Vox Sentences - $626 million for Flint

Flint, Michigan, residents will get $626 million in a settlement over contaminated water; a Hong Kong protester dubbed "Captain America 2.0" gets six years in prison under a harsh national security law.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Flint settlement finalized at $626 million

Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

• Residents of Flint, Michigan affected by the city’s contaminated water will receive a $626.25 million settlement from the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, and other individuals and corporations. [CNN / Laura Ly]
• The settlement resolves thousands of suits alleging contamination of the city’s water supply caused lead poisoning and Legionnaire’s disease, affecting the city’s predominantly Black population starting in 2014. Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was charged with two counts of willful neglect in January due to the crisis. [Reuters / Tyler Clifford and Kanishka Singh]
• Flint’s long battle for clean drinking water has been the site of what some have called environmental racism. “If we were middle class, or a wealthy white community, this wouldn’t have happened,” Flint resident Melissa May said. [Al Jazeera]
• The ruling, by US District Judge Judith Levy, stipulates that 80 percent of the settlement will go to people who were under 18 at the time they were exposed to the contaminated water; of that amount, 50 percent will go to those who were younger than 6 at the time of their exposure. Between 18,000 and 20,000 children under the age of 18 were residents of Flint during the water crisis, according to official estimates. [Washington Post / Adela Suliman]
• Levy called the settlement ”a remarkable achievement,” partly because all plaintiffs, whether they were part of a class action suit or decided to sue individually, will be subject to the same payment program and timeline. The settlement will pay out about half of Flint’s residents, although other plaintiffs are choosing instead to fight out their cases in court. [The Detroit News / Beth LeBlanc]
• But it’s not enough, say many activists and political figures, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “The amount in this settlement does not reflect the value of the lives that have been lost and the lives that have been damaged,” former Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said. [Guardian / Gloria Oladipo]

Hong Kong protester to be jailed for nearly 6 years

• Ma Chun-Man, an activist and delivery person in Hong Kong, has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison for encouraging independence from China under the city’s draconian national security law. [Reuters / Jessie Pang]
• Ma had been dubbed “Captain American 2.0” for holding the superhero’s shield at protests. He was convicted under the law, which passed in 2020 after widespread pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, for statements he made to the press, as well as his pro-democracy signs and slogans at protests. [BBC]
• Ma frequently protested alone, as the massive pro-democracy rallies dissipated under the crush of Beijing’s authoritarian rule and the Covid-19 pandemic. Shouting, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” a popular chant during the 2019 protests, got Ma arrested multiple times last year. [WSJ / Dan Strumpf]
• Ma is the second person to be convicted under the law; judge Stanley Chan found him guilty of one count of inciting secession. Ma had claimed that his protests were constitutionally protected. [Bloomberg / Kari Soo Lindberg and Olivia Tam]
• “The Hong Kong government must stop endlessly expanding its definition of ‘endangering national security’ as a means of locking up people who express views it doesn’t like,” Amnesty International’s Deputy Secretary General Kyle Ward said in a statement. The human rights NGO announced in October that it would close its offices in Hong Kong. [Amnesty International]

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F. W. de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa, is dead at 85. [NYT / Marc Lacey]

• The Chinese port city of Dalian has halted frozen food imports after an outbreak of Covid-19. [Reuters]
• About 900,000 children across the country received their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the day Wednesday. [The White House]
• Congress revived an effort to pass legislation compensating families of Black World War II veterans who were prevented from taking advantage of their benefits, like the GI Bill, when they returned from combat. [AP / Aaron Morrison and Kat Stafford]

“When you are on the verge of the abyss, it’s not important to discuss what will be your fourth or fifth step. What’s important to discuss is what will be your first step. Because if your first step is the wrong step, you will not have the chance to do a search to make a second or third one.”

[UN Secretary-General António Guterres, warning that efforts to slow global warming are failing]

China’s 1.4 billion people are averaging fewer than 100 cases of Covid-19 a day. All it takes is the willingness to shut down anything at any time. NPR’s Emily Feng explains from Beijing. [Spotify]

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