Tag Archives: ACLU

ArtPrize piece on ‘Flint’ receiving attention from artists, public

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“Flint” by Ti-Rock Moore is on display at Fountain Street Church as part of the church’s ArtPrize Nine exhibition.

By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

 

ArtPrize has barely been open a week and Ti-Rock Moore’s piece has already been called “moving” and “powerful.”

 

The piece, titled “Flint” is brown water constantly flowing from a bright white water fountain. The purpose of the piece, signals the ongoing situation in the majority black town, as well as, the extreme limitations placed on communities of color due to flawed infrastructures that privilege the needs of affluent and of the predominantly white communities, according to Moore’s ArtPrize artist statement. In 2014, lead was discovered in the Flint water system after cost-cutting measures. The city still does not have safe water to drink for all of its citizens.

 

Moore’s piece, which is on display as part of the Fountain Street Church ArtPrize Nine exhibition, recently receive the American Civil Liberties Union Award during a special reception at the church for ArtPrize artists and friends.

 

“Our Constitution provides for equal protect of the law,” said the jurors’ statement. “Civil rights laws protect against discrimination based on age, race, religion, gender, disability, and national origin. Ti-Rock Moore’s art reveals a stunning example of injustice against people of color based on the condition of municipal finances in the City of Flint, Michigan. People were poisoned because of money.”

 

Born and raised in New Orleans’ French Quarter, Moore followed disparate career paths before emerging in 2014 with protest works created, in part, in response to the devastating, lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina. At that time, Moore renamed herself in homage to colorful and controversial twentieth-century painter Noel Rockmore, a New Yorker turned New Orleanian who, like Moore, had been the child of artists. Moore’s self-identification (petit or ‘tit in local parlance) with the mercurial Rockmore as a kind of spiritual protégé positions her within both local history and artistic traditions, while her work focuses on dismantling the structures that support racism.

 

Artist Ti-Rock Moore

In “Flint,” the public water fountain has long been a passive symbol of separatism in the United States, one of the more visible manifestations of the Jim Crow era. Although the legal dismantling of the Jim Crow system of apartheid took place more than half a century ago, The Unites States remains deeply divided by race and class, according to a press release from Fountain Street Church. In such a volatile historical moment, the role of the artist is paramount, even essential, as a voice that both incites and instructs all of us to not remain complacent and to act upon our beliefs and stand up for what is moral and just, the press release states. If not now, we might ask ourselves, when? We are in just such a moment that requires—no, demands our attention and our action: to either squelch the flames of hatred and intolerance once and for all, or to stand by and watch as we reduce everything to embers.

 

Fountain Street Church is one of a few ArtPrize venues that award cash prizes to its participating artists. Along with the ACLU Award, which is a $1,000, the church also award a Social Action Committee Award, which was presented to Patrick Foran, Bufafalo, New York, for “State of Exception.” “We were fascinated by how Patrick Foran took iconic media imagery and, with an economy of means, presented a triptych full of foreboding. He reminds us of the power of imagery to form our understanding of the news we are bombarded by each day. The scale of the images and the mastery of craft help crystallize his powerful statement.”

 

The jurors were Kendall College of Art and Design Professor Emeritus and artist Darlene Kaczmarczyk and artist, social activist, and dedicated ACLU supporter Max Matteson. The jurors also presented two $250 Special Recognition Awards to Rebekah Modrak, of Ann Arbor, for “TheImplicit Jacques Panis on Shinola’s Quest to Revive American Manufacturing,” and Nick Reszet, of Reno, Nevada, for “Transitus.”

 

Twenty-six artists are featured at Fountain Street Church, 24 Fountain Ave. NE, all who have works that represent the venue’s theme “Art to Change the World: Inspiring Social Justice.” The exhibit is open during regular ArtPrize hours, noon to 8 p.m. Monday – Saturday and noon – 6 p.m. Sunday. For more information about Fountain Street Church and its ArtPrize exhibition, visit http://www.artprize.org/fountain-street-church

Flint pediatrician sees ripples of hope in water crisis

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Dr Mona and Kari Moss
Kary Moss, Executive Director, ACLU of West Michigan with Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha

By Victoria Mullen

victoria@wktv.org

 

“When I first heard there was lead in the water, it was a call to action,” said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of Hurley Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Residency Program.

 

The 39-year-old mother of two daughters shared her perspective on the Flint water crisis with a crowd of 400 at the ACLU’s third annual luncheon, ‘Standing Together For Justice’ on Wednesday, May 18, at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.

 

“Pediatricians–we know about lead, it’s a no-brainer,” said Dr. Mona. “We know what lead can do to our children, especially our most vulnerable children. It impacts cognition, it impacts behavior, it impacts the entire life-course trajectory.”

 

The Flint-based pediatrician sees many of the city’s poorest families, and it was Dr. Mona who raised the alarm about the harmful lead levels seen in Flint-area children after the emergency manager ordered a switch from treated Lake Huron water to untreated Flint River water in April 2014. The idea was to save $5 million in less than two years.

crowd

 

The extent of the problem came to light after a Virginia Tech researcher had discovered Flint River water to be 19 times more corrosive than water from Lake Huron. Dr. Mona compared Flint children’s blood tests with results from kids in adjacent Genesee County. What she found disturbed her: A shocking rise in lead levels between January and September 2015. She saw lead levels that were twice what they were a year before, and sometimes even three times higher, depending on the child’s location within Flint.

 

“We can’t take this away,” said Dr. Mona. “There’s no antidote, there’s no pill.”

 

When state officials refused to acknowledge the problem, Dr. Mona felt the urgency to share these findings with the public.

 

“We normally don’t release medical findings at a press conference,” said Dr. Mona. “But we had this ethical, moral and professional obligation to share this information with the public as quickly as possible, because it was so dangerous.”

