Mississippi Today
Jackson resident tries to fill communication gap over boil water notices
After years of Jacksonians feeling out of the loop about whether they were under a boil water notice, one resident has started a new text service to try to better inform those affected.
Amit Patel, a consultant with a background in aerospace, moved to Jackson from Los Angeles four years ago. He soon encountered the alerts that are familiar to everyone in the city: boil water notices. Patel said he grew up in South Africa where he became familiar with similar infrastructure issues, and got used to the frequent water disruptions in Jackson. But what stood out to him, he said, was the lack of official communication.
“It was always odd to me that it was hard to find out when there was a boil water notice,” Patel said, adding that he’d usually find out about the notices through word of mouth. “I’ve never actually gotten an email, a physical notice. Maybe we got something in the mail, I can’t remember. But the timing of it would be such that the notice might even be over by the time we got notified.”
Patel, who recently left a Silicon Valley-based tech job, said he came up with the idea for a text service for Jackson’s boil water notices while having drinks with friends, before realizing that it might be something people want.
The service, he explained, compiles boil notices for Jackson that appear on the website for the Mississippi State Department of Health, which regulates drinking water in the state. People who are signed up then get a text message saying when the notice was issued, for which streets, and a link to the MSDH posting. To get notices, residents can text “join” to 833-366-2498, or visit his website for more information.
Patel said that 150 people signed up for the tool in the first three days after launching it.
Such notices have become extremely common for Jackson — which has issued over 400 of them since 2020 alone — and officials attribute them to the city’s aging, undersized water lines, which are susceptible to weather changes and soil movement.
Boil water notices alone don’t signify that the drinking water is unsafe. But because reduced pressure after a water line bursts can allow contamination, health officials recommend as a precaution to boil water for at least a minute before consuming, or being used to brush teeth or make baby formula. Full instructions for what to do during a notice are on the MSDH website.
JXN Water, which has been in charge of the system for the last year, issues the notices on its website as well as with notifications on Nextdoor, a neighborhood networking website.
Last Thursday, the company issued a boil water notice for 20 homes just south of Lake Hico. Some of the residents became aware there were issues when a crew arrived on Friday morning to make an emergency repair and, without notice, shut off their water. While the water came back on that same morning, residents told Mississippi Today they were unaware they were under a boil water notice.
“I didn’t know nothing about a boil water notice,” said Robert Moore, adding that he’s usually out of the loop when those notices are issued.
When asked about notifying residents, JXN Water Communications Manager Ameerah Palacios said that the company’s current system goes “above and beyond the standard protocol for Jackson.” Both Moore and Patel said that the lack of communication goes back to before JXN Water took over.
According to MSDH guidelines, if a boil notice is issued to only “a few” residents, the system should “notify (customers) by personal contact, door-hangers, or notes taped to their doors.” If it affects a large number of residents, it says to also alert local media.
Patel said that he’s grateful for the work JXN Water has been doing and that he hopes he can collaborate with them, adding that there’s room for improvement in the way the company notifies residents.
“I think that’s one flaw with the system,” he said. “If you don’t have a Nextdoor account, how do you get that information?”
Palacios declined to comment on Patel’s new service.
Other residents and local advocates raised similar concerns to U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate, who is overseeing the role of JXN Water, back in September. In court filings, both Brooke Floyd and Danyelle Holmes — with the People’s Advocacy Institute and the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, respectively — wrote that Jackson residents were often unaware that their homes were under boil water notice.
“(Our) work to notify residents of boil water notices is necessary because the local, state, or federal government entities involved in the water crisis have not been providing consistent, adequate notice to residents,” Holmes wrote.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
‘Fragile and unequipped’: Disproportionate number of Mississippi mothers died preventable deaths during COVID
Mississippi women died of pregnancy complications at nearly twice the national rate during the COVID-19 pandemic, new data shows. The vast majority of those deaths were preventable, according to the latest Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report.
Between 2017 and 2021, 202 women who were either pregnant or up to one-year postpartum died. Seventy-seven of those deaths were directly related to pregnancy.
Black women were five times more likely to die from a condition or circumstance related to pregnancy, the report found.
“Unfortunately, COVID unmasked and exacerbated an already prevalent problem here in Mississippi,” said Lauren Jones, co-founder of Mom.ME and a member of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee members who contributed to the report.
The federally mandated committee, made up of physicians, advocates, social workers and others, is tasked with reviewing all pregnancy and postpartum-related deaths to determine the circumstances that caused them and whether they were preventable. The committee makes recommendations based on what members learn from reviewing the data.
The committee’s first recommendation to reduce these deaths is for the state to expand Medicaid as 40 other states have done.
“The report sheds light on exactly how fragile and unequipped we are to handle what is considered routine maternal care without adding a national health crisis to an already fractured system,” Jones said.
Study authors found that had COVID-19 not happened, it’s “highly likely” that the five-year pregnancy-related mortality rate would have gone down. Instead, it averaged 42.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, peaking at 62.6 in 2021 – compared to a U.S. average of 33.2 the same year at the height of the pandemic. COVID-19 was a leading cause of these deaths, second to cardiovascular conditions.
Nearly half of the women who died because of a pregnancy complication or cause in this time period never received a high school diploma. And nearly three-quarters of them were on Medicaid.
