Tainted Thursday

Flint, Mich. resident Glaydes Williamson holds up water from Flint and hair pulled from her drain, during the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing to examine the ongoing situation in Flint, Mich., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Michigan should have required the city of Flint to treat its water for corrosion-causing elements after elevated lead levels were first discovered in the city’s water a year ago, the state’s top environmental regulator says in testimony prepared for congressional hearing. (AP Photo/Molly Riley)

Gladyes Williamson paced the halls of Congress on Wednesday, armed with a bottle of brown water and clumps of her own hair.

She’d traveled with a group from Flint, Michigan, where high lead levels have made the water irritating to the skin and unsafe to drink since 2014. Williamson trekked 14 hours on a packed bus, with no sleep, to remind Washington of what’s happening in a poor, embattled, industrial town nearly 75 miles north of Detroit.

“Not only do we feel like the Republicans hate us, but now that the Democrats don’t care either,” Williams, 62, told The Huffington Post. “We just need something tangible to make us believe that politicians care about us. The wards in Flint haven’t seen any of this federal aid, but we do all the tax paying and all the dying.”

@ HUFFPO