FLINT, MICHIGAN—The Flint River, poisoned source of the city's drinking water, winds its way through a neighborhood along East Hamilton Street, where there are as many houses without windows as there are with them, and where you see something you don't often see in these very religious United States—derelict churches, all boarded up, two or three of them at a time. When I first came to Flint, on a road trip through the industrial Midwest prior to the 1980 presidential election, I was first astonished by the sight of abandoned factory complexes. Huge, mute places, struck dumb by an American economy already headed overseas but not yet perfumed by the jargon of "the new global economy." These were steel mills in Youngstown and auto plants in Flint. They all looked like lost cities, a graveyard for the hopes of countless generations.

The derelict churches sounded a different emotional chord. The churches were one industry that stayed in Flint. You can't outsource faith. God does not work an assembly line in Vietnam or a call center in India. But you can abandon faith and you can lose track of God and when you do, you find a church boarded up, its promises as dead as an autoworker's pension and as gone as an autoworker's job. There is an ineffable sadness in what once was and in all that's left behind.

But the Christ Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church is alive and thriving. The Dr. Alfred L.C. Dobbs Fellowship Hall played host to voters from three of the city's precincts—the 14th, the 28th, and the 37th. By the middle of the afternoon, turnout had been strong, at least according to the ladies working the registration tables. At three o'clock, 197 people had voted in the 14th, 196 had voted in the 28th, and 142 in the 37th, but not as many people live in the 37th precinct any more. Behind the voting booths, on the stage at the front of the hall, a stack of boxes containing Brita water filtration systems stands as quiet witness to the stakes of this election.

This was a signifying vote, for obvious reasons. It was the first chance for the people of Flint to give formal political voice to the anger that has overtaken the city since the criminal neglect of government poisoned the city's water and, thereby, its children. Wendell Payton works at the Hurley Medical Center, where some heroic physicians first sounded the alarm about what had happened when the city started to take its water from the Flint River. A pediatrician at Hurley named Dr. Mona Hasha-Attisha first sounded the alarm when a friend who works for the EPA told her that the city had not added corrosion control substances to its ancient water pipes during the change in the city's water supply. When pediatricians hear about lead poisoning, they don't waste time. Lead is so toxic and the damage is so long-lasting it scares pediatricians to death. The doctor went off like an air raid siren. And soon, the whole country knew what had been done to the city of Flint.

Wendell Payton takes great pride in the place he works. He showed up straight from the medical center in a Hurley ballcap and a Hurley windbreaker. Born and bred in Flint, he doesn't miss an election even in the best of times, and it has not been the best of times in Flint for a very long time. "That was something that my parents taught me, coming up," Payton said. "That it was important to vote because people died for my right to vote." Still, Payton saw the fine hand of unaccountable power behind what the state of Michigan has allowed to happen in his hometown.

"You ask me," he said, sounding very much like community leaders that you find in New Orleans, "they're trying to empty out the city so they can rebuild it for wealthy people. They'll refurbish the historical houses and then just tear down the rest so they can rebuild the city the way they wanted." He was not the first person in Flint to voice this concern. He votes because, what the hell, it's a way to kick back.

Sharise Harris came to the hall with her grandchildren only to find that she was registered to vote in another location. It took a good 20 minutes for the ladies at the registration table to figure this out. At her feet, five-year old Julio and two-year old Zaya were remarkably patient with all this grown-up foolishness, although Julio did let out with one damned fine five-year-old's I'M REALLY BORED vocalized yawn. Sharise is worried about the two kids. Her daughter was supposed to get them tested, but Sharise isn't sure that her daughter has done it yet. "I got worried when they first told us to start boiling the water," she said. Of course, boiling water doesn't do a damn thing about the lead that's in the water. Now there are billboards all over Flint saying precisely that. But that's what the people who were supposed to know better first told Sharise Harris, so she did it.

"All elections are important, but this one is very important," she says. "Look at these two. They're going to have to be watched for the rest of their lives because of what happened."

"The water from the sink is bad," Julio elaborated. "Stay away from that."

He gave a pile of dirty snow a swift kick and his mother corralled Julio and his sister into the car to drive to another place where she could finally vote. She turned onto Newall Street and swung wide to avoid a work crew that were hard at work in a trench, pulling up an ancient water pipe. More people came to the Fellowship Hall, and many of them stopped for a moment in the parking lot, watching the workmen in silence. There are derelict churches in this neighborhood but faith is not outsourced. It lives here, its life tentative, like so many other lives are in Flint, where the river is poisoned.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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