Pearl Jam launched a crowdfunding campaign to help the city of Flint, Michigan, overcome the serious water crisis.
In the last few decades Flint has been writing one of the saddest pages in the history of the United States: the original home of General Motors, where it was established in the early 1900s, the city has become the epicentre and symbol of the unemployment crisis in the United States, being particularly affected by it after the deindustrialisation and the closure of the car company.
Today, 41% of its 100,000 inhabitants live below the poverty line and the situation has often been documented in Michael Moore’s films, who was born exactly in the city located in the north-eastern part of the United States.
But endless problems seem to affect the city of Flint: indeed it was hit by one of the US most severe water crisis, caused by lead contamination. High levels of this toxic metal were also found in the blood of hundreds of children that now faced with serious physical and mental problems.
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On 5 January, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency, restated on 16 January by the President of the United States Barack Obama, who authorised the Federal emergency management agency to release 5 million dollars in aid of the local population.
For this extreme emergency situation many artists, musicians, actors and celebrities are taking action: Aretha Franklin donated hotel rooms to the residents of the contaminated areas; Cher sent 180,000 bottles of water; Madonna will donate 10,000 dollars.
Last week Pearl Jam, the band’s manager Kelly Curtis and a group of friends and partners – including Live Nation and Universal Music Publishing Group – donated 300,000 dollars to buy water filtres, bottles, aid and prevention services to Flint citizens. Donours also started a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdrise, through which they collected more than 80,000 dollars up to now.
Flint’s water crisis had been denounced by the inhabitants long time ago and the metal band King 810 also released a song entitled Let me be alone to protest against the crisis after that some of its members were hospitalized due to lead poisoning.
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