Businesses help raise money, water for Flint
By John Joyce
Published in News on January 28, 2016 1:52 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Sharon Dixon sits beside several 5-gallon jugs and cases of water that have been donated toward her efforts to help residents of Flint, Michigan during their current water crisis. Water and money collected at downtown businesses will be driven to Flint Monday for drinking, cooking, cleaning and bathing.
A community of artists from Jacksonville, New Bern, Kinston and Goldsboro are banding together to collect bottled water and supplies to send as relief for the people affected by the water crisis in Flint, Mich.
Trucks loaded with donated cases of bottled water and wet wipes will depart New Bern on Feb. 1, to arrive in Flint the next day.
Reports vary on just how contaminated the water is, but the people there are in need, organizers said.
"It could happen here," local poet Sharon "Princess" Dixon said. "And when all the bottled water sold out around here, what we do? We would depend on other people," she said.
Much of the water already being sent to Flint, either by the government or by other relief efforts, is not reaching part of the population there, Dixon said.
"The water people are sending to Flint is only getting to the north side of the city. It is not trickling down to the south side," she said.
Dixon, after speaking with another artist, Lamont "Voice" Cox, and learning of his desire to help, reached out to a a pair of neighboring businesses in downtown Goldsboro to help support her cause.
Goldsboro City Councilman Antonio Williams (District 1) operates The Ice Storm, a popular ice cream and specialty lemonade shop located on Center Street, with his partner, Yvonnia Moore. Both were eager to help once Dixon explained her vision.
"She came by, told us what was going on and asked if we could help, even if it was just with space, letting people drop off their water bottles and us keeping them here," Williams said. "And we said, 'Sure.'"
Williams and Moore have been and will continue to accept donations and will hold them at their shop until Dixon, Cox and their partners come to pick them up Monday evening. The organizers will depart for Flint later that night.
The crisis in Flint began about two years ago, when officials decided to switch the city's main water supply -- from Lake Huron water treated via Detroit -- to the Flint River. As a result, lead and other contaminant seeped into the city's water which has impacted several thousand. People became sick, some have developed rashes.
The concern about the effects on school age children in the community effected by long-term exposure to lead in their drinking water is growing.
Meanwhile, the local government and the validity of some of the water studies done before and after the water crisis made national head lines have all come under scrutiny.
Moore said it remains important to find out how this was allowed to happen and to figure out where the blame lies. It cannot be allowed to be swept aside, she said.
"That does matter, because it could just as easily happen here. Like with the coal ash, a lot of people didn't even know about that and that happened right here in our community," Moore said.
Moore was referring to the seepage of coal ash into the Neuse River at the H.F. Lee plant in Goldsboro, and alluded to the Dan River coal ash spill that Duke Progress Energy eventually took responsibility for and has been told by the state it will have to pay to clean up.
Dixon agreed that it is important to know how and why these things happen, but the immediate concern is for the people effected.
"They can't bathe, they cant drink the water, they need to be able to cook," she said. The donated water will allow the citizens of Flint to clean their dishes and to wash their clothes.
Next door to the Ice Storm, Kalilah Mischeaux, owner of The Village Rising, is selling "SharLouise Glamour Gloves," handmade gloves fashioned by Dixon, for $12 a piece to raise money for Flint.
The other poets that got involved with Dixon and Cox have been bust gathering donations in Jacksonville and New Bern. One poet, who goes by the name Life, is driving around picking up donated cases of water and will be packing a truck full of supplies -- wet wipes are in high demand, he told Dixon -- and putting them together with donations here and in Kinston.
Both Life and Cox have financial campaigns under way, the details of which can be found on either of their FaceBook pages.
Dixon said she is not asking for money and anybody who wants to give cash can go to "Life Speaks Life" on FaceBook and donate there.
What she wants is for more people in the community to open up their businesses, open up their homes and if they cannot, then to get in touch with her and she will come pickle up the water herself. She is riding to Flint with Cox and Life and plans to find out just what else the people there need. When the group returns to N.C. Feb. 3, they plan to start collecting all over again. Dixon said they will make as many trips as they can,. Although the trucks and vans come with rental fees and gas costs, what matters to her is not the money.
"A lot of times people want to give nut they are not sure the money is going where they think it will or who is really getting what they have given," she said.
"We are going there ourselves and it is all to try to help the Citizens of Flint," she said.
"This will not be the last trip. We are going to do more."