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."
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds is urging lawmakers in Washington to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which she says will help bring stability to her state’s agriculture industry.
Twitter will begin posting notices on tweets from social media savvy politicians that break the platform’s rules but are in the public’s interest, the company announced Thursday.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, June 27, 2019.
The 2020 presidential hopefuls agreed that despite recent positive signs in the U.S. economy, not all Americans have benefited from the boom equally.
Democratic candidates were asked about the climate crisis during the first presidential primary debates on Wednesday and Thursday in Miami, a city that is currently experiencing its hottest week in more than three decades.
Julián Castro, 2020 presidential hopeful, believes the deaths of Andrés Manuel Lopez Óbrador and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria, were avoidable if not for a Trump policy that limits the number of asylum seekers per day
San Francisco's board of supervisors has voted a final time to effectively ban the sale of e-cigarettes in the city until the products are reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, June 29, 2019.
As immigration officials return unaccompanied minors to a controversial Border Patrol facility, Deputy Secretary of the HHS Eric Hargan tells Cheddar, "We are running out of money in our program, and we really need to get the money so that we can provide services for these children."
As the recent push to legalize recreational cannabis in the Empire State failed in the legislature, state Sen. Diane Savino is putting forward the approach of expanding New York's medical marijuana program in order to further normalize the issue.