The pregnancy-related mortality rate was highest in the Delta.
A vast majority – 83% – of pregnancy-related deaths were deemed preventable. Committee members made several recommendations, including expanding Medicaid, training all health care providers on blood pressure monitoring, cultural sensitivity and screening for mental health issues.
“I want to acknowledge the Mississippi women who lost their lives in 2017-2021 while pregnant or within a year of pregnancy,” State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said in a statement published in the report. “I extend my heartfelt condolences to their surviving loved ones, and am optimistic that once we know better, we will do better.”
This report comes at the heels of the 2022 Infant Mortality Report, which showed that Mississippi continues to lead the nation in the number of infants who die before their first birthday. However, the number of infant deaths attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, decreased by 64% between 2021 and 2022.
Edney also commended the Maternal Mortality Review Committee members who he said “tirelessly leave no question unasked and no stone unturned in exploring what happened and how these deaths might have been prevented.”
In 2024, the committee met six times to review 54 maternal deaths from 2021.
“No one wants to serve on a committee that is only established to review death. It’s mentally and emotionally hard, but as members we do it not only to lend our personal expertise in determinations but to be a voice for those lost in hopes of sparking necessary change for better outcomes,” Jones said.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: Putting a wrap on the Saints and Rebels, and lots more
Following a holiday break, the Clevelands put a lid on the Ole Miss and New Orleans Saints football seasons. Also in the discussion are Southern Miss’s 25-player haul in the transfer portal, including 16 from Marshall. Rick also gives his memories of Magnolia State football heroes Jerald Baylis and Dontae Walker.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi is ‘A Complete Unknown’ in Bob Dylan biopic
The new film, “A Complete Unknown,” tells the story of Bob Dylan’s rise to success in the early 1960s, but the movie leaves out two fascinating Mississippi stories.
On the evening of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his first civil rights speech in which he declared that the grandchildren of enslaved Black Americans “are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”
Hours later, Mississippi NAACP leader and World War II veteran Medgar Evers was fatally shot in the back outside his home in Jackson.
Less than a month later, Dylan (portrayed in the movie by Timothée Chalamet) unveiled a new song in a cotton field several miles south of Greenwood, where Evers’ assassin, Byron De La Beckwith, lived.
That field happened to be owned by Laura McGhee, the sister of Gus Courts, who was forced to flee Mississippi after surviving an assassination attempt in 1955. Her three sons, Clarence, Silas and Jake, took part in protests that helped integrate the Leflore Theatre in Greenwood. Her house was shot into and firebombed, but she and her sons kept on fighting.
Dozens of Black Americans listened as they parked under umbrellas to block out the blazing sun while Dylan debuted the song, a scene that Danny Lyon captured in photos.
As he strummed chords, he told those gathered, “I just wanted to sing one song because I haven’t slept in two nights, and I’m a little shaky. But this is about Medgar Evers.”
His shakiness showed. He had to restart once before continuing.
Titled “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Dylan’s song focused on how Evers’ assassin and other poor white Mississippians are nothing more than a pawn in the white politicians’ “game.”
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
In the final verse, Dylan spoke about the civil rights leader.
Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain
Only a pawn in their game
Dylan also sang, “Blowing in the Wind,” which Peter, Paul and Mary had just turned into a top hit.
Dylan’s mentor, Pete Seeger (portrayed in the movie by Edward Norton) also performed at this music festival organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been fighting to register Black Mississippians to vote.
Dylan returned to New York City. During the day, he would hang out at the SNCC office, recalled civil rights leader Joyce Ladner. “He would get on the typewriter and start writing.”
She and her sister, Dorie, were no strangers to the civil rights movement. They had been expelled from Jackson State University in 1961 for taking part in a silent protest in support of the Tougaloo College students arrested for integrating the downtown Jackson library.
Now attending Tougaloo, the sisters helped with preparations for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After working days at the SNCC office, they would spend nights at the apartment of Rachelle Horowitz, the march’s transportation coordinator.
Each night, they arrived at about 11 p.m., only for Dylan to sing his new songs to Dorie until well past midnight, Ladner said.
That annoyed her because she was trying to get some sleep. Each night when they arrived, “we could hear him from the elevator,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, God, not him again.’”
At the August 1963 march, Dylan performed the two same songs he sang in that Delta cotton field, as well as others, this time before a crowd of more than 250,000. Folk singer Joan Baez (portrayed in the movie by Monica Barbaro) harmonized.
Not long after that performance, Ladner said Dylan visited Dorie at Tougaloo and once again sang her some of his songs before he said that he and the others “had to be going. They were driving down Highway 61.”
That highway connects Dylan’s birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to the Mississippi Delta. In 1965, Dylan released “Highway 61 Revisited,” generally regarded as one of the best albums of all time.
Dylan moved on, but Ladner said Dylan never forgot her sister, Dorie, a major civil rights figure who passed away last year.
“Whenever he performed in Washington, D.C., she would hang out backstage with him and the guys,” Ladner recalled. “That went on for years.”
She said she believes Dylan penned “Outlaw Blues” about her sister.
I got a girl in Jackson, I ain’t gonna say her name
I got a girl in Jackson, I ain’t gonna say her name
She’s a brown-skin woman, but I love her just the same.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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