This Nine-Year-Old Is Still Fighting For Clean Water In Flint, USA

The cheers of the Women's March in Washington, DC on Jan. 21 were deafening, but Mari Copeny cheered along in the loudest tone her 9-year-old voice could manage.  She also spent the day telling other fervent protestors about her hometown: Have you heard about Flint? Did you know my family has had to cook with bottled water for three years? Do you know what drinking lead does to a kid's brain?

Then Copeny returned home to Flint, Michigan, and turned back into a fourth grader. She packed her backpack to be ready for class the next day and played around with her little brother and sister. It barely fazed her that when she met celebrities like Katy Perry and the cast of Netflix's  Orange is the New Black, they already knew her as the face of Flint's water crisis—the littlest water warrior.

Copeny has met President Donald Trump, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, celebrities, governors and members of Congress, her mom Lulu Brezzell told Motherboard. She asks them what they're going to do to help the kids of Flint.

"She always wants to know: What about the kids?" Brezzell said. "She doesn't realize the historical significance. I don't think she realizes she's writing history. I think she'll be able to look back on all that and say, 'I did all that before I was 10.'"

Flint, Michigan, has been without clean tap water for three years after lead seeped into the public water supply—a crisis large enough to warrant a federal state of emergency. The problem began when Flint switched its water supply to the Flint River, and its water composition corroded some of Flint's old lead pipes. Lead is particularly dangerous as it can cause learning developments in children.

Finish reading this story on Motherboard.