. good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. it was three years ago when the people of the flint, michigan were poisoned by their own water supply. tonight we'll get an update from the front lines of that struggle. then, someone who has been fighting for clean water on a global scale. he is the eldest son of the famous beatle john lennon. we are glad you joined us, coming up right now. ♪ ♪

contributions from your pbs station, from viewers like you. thank you. # pleased to welcome flint's most famous doctor this program. she has become one of the most courageous voices in that city's water crisis, sounding the alarm on a poisonous supply that contained led, e.coli and possibly legion nar's disease.

>> great to be with you. >> three years later, these criminal cases are just starting to get underway. let me start by asking whether or not three years later you think what happened in your city was in fact criminal. >> yeah, absolutely criminal. one of the greatest environmental crimes of our century and we have been using the past tense, three years ago, but we are very much still in the middle of this crisis. to this day, the people of fingerprint cannot drink unfilters water. so we are still in the middle of this crime. >> what is your sense of what are they saying at least the end game is here? how much longer will residents three, four years later still be forced to drink bottled water? >> we finally had a huge settlement that happened. that's great. it is going to guarantee pipe replacements. we're going to finally get these damaged pipes out of the ground.

and then that whole process of pipe replacement will take another two to three years. so for another two to three years, the people of fingerprint should be on filtered and bottled water. you can think of it like an entire city with ptsd, postraumatic stress disorder, an entire city that had so many obstacles was betrayed. and we have an entire city, which exposed to led, one of the most well known well studied neuro toxins we know of that. on top of that, bacteria. so we have a community that is traumatized. and time will tell, you know, what happens to this population of especially our children. but i get to spend my every day making sure our kids turn out okay. we can't sit back and see the

consequences. it's really providing us with an opportunity to do everything, especially for our children, so that we don't see the life altering consequences, especially of led exposure. >> speaking of those children and those life altering consequences, what is in place as of yet, assuming there is something in place as yet, that is going to track these kids for the next 20, 30, 40 years, whatever it might be to see what the long-term applications of this crisis was. >> absolutely. that is how i spend my every day. i direct something called a pediatric public health initiative where we are investing in the children and evaluating our outcomes and leading the effort to build a registry, not only to support the kids today, but also to track and evacuate and see how they are doing for decades to come and not to see the consequence of led exposure, the expackets it has on cognition and behavior and the criminal justice system, but really

hopefully to show what hasn't been done before, how we're able to proactively invest in children and to share really hopefully best practices in decades to come. >> to use your phrase, invest in these children, who is funding this, and let's assume in a worst case scenario there are consequences health-wise for these kids for years to come. who is going to pay for that? >> that's a great question. we have been able to do so much for the kids. we have a medicaid waiver. we have knew trags programming. we have early education investment, universal preschool, literacy programs funded by state, federal and philanthropic dollars. many of those things are threatened by the current presidential administration. so we need to make sure that we have a long-term investment for these children because this is a long-term situation. >> threatened by this administration in what ways? >> yeah, for example, we have a

medicaid waiver, so our kids in fingerprint have an expanded health care access through medicaid. medicaid, health insurance is being threatened. a lot of programs that support vulnerable families, like the wic program, food assistance, after school programming, these are all things that our children in flint are benefitting from because we know they promote development and can mitigate the impact of this exposure. all of those things are on the chopping block, not to mention the cuts to the epa. you know, we will see, really many more flints to come, but we will also see the progress we've made become blunted if we continue to threaten programs that the epa runs, safe water drinking programs and led prevention programs. >> the politics notwithstanding and i'm not naive in asking this question, but it is one thing for the philanthropic support to be limited by a number of years. you will go back to those organizations and ask to refund for a few years.

