The Flint Water Crisis was a last minute journalistic undertaking. I had already decided on centering my graduate thesis on sexual assault in the military after seeing a documentary on the taboo of soldiers reporting their sexual assault incidents because of the offender being another solider or a superior officer. After scrolling through my Instagram timeline, I'd seen photographs from two classmates, one covering water and sanitation issues in bayetes (sugar cane worker towns) in Dominican Republic and another documenting her Habitat for Humanity experience in Ethiopia. Seeking an on the field experience close to home that dealt with an important social justice issue mirroring some of the same conditions found in third world countries like inaccessibility to clean water, I embarked to Flint, Michigan where I could get a personal glimpse into the impact of the water crisis on residents. Utilizing the University of Michigan- Flint college campus dormitory as my lodging, it afforded me easy access to students who would be coming in and out of the residence hall and might have the willingness to tell their account of how contaminated water had their city`. During the duration of my 4 day stay, I had resorted to bottled water for drinking, brushing my teeth and bathing without using the showers as I was hesitant about the safety of the water despite the filters on the faucets in the dorms. The young lady who had taken me up to my dorm told me how she got her lead tested on a monthly basis even with the filters which made me somewhat apprehensive. As I would later learn, since 2014, the beginning of the water crisis 8,000 children under the age of 6 have been exposed to lead from the tainted water. The three images below feature a mural of a then 8 year old young Flint activist, Mari Copeny also known as "Little Miss Flint" who mailed a letter to former President Obama about the severity of the water crisis; the second is stacks of cases of water at a bus station in Flint where people can take water as needed, and the third image is of the Flint River Watershed where I witnessed visually just how dirty the water in Flint was.