 

The state still refused to acknowledge the issue.

maddow
Curt Guyette on the ‘Rachel Maddow Show’

 

ACLU investigative reporter Curt Guyette was one of the first reporters to uncover the story and try to get the state government to pay attention to the issue.

 

“I was hired to investigate and write about issues involving emergency management in Michigan, and I started going up to Flint because they were under the control of an emergency manager,” Guyette said. “It was the emergency manager who unilaterally made the decision to begin using the Flint River as the city’s water source.

 

“People were complaining about the qualify of the water, the way it looked, the way it tasted, the way it smelled. And so we did a short documentary about the problems people were experiencing.”

 

Said ACLU attorney, Jay Kaplan, “Nothing like this should ever happen in any civilized place, especially where the government is not being responsive. We’re concerned about communities and we’re concerned about people. We work to ensure that everyone is afforded their rights and their civil liberties, regardless of one’s economic status or where they live or what their race might be.

 

“Everyone is afforded those protections, and I think sometimes it can be selective in terms of the way the government will work.”

 

consititution and postcard

The irony of this tragedy occurring in a state that is surrounded by the largest source of fresh water in the world is not lost on Dr. Mona. Two years on, the water is still not safe to drink. But she wants people to know that something positive has come out of this tragedy.

 

“There are Flints everywhere,” she said. “There are injustices everywhere and there have been so many bright stories that have happened because of Flint. People across the nation are talking about lead, they’re talking about infrastructure, about democracy, about environmental injustice, about poverty, about forgotten people in forgotten places.”

 

Dr. Mona is working to actively flip the story. She directs the Michigan State University and Hurley Children’s Hospital Public Health Initiative, an innovative and model public health program to research, monitor and mitigate the impact of lead in Flint’s drinking water.

 

“We want the word ‘Flint’ to not mean disaster,” she said. “We want it to mean hope. So, we are working everyday to wrap these children around with interventions to promote their development.

 

“Flint kids are smart and they’re strong and they’re beautiful. We’re going to make sure they don’t slip through the cracks and that they get everything that they deserve.”

 

 

 

Clearing the Air on Immigration

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Loosemore Auditorium at GVSU's Downtown Campus
Loosemore Auditorium at GVSU’s Downtown Campus

On Tuesday, January 26 at 6:30pm in the Loosemore Auditorium on Grand Valley’s downtown campus, the ACLU of Western Michigan will be hosting a timely event on the immigration issue currently capturing headlines across the United States.  Entitled, Beyond Hate and Fear: Immigration and the Refugee Crisis in America, the purpose of the event is to provide insight into the long overdue process of reforming the current immigration system.

 

“Currently the United States is experiencing its greatest influx of immigrants in its history,” said Linda Sanchez, one of the coordinators of the event. “This has created severe problems and one of those is a hatred and fear that are both being stoked against immigrants. It’s ironic that a nation of immigrants has historically always had such difficulty with immigration, but here we are in 2016 and the problem remains. We’re hoping this symposium will help shed fresh new light on the issue.”

ACLU

 

Panelists include Rubén Martinez, Director of the Julian Samora Research Institute at M.S.U.; Richard Kessler, Attorney and activist specializing in Immigration law; and Liz Black, Legal Services Director for Justice for Our Neighbors West Michigan.

 

The purpose of the event is to discuss the root causes of the anger toward immigrants and refugees. Additionally, discussion will center around the fundamental protections of due process and equal protection that are embodied in our Constitution and apply to every person, regardless of immigration status.

 

Admission to the event is free.

Event Discusses the Latest Technology and Privacy Rights

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Upcoming Eyes in the Sky event focuses on your rights

Join the Western Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan for a discussion on privacy rights.  From drones to NSA hacking, the ACLU is dedicated to ensuring that civil liberties are enhanced rather than compromised by new advances in science and technology.  The ACLU’s mission is to expand the right to privacy and increase the control that individuals have over their personal information.

Don’t miss Eyes in the Sky on Monday, January 13 at 7:00p.m. at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts– 2 Fulton West, Grand Rapids, MI. 49503.

Joe Marogil, coordinator of the event, stresses the importance of the public’s right to know. “Specifically, we hope that people will come away more informed on what their privacy rights are, and what is being done to undermine those rights.  We want people to learn what options they have available to protect their rights, and we want to provide a forum for them to learn.  We want them to know that the ACLU is working on a local and national level to protect the right to privacy, he explained.”

Panelists Include:

Mary Wheeler, a journalist specializing in national security and civil liberties who regularly contributes to The Guardian, Daily Kos, The Huffington Post and Michigan Liberal as well as her own website Empty Wheel.

Ronald G. DeWaard, an attorney with vast experience in civil liberties.  DeWaard is a partner at the law firm Varnum, LLP and previously served as an Assistant United States Attorney in Miami as well as Deputy Chief of the Major Crimes Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Shelli Weisberg, the legislative director of the ACLU of Michigan.  Weisberg has worked to persuade policy makers to enact or amend legislation consistent with civil liberties principles and educate the public on the importance of legislative processes in the protection of our rights and liberties.

“We chose the panelists because they are all specialists in different aspects of privacy rights.  Marcy Wheeler has extensive experience following the national security aspects of privacy rights.  Ron DeWaard worked as a prosecutor and can speak to the local level, and police protection issues.  Additionally, he can speak to the question of whether corporations like google and facebook are too invasive in their collection of data, and where the line is draw.  Shelli Weisberg is one of our resident experts on all aspects of ACLU policy, and we are hoping she can help formally address the ACLU position on the issues, while also explaining how to best help create change through legislative and other means to help protect our privacy interests,” Marogil concluded.

The event is free and open to the public.  For more information, check: www.aclumich.org/westernspeakers