As soon as I began talking, though, one of the group’s members, an older physician, confronted me. Without a sense of what she sounded like, she complained that Flint residents didn’t pay their water bills—and predicted this water thing would just encourage more of that, which would cause the doctor’s own already high water bills to rise even more. My mouth agape, I pretended she hadn’t said that—how could she say something like that?—but Dr. Reynolds wasn’t so forgiving. He got on her for her remarks, while Pete Levine masterfully kept things moving with adept political and diplomatic skills.
