A Full Court Press to Get the Lead Out

By Ben Jealous There’s nothing quite like seeing a kid who was born healthy but now suffers cognitive impairment and is prone to outbursts of anger. As a volunteer restoring six-story walk-ups in Harlem in the early 90s, I saw how lead paint chips and dust were wreaking havoc on the kids in those low-income buildings.& The kids not only lived in a cloud of despair but in a cloud of lead-infused dust. The former made achieving their dreams difficult. The latter made it impossible.& Fast forward a few decades and the threat of lead poisoning has continued to manifest in public health crises. It was at the heart of the well-publicized water crisis in Flint, Michigan that started in 2014 … and the subsequent not-as-well-publicized water crises in Benton Harbor, MI and Pittsburgh, PA just a few short years later.& Now, thanks to community organizers, advocacy groups, the federal government, and even some private companies, we’re seeing a major push to eliminate the lingering threat of lead. It is thanks to the hard work of activists like Gabriel Gray. Gray is an organizer with Pittsburgh United, a local advocacy group that works on clean water and housing issues. She...