Gary, Indiana, has spent more than a week dealing with widespread power outages, and Karen Hunter says the crisis should be receiving far more attention than it is getting.
On her show, Hunter reacted to food critic and social media personality Keith Lee, who has used his massive platform to draw attention to residents still without electricity and to organize direct assistance.
“It’s not a national story, and it should be a national story, what’s happening in Gary, Indiana and in the surrounding areas,” said Hunter, who says that the outage also a test of infrastructure, political leadership and what happens when systems fail communities already dealing with limited resources.
“In crisis is when you find out,” she continued. “You know, if the weather’s nice, you don’t know. This is a storm. There’s a storm right now in Gary, Indiana.”
Hunter then questioned the response from local and federal officials and said residents should demand answers about what happened and what comes next.
Lee has been asking similar questions.
“Ain’t nobody talking about it,” Lee said in a video played during Hunter’s show. “I, for one, have not seen anybody else outside of Gary, Indiana, talk about what’s going on in Gary, Indiana, and I don’t like it.”
According to Lee, his team contacted the mayor’s office and the Salvation Army about distributing necessities to residents.
“We want to show up in the best way we possibly can,” he explained. “We don’t want to just show up for the fact of showing up.”
Hunter also raised questions about the growing electricity and water demands associated with data centers, noting that Indianapolis officials recently moved to pause new data center construction temporarily.
She said disasters can expose weaknesses that were already present before praising Lee for using his reach to push the issue into a larger conversation.
“If you have means, platform, and you’re not using it to do this, what’s your point?” she declared.
“We’re going to be empowered with knowledge,” she added. “We’re going to know what’s happening.”
