Photo by: Connor Gorry
Late last week, in the wake of the Flint water crisis, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder issued a second state of emergency, after Timmy Smithy-Johnson, son of area billionaire Jonathan Smithy-Johnson, found a worm in his apple. In a press release about the Ann Arbor Apple Crisis, Governor Snyder stated, “This is a tragedy of the highest order, something I promise will never happen again… again.”
According to reports, Smithy-Johnson went to lunch on Monday when he bought a pizza and an apple from the cafeteria at Whitesboro Elementary School. After biting into the apple, Smithy-Johnson saw a worm inside the apple and reported it to his teacher. The teacher reported it to the principal, the principal reported it to the EPA, and the school was immediately shut down for the week.
“I am just outraged,” Timmy’s mother Jacqueline Davis-Smithy-Johnson told reporters. “The fact that our government would let my child be poisoned by the apples he needs to live is insane! How they could let something like this slip through their fingers is beyond me.”
According to Governor Snyder, the problem arose because Ann Arbor school district recently underwent a change of apple farms. Ann Arbour previously received their apples from the Detroit Apple Farm, but decided to switch to the newly established Lake Huron Apple Farms in 2014. While the apple trees were being planted in the new farm, Ann Arbor had to resort to using the local Flint River Apple Farm, which was old, understaffed and did not use pesticides.
“I apologize profusely for letting children be almost poisoned under my watch,” Snyder said. “As of right now I am sending $60 million dollars to Ann Arbor to make sure they get clean apples as we sort this mess out and I want everyone to know this crisis has my full attention above anything else!”
Snyder has been under fire recently for a lack of a timely response to the Apple Crisis, only declaring the state of emergency this past Sunday. Reports have come out that children have been complaining about the worms for a while now, mainly from the more impoverished side of town, with no action from the city taken whatsoever.
Local parent Katherine White is preparing a class-action lawsuit against multiple officials, claiming that they knew about the worms in the apples long before Smithy-Johnson almost ate one.
“I find it infuriating that our local officials knew about this crisis days, DAYS, before they issued a state of emergency, according to their emails!” White said. “After hearing all this brouhaha coming from Flint about their supposedly ‘poisoned’ water, you’d think the government would respond quickly when their more affluent and less urban residents are being poisoned as well!”
Snyder’s declaration of a state of emergency came right after Snyder met with President Obama and asked him to grant a federal emergency designation for the city of Ann Arbour. Witnesses report that Obama merely stared at the Governor and told him sternly to “get out of my office before I fill you with lead, like you did to Flint’s water,” before having Secret Service escort the Governor away.
“You know what this a prime example of?” White said in a press release. “Institutional disadvantage structured towards the Caucasian and wealthy! Everyone thinks because we are affluent, and have certain advantages in income, housing, employment, medical treatment, and overall safety that it’s okay to let our children almost eat apples with worms in them! And I for one am not going to stand and let this happen. Not on my Rolex.”
