The toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan exemplifies capitalist state terrorism. Not only is the whole working class poisoned by the profit drive, but also the treatment of Black and undocumented workers exposes the bosses’ racist essence.
Flint, the birthplace of General Motors, is nearly 60 percent Black, and over 40 percent of its population lives below the official poverty line.
Under the pretense of saving the city money, Flint switched its water source in 2014 from Detroit to the local river. Residents pay $140 a month for this toxic waste. Nearly 9,000 kids were poisoned. There’s a spike in Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia. Ten died.
Within weeks of the change, families complained of a foul smell from the pipes. Researchers at Virginia Tech proved that the state government not only ignored complaints but also lied about lead levels and concealed evidence.
Who’s to blame? Capitalism, General Motors and its century of exploitation. “After decades of industrial dumping by GM and its suppliers, the Flint river became polluted” (Columbia, 1/26).
Flint is no isolated incident. Every city with a current or former industrial base suffers the consequences of this capitalist waste dumping.
Flint: No Stranger to Struggle
As home to tens of thousands of industrial workers, Flint was the site of one of the most significant labor battles in U.S. history, the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike. In 1936, from December to February, autoworkers occupied their GM factories for 44 days. Through collective action and unshakeable working-class unity, they counterattacked the bosses, took the offensive and won. It inspired a wave of sit-down strikes nationwide. The working class never forgot.
The bosses didn’t either; when GM left, it tried to defeat both workers and their environment. The arsenic, chromium, mercury, lead and other toxins will take centuries to dissolve. The unemployment and crumbling infrastructure in Flint may actually foreshadow more capitalist crises to come.   
Embers of that anger against capitalism still burn today. Workers chanted, “Hey hey! Ho ho! Snyder’s got to go!”
Many wore t-shirts printed with “Flint Lives Matter.”
A retired autoworker said it best, “We are being saddled with this toxic water because we are under a toxic system” (ACLUofMichighan).
Politicians, in an effort to cover their ass, point fingers at Snyder or the emergency manager Darnell Earley when it’s capitalism that caused this water crisis.  A system based on wage-slavery will always put profit over health and safety of the working class.
Capitalists Respond to Crisis with Fascism
After Snyder and president Obama declared an emergency, workers were greeted with the National Guard.
Many water distribution centers required identification cards, effectively barring up to 1,000 undocumented workers from clean water. Because of the language barrier and fear of the government, they were also the last to find out about the lead (abc12 news, 1/20). In times of crisis, bosses respond with fascist terror and the racist essence of the system exposes itself.
The backdrop of the Flint crisis is rising racism. In addition to the daily murder and terrorization of Black workers and youth, the U.S. has ramped up deportations and turned up the racism against Muslim working-class families. This is an attempt to divide our class so we blame each other instead of bosses for decrepit schools, lack of housing, imperialist wars, and toxic health environments.
Attacking one section of the working class effectively drives down the living conditions of all workers. The Huffington Post’s Race and Economic Jeopardy for All report explains how “politicians’ deliberate use of racism has hurt workers—Black, Latin, women, gay and white—while, simultaneously, advancing the agenda of the 1 percent….[White workers] suffered wage stagnation just like everybody else” (1/18).
While Black, Latin, refugee, and indigenous workers suffer the brunt of racist exploitation, racism hurts white workers, too. The 38,000 white workers in Flint can attest to that.
Communism Antidote for Workers
We can always look to the working class for solidarity. A Muslim community group donated 30,000 bottles of water to the workers in Flint. Multiracial rallies blasted the murderous government. PLP fights to build on this solidarity by organizing a mass party of workers to fight for communism.
There is no safe place for working-class people under capitalism. Whether you are battling toxic working conditions in China, the ISIS and other capitalist thugs in the Middle East, or the Zika virus in Latin America, communism is the antidote for our class.
We must build a world where we run society in our interests. That requires eradicating the toxic system of profit from human history.
We can begin the road to revolution by joining PLP.