President Obama Wednesday visited Flint, Michigan to highlight the federal government’s response to the lead poisoning scandal and to renew calls for Congress to pass emergency assistance for the beleaguered city of 100,000. The presidential visit comes one day after the Coalition on Human Needs and allies hosted Child Lead Poisoning: Preventable Harm , a webinar that examined the catastrophe of lead poisoning in the United States and its causes and effects. The webinar was cosponsored by Children’s Leadership Council, First Focus, MomsRising, the National Head Start Association and the...

It all began with a snowball. Arleen’s 14-year-old son Jori and his cousin were throwing snowballs at passing cars. One driver took umbrage, slamming his brakes, chasing Jori into the family’s apartment and kicking down the front door. When Arleen’s landlord found out about the property damage, Arlene and her two sons were evicted, out on the street. It was viciously cold out, even for a January in Milwaukee. The temperature fell to ten below; the wind chill, 40 below. Local TV newscasts flashed frostbite warnings. But in Milwaukee, evictions, unlike baseball games, aren’t called just because...

There is some “new” news out of Flint this week: Recent testing of lead in the city’s troubled water system shows things are improving six months after the city switched its water source and began adding chemicals to control corrosion of aging pipes. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the good news isn’t good enough. This week’s Washington Post headline says it all: “Water in Flint, Mich., is improving but still unsafe to drink, researchers say.” The article quotes Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor who helped uncover the massive contamination in Flint’s water supply, as saying...