Flint on the Brink is a clear-eyed examination of an American rust-belt city struggling to decide who controls its future.

In this episode, former Michigan prosecutor and legal educator Arthur Busch reads and expands on his essay Flint on the Brink: How Broken Systems, Billion-Dollar “Saviors,” and Flint-First Leadership Are Fighting for the City’s Future. The episode explores how decades of economic decline, segregation, and institutional failure have weakened Flint’s economy and its ability to govern itself and plan for what comes next.

But Flint’s story is not only one of collapse. It is also a story shaped by powerful outside actors, fparticularly large philanthropic institutions that have poured enormous sums of money into the city. While philanthropy has funded important programs, cultural institutions, and physical improvements, it has also created an unhealthy dependence on a small number of private funders to support basic city functions, including at times police and fire services. When grants substitute for sound taxation, budgeting, and public accountability, structural problems are masked rather than solved.

The episode examines how this pattern has influenced decision-making in Flint, encouraging leaders to ask what foundations will pay for instead of what residents truly need and how those priorities should be funded. It revisits major cautionary episodes such as AutoWorld and the downtown redevelopment that followed—projects driven by optimistic studies, philanthropic money, and outside vision, but which failed to deliver lasting economic transformation and permanently removed valuable land from the tax base.

At the same time, the episode acknowledges Flint’s real strengths: a deep sense of community, a lower cost of living, cultural institutions. These assets matter—but only if they are woven into a realistic, locally driven vision for the future.

Ultimately, Flint on the Brink argues that no foundation, state agency, or outside “savior” can substitute for accountable, Flint-first leadership. Public money and philanthropy can help repair damage and support good plans, but civic confidence and self-governance must come from within. The city’s future depends on leaders willing to level with residents about hard truths, right-size infrastructure, confront segregation, and insist that decisions affecting Flint are made by people answerable to Flint voters.

This episode is part of The Mitten Channel, a Michigan-based podcast and media network examining law, public policy, labor, and life in America’s industrial communities. A full transcript is available, and listeners are invited to explore the broader archive and subscribe for future episodes.

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Join us for the full experience. Subscribe to The Mitten Channel on Substack to receive our latest narrative essays, audio stories, and deep-dive reporting directly in your inbox.

Explore Our Series:

• Radio Free Flint: Narrative storytelling and community perspectives on industrial resilience.
• The Mitten Works: Essential history and analysis of labor and economic policy.
• Flint Justice: Critical insights into the legal and institutional challenges facing our state.
  
  

Visit our Mitten Channel website for our complete library of podcasts, videos, and articles.

The Mitten Channel is a production of Radio Free Flint Media, LLC. © 2026 All Rights Reserved.

When water systems fail, the damage is not the same for everyone.
In Flint, the deepest harm lives in children’s brains.
In other cities, the damage is buried in pipes, mains, and hydrants.

In this episode, Arthur Busch examines what really gets damaged when public water systems fail—and why the law treats those harms very differently.

The episode opens in Flint, Michigan, with the story of Lee Anne Walters and her twin sons, who lost developmental skills after drinking lead-contaminated tap water. Their experience illustrates what lead exposure looks like up close: not statistics or charts, but children who had to relearn colors, numbers, and basic coordination, and who continue to struggle years later. This is the most enduring harm of bad water—damage carried inside a child’s body and brain for life.

From there, the episode draws a critical distinction between human damage and infrastructure damage. In Flint, the deepest injury is neurological and developmental, raising issues of justice, lifetime support, and accountability. In other cities, such as Miramar, Florida, and Greenville, South Carolina, the primary damage has been mechanical—corroded copper plumbing, failing ductile iron pipe, clogged mains, and compromised fire flow. Those cases focus on replacing pipe, repairing systems, and preventing the next failure.

The episode explores how these different kinds of harm move through the legal system. In Flint, class actions and civil rights claims seek compensation for children’s injuries, medical monitoring, special education needs, and property loss. In Miramar and Greenville, lawsuits target cities, engineers, and manufacturers over defective design, testing failures, and pipe performance, aiming to shift future repair costs away from ratepayers.

Along the way, the episode examines how water crises have become a litigation business model, with large contingency-fee cases driving accountability only after harm has already occurred. It also looks at how new Lead and Copper Rule requirements are reshaping evidence, documentation, and liability—often after cities have already gambled with aging infrastructure.

Ultimately, this episode asks a hard policy question: Is our system designed to protect the public, or mainly to manage liability after failure? Pipes can be replaced. Children cannot. The choices judges, regulators, and lawmakers make about prevention, accountability, and funding will determine whether future crises are stopped early—or simply paid for later.

This episode is part of The Mitten Channel, a Michigan-based podcast network examining law, public policy, and life in America’s industrial communities. A full transcript follows.

👉Subscribe to The Mitten Channel

Join us for the full experience. Subscribe to The Mitten Channel on Substack to receive our latest narrative essays, audio stories, and deep-dive reporting directly in your inbox.

Explore Our Series:

• Radio Free Flint: Narrative storytelling and community perspectives on industrial resilience.
• The Mitten Works: Essential history and analysis of labor and economic policy.
• Flint Justice: Critical insights into the legal and institutional challenges facing our state.
  
  

Visit our Mitten Channel website for our complete library of podcasts, videos, and articles.

The Mitten Channel is a production of Radio Free Flint Media, LLC. © 2026 All Rights Reserved.

I Left My Blue-Collar Hometown On A Schwinn And Learned How The "Other Half" Actually Lives

Have you ever felt that crushing pressure to leave home just to "figure out your future"? 🤔 In this episode, I’m looking back at 1970, when I ditched the factory smoke of Flint, Michigan, for a 2,000-mile cross-country bicycle odyssey that changed everything.

Expect to hear about:

• Why riding at dawn in the Mojave Desert is basically a 110-degree survival horror movie. 🐍
• The "poor man's air conditioner" that totally blew my Michigan mind.
• What happens when you’re 16, solo, and realize postcards have been lying to you about Los Angeles.

It’s a story about "sea to shining sea" on two skinny tires, outlasting the factories that defined my youth. Hit play for the full "Rest of the Story."

#FlintMichigan #BicycleTouring #PaulHarvey #Schwinn #RadioFreeFlint

👉Subscribe to The Mitten Channel

Join us for the full experience. Subscribe to The Mitten Channel on Substack to receive our latest narrative essays, audio stories, and deep-dive reporting directly in your inbox.

Explore Our Series:

• Radio Free Flint: Narrative storytelling and community perspectives on industrial resilience.
• The Mitten Works: Essential history and analysis of labor and economic policy.
• Flint Justice: Critical insights into the legal and institutional challenges facing our state.
  
  

Visit our Mitten Channel website for our complete library of podcasts, videos, and articles.

The Mitten Channel is a production of Radio Free Flint Media, LLC. © 2026 All Rights Reserved.