Up North Progressive

On Sunday, June 30, 2019, @prisonculture launched a tweetstorm to right the injustice of granting Rick Snyder a fellowship at Harvard University. People answered her call to action and flooded the Dean of the Kennedy School where Snyder would have spent the next year offering his knowledge and experience to the students of Harvard.

What knowledge and experience did Harvard want The Nerd to share with their student body? How to ignore the law and push a corporatist agenda? Cut taxes on the rich by raising taxes on the poor and elderly? Giving deep pocket Betsy DeVos everything she wanted so she could dismantle Michigan’s public education system even more? Strip the civil rights from half of the black people living in Michigan with your Emergency Managers that gave you the ability to the poison an entire city with toxic water that killed 13 people and left thousands of children struggling for the rest of their lives?

The students, alumni, and others said hell no and demanded Rick Snyder not be granted this fellowship. He had already been turned down by the University of Michigan because of his handling of the city of Flint.

Four days later, Snyder tweeted this statement that he wasn’t going to spend the year in Cambridge after all:

I have informed the HKennedy Sch that I am turning down its offer as Snr Res Fellow. It would have been exciting to share my experiences, both positive and negative; our current political environment and its lack of civility makes this too disruptive. I wish them the best.

— Rick Snyder (@onetoughnerd) July 3, 2019

Notice how in typical Republican fashion he accepts no responsibility for why people so strongly objected to him coming to Harvard? Another fine example of the moral bankruptcy of conservatives in America today. Especially with the state of Michigan relaunching a criminal investigation into the Flint water scandal after uncovering evidence that had been conveniently hidden and dismissed in the previous investigation.

Good job to @prisonculture and everyone else. If you want to help out the people of Flint who have lived for 5 years with no water supply other than bottled water, visit Crossing Water to see how you can get involved.