Poor People’s Campaign to file Fair Housing complaint over Jackson water

Poor Individuals’s Marketing campaign co-chair Rev. William Barber II introduced Monday that his group can be submitting a Honest Housing Act criticism in opposition to the state of Mississippi for failing to offer clear ingesting water to Jackson residents.

Barber introduced the information at a Monday night rally in downtown Jackson. In his return to Jackson after internet hosting one other protest in late September, the reverend marched alongside about 100 metropolis residents from the Smith Robertson Museum, strolling a half mile or so to a stage arrange outdoors the Governor’s Mansion.

“The Honest Housing regulation says you can’t refuse to present folks what they want of their personal housing, of their rental housing, or of their federally owned public housing, what they should have an honest life,” Barber informed the gang on Capitol Avenue. “And we imagine that whenever you deny folks entry to wash water, you’re violating their honest housing rights.”

Barber cited that the federal regulation protects in opposition to discrimination in housing primarily based on quite a few components, together with race. Jackson, the most important metropolis in Mississippi, is 83% Black. The federal authorities created the regulation as a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The Poor Individuals’s Marketing campaign additionally echoed different activists talking out in opposition to the opportunity of privatizing Jackson’s ingesting water system.

“Perceive that in the event you privatize the water of Jackson, every little thing else is up for grabs,” Barber mentioned. “If you happen to privatize the water they’ll take the financial sources.”

Mississippi Right this moment reported in August that state lawmakers had met to think about new choices for managing town’s water system, together with privatizing. It’s unclear, nevertheless, what the state’s function can be because the federal authorities steps in. Final week, the Jackson Metropolis Council voted to enter a confidentiality settlement with the Division of Justice in discussing a settlement over the water system, WLBT reported.