The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Immigrant Doctor Fought for Flint Children

Aug 6, 2018

Starting in 2014, criminal negligence by state officials poisoned the entire city water supply of Flint, Michigan, with lead.

Lead is poisonous to everyone, and especially poisonous to children. It gets into their growing brains and can’t be taken out.

The city-wide poisoning went on for over a year. Even today it is not completely fixed.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is an Iraqi pediatrician working in Flint. Her research in September 2015 was the “last domino” in many months of public outcry, before officials would stop denying they had a problem.

Dr. Mona’s parents moved out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to England where she was born, then to the U.S. She could imagine a government poisoning a city—Saddam had done that. She could imagine a government lying and covering up its crimes Saddam had done that.

Dr. Mona used her political experience to stand up and help defend the children of Flint. She is an example of how the working class can benefit from experiences shared across borders.

As she says, “When you work together with others, you can accomplish and change so much more.”