The Proles are expendable meat. The Gov appoints an "emergency manager" to usurp the authority of local elected officials, to prevent the city or school system going bk, by any means necessary, so the bond holders are paid. In Flint's case, the EM disconnected the city from the Detroit water system, and started drawing water from the heavily polluted Flint River instead. The river water could have been made safe, with enough treatment, but that treatment would cost money.

Exactly. Anecdotes like that do not really instill trust that government is a dependable institution that has the best interests of the citizenry at heart. Which is one reason why there's such a huge class disparity between attitudes of non-college working class folks and the more progressive college-educated DSA-type folks. These failures undermine the effectiveness of democratic socialists' advocacy for greater involvement of government in the economy. It doesn't ameliorate the issue that the failure took place under Republican governors. If government is just as susceptible to the "JC's" or Elites taking advantage of the Proles as any other institution, it's hard to build support for a platform that gives government more of a role over more of the aspects of the economy that the voters are unhappy about - especially when there were folks on both sides of the aisle involved:

wsws.org: Democratic state treasurer played key role in Flint water disaster