Mari Copeny Is More Than Little Miss Flint: An Activist Grows Up
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Sylvia Jarrus
Amariyanna My’Angel Copeny’s name precedes her, although you have probably never heard it in full before. She prefers to go by Mari and is quick to remind people that absolutely no one calls her by her full name. In fact, the name that usually enters the room before Mari does is Little Miss Flint, a title she first earned in her childhood pageant days that followed her as she began raising global awareness about the Flint Water Crisis when she was just eight years old.
When I enter the Ramsdell Room at the Flint Farmers Market to interview Mari, I am surprised that the door does not have “Little Miss Flint” plastered on it. Instead, it simply reads, “Event in progress, please leave doors closed.” One glimpse at the 16-year-old posing casually in front of a 15-person Teen Vogue production crew and it is clear that Mari is no longer Little Miss Flint. Even as she stands before us in the same room where she once held a Christmas toy drive, she is someone else altogether. Someone more mature, less naive, and just as determined as when she first graced the world’s stage (and social media feeds) as a small girl who brought attention to Flint, Michigan’s lack of clean drinking water. Mari’s desire to answer to a new name signals that she is ready to respond to a different calling.
“I wish more people [could] see me for me and not Little Miss Flint,” says Mari. She hands her iPhone to her mother, Loui Brezzell, as songs by BabyTron, Playboi Carti, Odd Future, Olivia Rodrigo, Paramore, old Kanye, and Flint-born rapper Rio Da Yung Og boom in the background of outfit and set changes, hair teasing, and tinted lip gloss application. She tries on upcycled jeans from Coachtopia and outfits from Zankov and Caroline Zimbalist, both of which consider the impact of water and plastic usage.
Mari, a junior in high school, has selected the kind of expletive-laden tunes that simultaneously pump her up to strike a pose and shock any adult within earshot. “We’ve never been able to filter her,” says Brezzell.
Technically though, Mari does have a filter. In 2019, she partnered with Eric Roy, PhD, who created Hydroviv water filters that flush out the toxins in unsafe drinking water. Through this partnership, Mari and Brezzell can donate the filters to families in need. “I have my very own water filter…. It goes on the end of your [faucet] and it pulls out lead and bacteria and all that, and you can continue drinking water from your sink,” says Mari.
Moments like this are a reminder that try as she might, Mari is not an average teen. Her social media following is more than four times larger than the population of her hometown. At the beginning of our interview, she introduces herself as a philanthropist and environmental racism activist. She has met and spoken to the last three American presidents. In 2022, she appeared onstage at the Billboard Music Awards to accept the Change Maker award, becoming its youngest recipient.
Mari's knack for distilling some of today’s most pressing problems into urgent yet relatable content is just one dimension of her power. It’s a skill she is grateful for — yet tired of. She is encountering a common paradox that youth activists face as they mature and begin to morph into more than just a mouthpiece. “Yeah, I’m an activist, but I’m really just Mari. I don’t like putting labels on myself for real,” says Mari.
On her 17th birthday, the Fourth of July, Brezzell was wheeled into the Hurley Medical Center, in labor with a baby who wasn't due to arrive for six more weeks. Little did she know she would give birth to a firework on July 6, 2007. Mari is the oldest, followed by a brother and a sister. Although Mari has, for better or worse, become the face of the Flint Water Crisis, their family encountered Flint’s unsafe drinking water together. In April 2014, the Copeny kids wanted to take a bubble bath when they realized something was wrong with the water.
“[The water] didn't have a specific color at first, but the smell was off. The water would almost burn your skin and your eyes, and it got worse when they started dumping chemicals into it to try to fix the damage that was already done to the pipes,” says Brezzell.
The water was not safe to take a bath in and definitely wasn’t safe to drink. Later, Flint residents would learn that the water was traveling through eroded pipes that contained dangerous levels of lead. Unfortunately, before the family knew how toxic the water was, they had all been exposed. Mari’s two-year-old sister, Keilani, had eczema so bad that it looked like chemical burns. She applied ointment and wrapped the affected areas in plastic wrap to soothe the sores. Mari still has a patch of eczema on her cheek from the water.