i suspect some of them will. but i don't how it is that the government, the state government, the local government, the federal government can only be at this point committed to helping these kids for two or three years down the road. what's that about? >> so budgets are made for one or two years. there is not that long-term perspective. but this is a long-term issue, and we need a commitment for decades to come, and we have yet to see that. >> what numbers of kids are we talking about that you suspect will or are being affected by this? >> sure. so the entire population of flint, less than 100,000, everybody was impacted. kids, adults, seniors, even animals. but led is most toxic to the developing brain. it is children under six that bear the brunt of this exposure and there is about 10,000 kids under the age of six in flint. >> what is your sense of the accountability or lack thereof on the part of officials years

later? >> so my job as a pediatrician is to take care of the kids. and right when this happened, my focus became preserving the tomorrow's of these kids. so i have not been invested and involved in the accountability. but the accountability is incredibly important for the people of flint. you can think of it as a truth and reconciliation process. we need to have that truth so that investigations, the charges to really bring out some sort of restorative justice and that long process of healing can begin. i know there is over 300 there has been many criminal charges, but i think really it's just the beginning. >> so there are those lawsuits you referenced a moment ago. there are these criminal cases that are making their way forward as i mentioned earlier at the top of this program. but give me your thoughts about that, and i like the way you programmed it. sort of like a trc after the fall of apar tide.

is there anything akin to that in the state of michigan? >> not that i know of. nothing i know of in the state of michigan. but this is a crisis that was really on top of decades of crisis. flint was under emergency management, which was really unprecedented. michigan has really the most egregious form where a state can take over a city. so there is really no precedent for that. and during this emergency management process, when the city had lost democracy is when the move was made to switch to the flint river without treating it properly. so there is nothing like this that happened before. >> you were right about that. but there are going to be, we are told, other cases like this that are going to happen in the future if something has rnt done. erin brocovich has been on the program for years. there are some of us that feel that at the moment three or four

years later there might be some flint fatigue, but i wonder how long it is going to be before another crisis like this in another city develops to bring us back to what we should have learned and should have done after the crisis. >> absolutely. we should have learned lessons before flint. a decade ago there was a similar led and water crisis, and we learned very little from that crisis. there has been about 150 years of led and water crisis and we haven't had the political will to do much about it. the romans build their aqua ducts out of led plumbing. so there has been -- and many people thought the devise of the romans was because they used so much led. we have known for a long time about led in our plumbing. we haven't done much about it. if we continue to not do much about it, we will see flints to come. we are creating this perfect milieu of flints to come. we want to cut regulations that

protect public health. we want to eliminate these public health agencies. we want to cut funding to scientific research and we want to cut health care to millions of people. all of these things together are a perfect storm for us to see many, many more flints to come, which is tragic because after flint it has been my charge to prevent another flint. all of this was absolutely preventable. no child should be exposed to led from any source. we need to learn from our mistakes and make these regulations and protects stronger. >> as i mentioned at the top of this conversation, you are sitting in troy, michigan, down the road a bit from flint. but you are sitting in a backdrop in front of a medical center, which leads me to ask how in fingerprint tlint the me community has responded. what say you about your increased respect for the medical community in flint? >> yeah. so the medical community has

played a huge role in not only exposing this crisis, having my back but really intervening. in our medical clinics, there is a lot of the interventions to protect the children are taking place. for example, early literacy programs and trauma informed care. a lot of the mental health services, behavior health services and a lot of the reassurance and hope that we're trying to instill in our community. you know, i see patients every day and i've been writing, you can call it prescriptions for hope. they hear what you're hearing. they hear brain damage and neuro toxin. so we're really trying to instill, especially in our children, that they are bright, brave, smart and they have an amazing future amhead of them. a lot of that is being led by our medical community. >> the entire audience knows that you were castigated.

