involved in issues of great importance to the country and the world, is weighing in.
Damon is the co-founder, along with Gary White, of Water.org, which tries to bring clean water to people around the globe. Damon, speaking to The Daily Beast, had this to say about Rick Snyder:
“At the very least he should resign! At the very least. Listen, everybody’s entitled to a fair trial in the United States of America, but that man should get one. And soon. That’s just my personal opinion… In terms of the work that we do, to see it happening in Flint, every parent in America feels it on a visceral, deep level, because we ask the question, ‘What if that was my child?’ It’s unconscionable in Flint, and it’s unconscionable that 663 million people around the world are dealing with that every day in the developing world. Those are the communities we interact with, and that’s the mission of Water.org: to end that suffering for those children, and those parents.”
His comments were echoed by Gary White:
“We should be outraged about Flint. That shouldn’t be happening in the United States, but it also drives home the point that it shouldn’t be happening anywhere. Flint is the reality for many developing countries around the world.”
And Damon said that he is a firm believer economics play a big role in who has clean water, both in the United States and around the world:
“My sincere hope for our country and our world is that this greater connectivity is going to lead to a greater empathy and an awakening to the plight of our fellow citizens. These are huge systemic injustices we’re talking about that hopefully everybody is waking up to. The question then is, what do we do about it? It will be interesting to see where we go from here.”
It bears repeating as often as necessary: Rick Snyder needs to go. He has overstayed his welcome and he is responsible for a horrible ecological and human disaster.
Featured Image by Wikimedia available under a Creative Commons license
