Fifty Years Without Running Water

2004 was a big year in Coal Run. After half a century of discrimination, neglect, and bureaucratic runaround, the residents of the mostly-black neighborhood outside Zanesville, Ohio finally got running water. 2008 will be a landmark year too: earlier this month, a jury in the US District Court in Columbus found that racial discrimination lay behind the lack of services, and awarded the affected residents $15,000-$300,000 each.

You can read the details in the original lawsuit (.pdf), and I highly recommend doing so—it's a case study in institutional racism. (During the trial, the town and county argued that they weren't aware that residents didn't have water, and that if they were aware, they weren't sure who had jurisdiction over the neighborhood. That may have been true, but they were happy to charge black citizens up to ten times as much as their white peers to purchase water and haul it home in trucks.)

But as much as this is a story about race, it's also a story about poverty, and how bureaucracy and greed work together to prevent poor people from accessing services that most of us take for granted. 22 percent of Zanesville's residents live below the federal poverty level, including nearly a third of children under 18. Unemployment in Muskingum County, where Zanesville is located, runs at 7.4 percent—significantly higher than the national average. Only 11 percent of city residents have completed college. But just as it took Hurricane Katrina to alert America to the poverty of the Gulf Coast, Zanesville didn't make national news until we heard of something so egregious that we couldn't help but take notice.

Just a week before the District Court decision, Barack Obama spoke in Zanesville about his plan for faith-based organizations to help the country's neediest people. That's a start. But will his administration, or John McCain's, undertake the task of reshaping this society into one that meets the basic needs of all its citizens, no matter how poor or out of the way?

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Andrew|W.

Comments

District Court in Columbus found that racial discrimination lay behind the lack of services, and awarded the affected residents $15,000-$300,000 each.

Now who, I wonder is going to have to pony up all that cash?
A: The politicians who were elected to represent ALL of the people of the district, who failed for 50 years to provide equal services, apparently based on racial prejudice?
Or
B: Taxpayers throughout Ohio who had nothing to do with it.

Let me take a wild-ass guess at this and say...

Option B.

...Barack Obama spoke in Zanesville about his plan for faith-based organizations to help the country's neediest people. That's a start.

His plan?!?!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't that George Dubya Bullsh's plan, which many of us roundly criticized when he first proposed it?

Isn't Barack Obama's plan just to CONTINUE the Bullsh plan that we hated when it was coming from Bullsh?

Posted by: Droolius Sneezer on 07/21/08 at 2:31 PM Respond

Faith-based operations have no place in public policy - this nation was founded in part on separation of church and state, and having politicians pander to the religious potion of the voting public should not change this. If you want to believe in God (Yahweh, Allah, Babaloo, or whoever you want) don't expect me or other rationally thinking people to foot the bill for it.

Posted by: Bill G on 07/22/08 at 4:51 AM Respond

Bill G. , look at America in 1783, the states had religious tests to hold public office. Atheists(not to mention Jews) were not allowed to hold public office. The Bill of Rights of the Texas Constitution (Article I, Section 4) allows people to be excluded from holding office on religious grounds. An official may be "excluded from holding office" if she/he does not "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being."

This would specifically exclude all Atheists and Agnostics from holding public office.
This not limited to Texas. Seven other states (AR, MA, MD, NC, PA, SC and TN) all have similar exclusionary language included in their Bill of Rights, Declaration of Rights, or in the body of their constitutions.

In a few states whose constitutions include the text of the oath of office, the candidate must swear an oath to God. Such an oath would prevent ethical non-theists from taking office. Of course, non-ethical non-theists would have no problems with such an oath.

Posted by: Pastor Leroy on 07/22/08 at 7:31 AM Respond