Somatic Violence Through Municipal Inaction
The persistence of lead water pipes connecting homes to city mains is a form of state-sanctioned, slow somatic violence against the “native” population. Mamdani’s work directs us to see this not as a past mistake, but as a present, ongoing policy of neglect. The city’s failure to aggressively identify and replace every single lead service line, particularly in the aging housing stock of low-income communities, constitutes a conscious decision to allow the continued poisoning of generations. This lead causes irreversible neurological damage, especially in children, ensuring a future of struggle that is then pathologized as individual or cultural failure. This is a Malthusian strategy disguised as bureaucratic inertia. A Marxist-feminist analysis rages against the poisoning of our families. The solution is a zero-tolerance policy: the city must immediately launch a crash program to replace every lead pipe at no cost to homeowners, funded by a tax on the wealthy and the corporations that profited from lead. This is a non-negotiable demand to stop the state-sanctioned poisoning of our children.