you were demonized when you first came out with this story some years ago. people didn't want to believe you, the state and other officials pushed back on you. we all know that you were right in retrospect. and i keep reading that even all these years later, you are getting some little girls around the country and around the world who look up to you, who are proud of you, who want to be like you. what do you say to them? >> i tell them be loud, be stubborn, fight for what's right. this is a great story of how we need to believe in science. we're approaching earth day, the march for science. trust your gut. trust the facts. but use those -- use those numbers to make the world a better place. i continue to this day to do my job, to protect my kids as a pediatrician and to use my voice to elevate their voices. so this unjustice is everywhere. flint is just one example and we need lots of loud, stubborn little girls, especially brown

ones, to make a difference in this world. >> thank you for your witness, for your work oncoming on this program. good to have you on this program. up next a musician on his children's books. stay with us. the fight for clean water is not just a battle in flint, michigan but around the world. the new children's book "touched the earth" brings a love for the planet and reading books together. the author is musician julian lennon. this is part of the work he's been doing with his white feather foundation. thank you for being on the program, sir. tell me about the foundation, first of all. >> well, it's a bit of a long story, but it initially arose from a meeting i had that came

out of the blue while i was touring in australia. and i was in delayed and i got a phone call from the hotel saying, excuse me, mr. lennon, there is a group of 30 to 50 people down in the lobby of the hotel with an an original tribe and a couple of camera crews. i said you're joking, right? they said, no, we're being very serious. can you take care of this? i'm like, what can i take care of? so i go down. and as i walk into the lobby area, they're in a sort of semicircle with the indigenous tribe. this woman elder, who was the elder, the tribe's elder, one of the tribe's elder, the woman walks up to me with both hands and presents me with a white feather, which is a male swan's white feather, which is about

yah big and said to me, can you help us? you have a voice. and i -- you know, that -- i mean, the back story to this is, of course, that as dad said on the rare occasion i saw him, if something happens to me, then to let you know that he would be all right or that we were all going to be all right would be in the form of a white feather. so, you know, you see white feathers on a daily basis, pretty much. but being presented like that directly like that from, you know, one of the oldest indigenous tribes in the world, you know, that was goose bumps through the roof right there. and so it really was a question of sort of, you know, either just remaining a rock and roller or stepping up to the plate. >> yeah. >> and i had heard a bit about their history, their past.

so i spent ten years making a documentary about them with a few friends. and at the end of it, which is called "whale dreamers," by the way. at the end of it we thought if this makes any money whatsoever, i want it to go back to the tribe to keep their culture alive and keep them protected because there was a lot going on. and the only way to do that at that particular point in time was to do it through a foundation. so the director and myself were throwing ideas on the table, and logically the whitefe feather foundation came up. and initially it was a way to get the money from the film back to the tribe. i thought kind of that was it. all right. back to the rock and roll. get on with it. and it was only after sort of social media really came into play and i put a website up expressing that we were doing that i really started getting a

lot more e-mails, a lot more e-mails requesting for help. it was overwhelming, in fact. and, you know, i had to really think about that and what -- what was important to me. what stood out to me? what could i take care of? what would i want to take care of if that was the position i was in, what would i choose to help? i was invited out a few years ago by a friend called scott harrison who started an organization called charity water who have gone on to bring clean water to literally millions. i was invited to go with him to ethiopia on one of his trips where we ventured all over the country to look at scenarios where there was no clean water, where they were in the process of building wells and where they had thriving communities, you

know, which was beautiful to see. and so we did a campaign with him for clean water well. and that really touched me. it was the first trip i had ever been on like that. at the same time, within the same time period, i was able to go to kenya to see part of the millennium projects, what was going on there and they were dealing with health and education and also, you know, schools. so we spent a fair amount of time going to the health clinics, going to the schools, listening to the kids and the girls schools especially, asking them what they need. and so white feather has embarked on all of those issues, clean water, health and education and also the protection and the protection of indigenous tribes from all over the globe. >> so you're glad you took that meeting then? >> oh, yeah. you got that right.

