Flint City roller derby team refuses to be broken by water crisis

— -- One by one the women trickle in, rolling their gear bags behind them, flopping down on the stage of a church's rec center turned gymnasium. Each goes through her own personal ritual--socks, skates, pads, helmet, assembling their armor and preparing for practice.

Coach Cotton arrives with a long piece of corded rope, which helps create a regulation sized flat track outline of blue masking tape. It is time for the team to turn nothing into something.

The women in gear preparing for battle are the women of the Flint City Derby Girls. They are mothers, wives, sisters, caregivers and friends. The group is an enduring symbol of the heartbreak their city can experience. The government seems slow in offering the retribution the city deserves, in the wake of the water crisis, so they seek resolution on the track. 

The Flint City Derby Girls' uniforms are a public declaration that Flint will not die, that they aren't going anywhere. The team is revolutionary, simply by existing in a landscape that doesn't expect them to survive.

Their practice space is the training center of the modern athlete, for women hewn of bone and flesh who run into one another at full speed, or at least as fast as their skates will take them. This isn't your mother's roller derby. Gone are the fishnets, tutus and the theatrics that accompanied Roller Jam contests in the 1990s. Roller derby is a full-contact sport where two teams compete against one another in a contest of strategy and brute force, where skaters who score points by passing members of the opposing team.

As practice starts, Diplo's "Revolution" begins to play:

The worst is over

The monsters in my head are scared of love

Fallen people, listen up!

It's never too late to change your luck...

And the women are drawn into the rink for their warm-ups. The skaters glide around the oval, demonstrating fluent strides around the makeshift track. The sound of the wheels on their skates meeting the linoleum creates a constant hum.