This op-ed is from Flint City Council President Ladel Lewis
As Donald Trump comes to today, our city has a clear message: He failed us as president and we’re not going back.
Our city has been through so much, but instead of delivering for us, Trump repeatedly left our citizens behind. He sold us out every chance he got, passing his tax scam that made it easier for companies to shutter factories and ship Michigan jobs overseas well before the pandemic hit. Under his watch, more than 280,000 Michiganders — including 7,400 people here in Flint – lost their jobs, and our state lost more than 30,000 manufacturing jobs.
His tax giveaways for billionaires and the wealthiest Americans worsened the racial wealth gap, doing nothing to build wealth and opportunity for our communities. His failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately killed Black Americans and forced Black-owned businesses to close at higher rates.
When he was president, Trump also tried to undermine efforts to make our water safe to drink. Every year, he tried to cut funding for the water infrastructure program that we relied on in Flint to rebuild our water system. He also appointed an unqualified partisan to lead the EPA who claimed that Flint’s drinking water was safe before it really was. Donald Trump failed us on jobs, our economy, and our health the first time he was president, and he will fail us again.
To put it bluntly: Flint cannot afford a second Trump presidency. We know what he’ll do if he’s elected. His closest advisors have already written a blueprint for a second Trump term, called Project 2025, that would jeopardize our health even more and give Trump unprecedented power and control over our daily lives.
Trump’s extreme Project 2025 agenda would raise costs on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year. Independent experts have warned that his plans would send inflation skyrocketing, add trillions to the deficit, and send our country into a recession as early as next year. He would cut programs specifically designed to increase Black home ownership and support Black-owned businesses.
I have seen the turmoil under a Trump presidency and the progress made under Vice President Harris.
She has real plans and a real record of delivering for Flint residents, some of whom she met when she visited our city in 2020 and spoke with small business owners.
She has helped bring more than 17,000 jobs to Flint over the past four years — and she helped create more than 20,000 new manufacturing jobs statewide. Vice President Harris has a plan to build an opportunity economy where everyone has a fair shot at success, so families cannot just get by, but get ahead. She will lower costs for working families — just like she took on Big Pharma to cap the price of insulin and prescription drugs for seniors. She’ll continue bringing good-paying jobs back to America and boost manufacturing. She’ll crack down on exploitative landlords and has set a goal to build 3 million new homes to cut housing costs for families. And her agenda will help more entrepreneurs start their own small business and cut unnecessary red tape that makes it hard to get new businesses off the ground.
Trump may be trying to erase the past and his abysmal record in Flint, but we remember. That’s why it’s so important that we choose the future — and Vice President Harris’ new way forward at the ballot box on Nov. 5.
Flint City Council President Ladel Lewis