and accepted the white feather. >> absolutely. it's been -- you know, i'm joined at the hip now. it's forever a part of what i do. >> yeah. i could only imagine. you said it was goose bumps through the roof, but i could only imagine what that must have felt like to have had your father tell you that this would be the sign and then -- >> i have to say it was a pretty weird one, especially because, you know, i would have been anywhere between, i don't know, ten and my early teens when he would have told me that. so it would have been quite a weird thing to say. i remember him saying it and i thought, well, that's a bit odd. and i told my mom, and she said, well, that's a bit odd. but low and behold. 20 years later and really, really beyond taken aback. >> yeah. tell me about the -- you laid out what the foundation does. i'm glad i asked that. i know all the work you do. tell me specifically about this

children's book, "touch the earth". >> i'll come around to it. i also the end to -- yes, everything i do is connected to the white feather foundation. i was actually -- i had met a friend, bart, we were going to talk about putting a bio gra if i together because i was worried that time was flying by, which it is. and a lot of my friends have passed away and who knows when. and, so, initially we were talking about biography and he dealt into the work i was doing. he said you've got all this stuff going on. you write songs about the environment and the humanitarian issues. you have made documentaries about this stuff, you know. you have started the white feather foundation. but have you done anything for the kids? and i said, well, yeah. i've got some animated tv shows and a couple of cds for charity for kids here and there, but nothing directly from me. he says what about that?

and i said, well, i think it's a great idea. i said as long as we can incorporate everything that -- everything of what i do is parts of it. so a year ago we just started writing and decided that it had to have environmental elements to it. and it had to -- for me, it has to be reminiscent of days gone by when i remember nap time or bedtime. you would sit with your mother or your grandmother and you'd be arm and arm and you'd go through the pages of the book and go on an adventure and it was -- you know, it was such a fond memory of that sort of time of bonding and nurturing, which, you know, we see little of today with today's technology, you know, kind of stealing that a little bit with i pads and everything else. that was really, really important for me to bring that back and, you know, to be able to do it with beautiful

illustrations. >> sure. the pictures are gorgeous. >> she did an amazing job. it is a very simple book, but it tells a beautiful little story, and, you know, to bring in education a little bit, to get the kids to really start -- because i think at this age, sort of threes and onwards, you know, so sort of a lot of people call it the why age. well, why is the grass green? why is the sea polluted? why is the plastic there? and i think that's really good at opening the conversation for kids. and helping the kids to understand what's going on in their life and around them. but also not a bad reminder for the parents, too. >> for the little time you spent with your father, it is amazing to me that you embody so much of his spirit of using your artistic gift to love and serve other people. >> thank you for that.

i think it's more so than that. it's my mother that gave me that, that heart. because after seeing what her life was like and how she had been treated, you know, the one thing for me was that shouldn't happen to anybody, you know. >> right. >> and, so, empathy began early at home. and i've -- you know, the only thing i wanted to do was make mom proud. >> don't we all. >> yes, exactly. along my journey. and, so, i tried to be the best that i can be and tried to do the best that i can do through this journey called life. >> you're doing it. and i'm honored to have you on the program. >> the book is called "touch the earth" by julian lennon. wonderful illustrations and what better gift as we celebrate earth day tomorrow to give to your children in a great book like this. good to have you on, my friend. >> last year on this day we lost the iconic artist, prince. i certainly miss him.

but tonight we close with prince on a lighter note, sort of giving me the business as he always did. hope you enjoy the clip. this is our show for tonight. good night from l.a. thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith. >> and, you know, tavis, i love to laugh. i'm kidding. i'm kidding. >> he's funny. yeah. >> i'm kidding. i told her i was going to say that to you one time. that was for her. >> you got it out. and on that note, you can get out. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time as we take a deep dive on what's happening around the country. that's next time. we'll see you then.

>> good evening from los angeles, i am tavis smiley, john ridley joins us to discuss "let it fly." how he manages to juggle headline grabbing projects, the anthology series, "american crime." showtime, six-part series, gorilla. from his debut album. and john ridley, and sampa, coming up in just a moment.