Mari Copeny, also known as Little Miss Flint, is spreading the word about what happened during a Flint City Council meeting that spiraled into chaos.
On Monday, June 2, tensions reached a boiling point during the council meeting in Flint when the police were called to remove protestors who were growing frustrated as the topic of a loan for improvements to Flint’s drinking water system and delays in settlement payments came up, ABC 12 News reported.
Yesterday, Copeny, who was there to express the community’s frustrations, began posting footage to Instagram as the meeting became volatile, and a fight broke out.
According to the 17-year-old activist’s footage, tensions began to swell once police arrived. In the first video, she posted footage of her remarks during the meeting. She soon followed up with footage of when police arrived on the scene before uploading a final video that showed the crowd, including the authorities, violently shoving and pushing one another.
At one point, Copeny is seen in the footage being pulled into the melee as someone off camera calls out her name and yells for the others in the crowd to “get off of her.”
Flint Police Chief Terrance Green said, per ABC 12, that the officers felt caught in the middle.
“Flint police officers are upset after being attacked by some citizens while at the special city council meeting,” he said. “They are confused and frustrated by a city councilman that joined the unruly crowd by berating and insulting officers for doing their job.”
In her Instagram stories, Copeny wrote “the gaslighting is insane” in response to the police statement.
TheGrio’s request to Copeny for comment was not immediately returned.
The council had been attempting to approve the city’s budget before a midnight deadline, ABC 12 reported. In footage the outlet released, capturing the moment the fight broke out, Copeny can be seen off to the right. Police were called to remove protestors shouting, refusing to sit, and being disruptive when the topic turned to the low-interest rate loan for the water system. Some were also still angered over an incident that occurred on Sunday when police were called to the scene of a peaceful protest and threw an elderly man to the ground.
“Today during a peaceful protest the mayor decided to weaponize the police against the people,” Copeny wrote in the caption of a post on Instagram that included footage of the encounter. “Not a single law was broken but at least 2 of our elders were pulled out [of] cars. Here in Flint, when there is a shooting, we can barely get a single officer to come, but the entire department, plus the Michigan State Police, shows up to bully peaceful protestors.”
Before the melee, Copeny, who first gained notoriety when she wrote a letter to former President Barack Obama about the Flint Water Crisis, had given rousing remarks that expressed the community’s frustrations amid the fallout from the Flint Water Crisis, 10 years after it first made headlines.
“When it comes to issues dealing with the youth here, I do not trust that you have our best interest at heart or even know where to begin to help the youth of this city,” the teen activist said, noting that despite her activism taking her around the country, she has yet to see them at any of elected officials at her events.
Copeny added that “for years” she has observed elected officials “behave worse than toddlers,” which she said was “ridiculous, especially when we have so many issues that need to be handled, including the water crisis that is still not over and a crime rate that is through the roof.”
She described the slow response her community experiences when they call the authorities, who take over an hour to respond to their emergencies.
“But somehow [on Sunday] the mayor and the police chief were able to weaponize both Flint police and the state police against peaceful protesters, many of them residents of our community, resulting in them assaulting an elderly resident,” she added.
“Why is it when we call 911 for help, help never shows up, but when the mayor calls, there can be dozens of officers ready to harass and assault the residents?” she concluded. “Why is it when so many in our community are suffering, the people we elected to represent us act like they don’t care about us?”
According to ABC 12, the Flint Police Department has not announced any arrests in connection with Monday’s meeting. As of now, the council has missed its deadline to approve the budget, and there has been no clear indication on when the council will resume approving the budget.
