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Showing posts from December, 2025

Amariyanna Copeny & the Flint Water Crisis

By Maili Pieragostini In 2014, the water of Flint, Michigan, shifted from a basic necessity to a quiet, everyday danger. When the city switched its water source in an effort to save money, the water that flowed into homes wasn’t just discolored…it was dangerous. Lead seeped from aging pipes. Children were breaking out in rashes. Mothers and fathers were losing their hair. For many, bottled water became the new norm – and focus – of daily life, in order to drink, cook, and clean. This was the Flint Water Crisis: a failure of infrastructure, of oversight, and of justice.  In the middle of this crisis, one voice broke through – not of a politician, a scientist, or even of a seasoned activist, but of a child determined to be heard. Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny, otherwise known as Little Miss Flint.  In 2016, at barely eight years old, Copeny wrote a letter to President Barack Obama. She told him what life in Flint had become for kids like her: what it meant to grow up in a city where ...