A Day in Flint

Today we went to the Flint Institute of Arts. It is a great collection and a fabulous museum. We had so much fun. It is sobering, however, to make the forty minute drive south to Flint. Flint is such an important Midwestern city and the site of so many extraordinary struggles for workers’ rights. It, like Saginaw, like Pontiac, and of course, like Detroit, has been decimated by the de industrialization of the Midwest in the past forty years. Then of course just as we were returning to Michigan the story of water in Flint and lead in the water system poisoning all of the children of Flint broke to a national audience. Being in Flint is a balance between the cultural gems of not only the Flint Institute of Arts but also the other cultural institutions, many housed along the same strip, and the open acres where manufacturing plants once thrived. It is a balance between the former wealth that endows those cultural institutions and the lack of economic opportunity and investment today.

The trip began with the drive by the Flint Water Plant.

There were two special exhibitions at the Flint Institute of Art: an African-American quilt exhibition, which included quilts by the quilters of Gee’s Bend and many others, and a special Jacob Lawrence exhibition of his series on John Brown. It was amazing to see this work in a single room.

The general collection proceeds chronologically and includes interesting artifacts from Africa and native communities along the Artic. There were great Impressionist pieces and an extraordinary furniture and tapestry collection from the seventeenth century. My favorite piece though as this painting of a woman reading.

After the museum, we ate at the Starlite Diner and then went back downtown to the Flint Farmer’s Market. The market is fantastic. Great vendors. Amazing food. A lovely wine shop. It is not to be missed–and it was packed with people on this Saturday.

A lovely day, but the horrible water situation hangs over the day and in many ways over our time here in Michigan. I feel as though we all have culpability. The disregard for people, their lives, their health, their well-being is breath-taking and heart-breaking. We re better than that as a country, and Michigan is better than that as a state. We all have responsibility for what is happening in Flint; we all must act in solidarity with Flint and create a world where people have access to clean water, jobs with dignity, and lives with honor.