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Editor’s note: Radio station WYNC interviewed Maureen Taylor, State Chair of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization about the right to water.
WYNC: Maureen Taylor says America needs to wake up. Access to water is a basic human right. She’s trying to make it a national issue.
Maureen D. Taylor: I don’t work in a bankrupt city. I live in a city that was bankrupted. And we continuously hear this phrase, “if you can’t pay for this water then you don’t need it.” But just never forget that this started a number of years ago. An emergency manager was imposed here—these people are able to sell off our assets to their family and friends and make any decision they want. Now the press, except for you, has decided to remove the spotlight from Detroit and move it up the road 70 miles to Flint as if these fights are not connected.
WYNC: If you didn’t pay your bill, the Emergency Manager had your water turned off and you made the point that water is not like milk or gasoline.
MT: It’s not cookies, we’re not talking about buying a bag of Lay’s potato chips. You have to have water to live. The fact is that 70% of the people of Detroit live at or below the poverty level. It’s very similar in Flint. They said, “If you can’t pay for water then you can’t have it.” In the last six months, the water department in Detroit has disconnected service to somewhere around 34,000 households
WYNC: Do you think the civil right to water will be established or will they continue to be able to turn off water in residences?
MT: We’ve been in court with a Judge Rhodes who has already indicated in his findings that there is no civil or natural human right to water. We’ve already lost that battle in the courts but we won because it put that question out there in the universe. We hope that there will be some kind of a national indication that says, “People have a right to water.”
WYNC: What would you say to people who say, “They will never take my water away”?
MT: That’s what they always say. I’m sure there were people in Germany who said I’ve heard about these bad things happening in the next township but they will never come after me. They came after the Jews but I was not one . . . then they came after the union organizers but I wasn’t one . . . then they came after the welfare recipients but I wasn’t one of those . . . then they came after the Detroit residents but I wasn’t one. And then one day someone knocked on my door but no one was there to do battle. This nightmare is going to come to a theater near you unless you wake up.
