In Maryland, the Montgomery County Council has introduced a resolution deeming racism a public health crisis.
In an interview with Cheddar, councilmember Will Jawando says disparities the black community faces are staggering. Recent social uprisings might have lit the flame under Jawando to introduce the resolution but the issue of racial inequality goes back hundreds of years, he said.
"Racism is the direct result, for 401 years, we've been either property or legally discriminated against for most of that time," Jawando told Cheddar.
In Montgomery County, systemic racism is not limited to just over-assertive and sometimes lethal policing of the black community, he said. It's also running rampant in the healthcare system. As COVID-19 continues to ravage communities of color nationwide, 18 percent of the black population in his county makes up a quarter of the deaths related to the virus.
For Jawando, racism in the Washington DC suburb is simply a reflection of society on a smaller scale.
"If you look at maternal health and childbirth, black women die at three times the rate," he said. "When they come in with problems, often doctors — look at Serena Williams — don't believe that they're sick."
Introducing the resolution, which he expects to pass next week, is a first step for curing the public health crisis in his county, Jawando said, but he hopes the measure is eventually recognized on both the state and federal levels. He also supports other methods of combating racism including the growing call to defund police departments nationwide.
"We shouldn't have stats driven by policing," he explained. "De-escalation, that should be rewarded just as much as we reward arrests and tickets."
Coronavirus cases are rising in nearly half the U.S. states. And while many are chalked up to increased testing or to small, local outbreaks, others are more alarming.
As Democrats naturally work to get one of their own into the White House this fall, The Lincoln Project is working toward the same goal and its GOP members believe dissent from within the party can be even more effective.
Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says his presence “created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
The federal government recorded a budget deficit of $1.88 trillion for the first eight months of this budget year, larger than even any annual shortfalls in U.S. history.
As massive waves of protesters in communities across the U.S. call for fundamental changes in American policing, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter told Cheddar the nation must find a balance between good policing and civilian safety.
The skyline of Washington D.C. is stunted. You've probably heard that D.C. can't build skyscrapers taller than the U.S. Capital Building or the Washington Monument. But those are both myths from a bygone era. Cheddar tells the real story.
Wall Street hit the brakes Tuesday, a day after its remarkable, weekslong rally brought the S&P 500 back to positive for the year and the Nasdaq to a record high.
Handling successive protests has required a careful balancing act for Gretchen Whitmer, Democratic governor of Michigan.
Hundreds of mourners packed a Houston church Tuesday for the funeral of George Floyd, the black man whose death has inspired a worldwide reckoning over racial injustice.
IBM says it is getting out of the facial recognition business over concern about how it can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.
