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Matt Damon Calls On Mich. Gov. Snyder To Resign Over Flint Water Scandal
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Matt Damon lambasted Republican Gov. Rick Snyder over the Flint, Mich. water scandal during an interview Sunday, suggesting the governor should be ousted after “a fair trial.”
“At the very least he should resign! At the very least,” Damon said about Snyder.
“Listen, everybody’s entitled to a fair trial in the United States of America, but that man should get one. And soon. That’s just my personal opinion,” Damon continued.
Damon, an environmentalist, has made philanthropic efforts to get clean water to the masses. In 2009, he helped form Water.org, an organization devoted to getting drinkable water to water-strapped communities.
“In terms of the work that we do, to see it happening in Flint, every parent in America feels it on a visceral, deep level, because we ask the question, ‘What if that was my child?'” Damon said during an interview with The Daily Beast.
“It’s unconscionable in Flint, and it’s unconscionable that 663 million people around the world are dealing with that every day in the developing world. Those are the communities we interact with, and that’s the mission of Water.org: to end that suffering for those children, and those parents,” he added.
Michael Moore, who hails from Flint, mirrored Damon’s sentiments in an open letter to President Barack Obama last week saying Gov. Snyder is responsible for curtailing the Democratic system in “this mostly African-American city—where 41% of the people live below the official poverty line.”
Moore and others argue it was Gov. Snyder’s decision to move the the city’s water source from Detroit to a regional water system, a move ultimately tainting the city’s water.
However, it was Flint’s own city council and mayor that approved the idea, with Michigan’s Democratic State Treasurer Andy Dillon ultimately signing off on the plan.Damon did not suggest Gov. Snyder was racist, as Moore implied, but he did say that the Flint disaster was a result of systematic injustice that allegedly plagues areas with poor sources of water.
“These are huge systemic injustices we’re talking about that hopefully everybody is waking up to. The question then is, what do we do about it? It will be interesting to see where we go from here,” he said.
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