Mari wanted to do something, so she decided to make a short video listing facts about her daily reality as a resident of Flint, Michigan, living without clean drinking water. A screenshot from that video, where Mari holds a piece of paper that reads, “Flint, MI has been without clean water since April 24, 2014,” was one of the first images of her to go viral. After the local government stopped providing bottled water to residents, she hosted bottled water drives to get more clean water to residents. Soon, Mari, the child who was slow to speak and spent kindergarten and first grade struggling with a speech impediment, became the voice of a generation nearly overnight. Now, Mari has spent most of her life fighting a crisis she did not create.
“I was a kid talking about things that they didn't even know and they really wanted me to ‘stay in a child’s place,’ which is mad crazy because I was really spitting facts and y’all were telling me to shut up…. Even to this day, people are so terrible to me and it’s always the adults,” says Mari.
What has been commonly referred to as the Flint Water Crisis may be more accurately described as a water crisis in Flint, Michigan. It is just one of a series of national water crises that includes Newark, New Jersey; Jackson, Mississippi; and Washington, DC, and flow throughout the world.
Over time, the people of Flint have been watermarked: The image of lead pipes and brown water superimposed on articles about their city has become unfairly representative of them as individuals. The people have become stand-ins and victims of the industrial shortcomings of their community.
In the best-case scenario, Mari’s voice and visibility have made her a trailblazer. In the worst case, those same qualities reduce her to a mascot or position her as a nuisance for adults who would rather she remain silent. In truth, Mari’s efforts to raise awareness brought attention to the fact that her city couldn't meet one of the most basic needs of its residents. Even as Mari advocates for Flint, she often feels alienated instead of welcome in her hometown, but says, “I never gave up on Flint. I love helping people.”
The growing pains that all teens face at Mari’s age are exacerbated by her role as a highly visible activist. She's been bullied by adults online. Together with her mom, she has made changes in an attempt to make life easier. Mari attends a nontraditional high school where classes are held virtually and a digital poll is sent out to vote on prom themes. In her free time, Mari skateboards, draws, plays video games, and makes beats. She has a close circle of friends and a boyfriend, all of whom make her feel that she can be herself.
One of the most significant changes to Mari’s day-to-day life came last year with her ADHD diagnosis. Being a youth activist is a very energetically taxing responsibility and at times it can be overwhelming to interact with so many people. Last year, Mari experienced notable disruptions in her daily tasks and sought help. “I couldn’t get basic things done and I didn’t understand why,” Mari explains.
She says she now has medication that helps her dial in and focus when necessary, and it comes in handy when she is invited to give keynote speeches, host a local kids fashion show, or appear on national television. All of those events are outliers, though. These days, Mari leads a pretty normal life. Beyond her environmental work, she is most passionate about helping the children in Flint. Her holiday toy drives and back-to-school backpack events are a mainstay in the community.
After nearly a decade of organizing, Mari doesn’t want to discourage young people who want to become activists, but she does have some advice: “You gotta really use your voice and you gotta be serious…. You really gotta stand on business and lock in. Oh my god, those are my new words of encouragement,” says Mari.
Contrary to some of her yet-to-be-updated social media and website language, Mari no longer wants to be president. That was a childhood dream. Now, she wants to be a nail technician or a tattoo artist. Mostly though, she just wants to be Mari.
Photographer: Sylvia Jarrus
Stylist: Kat Thomas
Stylist Assistant: Majesty Hope Bland
Makeup Artist: Ashlyn Sinishtaj
Hair Stylist: Bria Larine
Hair Stylist Assistant: Kailyn Richelle
Manicurist: Natalie Kadie at Eight Ten Nail Bar
Lighting: Erik Henderson
Digitech: Josh Nagy
Photo Assistant: Sarahbeth Maney
Photo Assistant: Miles Reuben
Photo Retouching: Ultraviolet Creative
Production Coordinator: Aisha Jama
Production Assistant: Allie Zinn
Producer: Dani Dabney
Location: Flint Farmers’ Market
Design Director: Emily Zirimis
Designer: Liz Coulbourn
Associate Visuals Editor: Bea Oyster
Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
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