emergency manager in charge and their only job was to save money. no matter what the cost. and it was too expensive, i guess, for us to get great lakes treated water. instead we got it from the flint river and it wasn t treated properly. all of this happened because of y usurped democracy. at one point in michigan half of our african-american population was under emergency management compared to 2% of whites. which means you don t have power to elect your local officials. you can t hold them accountable either. she s the author of a new book. you give me hope. great to see you my friend. thank you, rachel. . we ll be right back. stay with us. stay with us. day. don t use if you are allergic to xiidra. common side effects include eye irritation. .discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye.
9,000 to go. until the infrastructure work is complete, people need to stay on filtered and bottled water. the way we got to the story in the first place on this show way back in the day, was that we had been covering the emergency manager law in michigan where your locally elected officials can be pushed aside, taken out of all decision making process and the government, the governor specifically can say we re not going to recognize the results of your local elections anymore, we re going to do it our way because we know what s best. that s part of the flint water crisis story because it was an emergency manager who was in charge when the switch was made. how s democracy? that s a big part of how you tell the story about what went wrong. absolutely. kudos to you, rachel, you were the first to elevate that issue of democracy. you were on the story before it was a water crisis story. so thank you we would be nowhere without you. in 2011, flint lost democracy overnight. we had a stat