Black Nouveau

(soft piano music) Hello, welcome to Black Nouveau. I'm Joanne Williams and welcome to my house. The coronavirus is still the big news. Tonight we'll discuss some stories and information about issues affecting our community. James Causey speaks with two health professionals about the disproportionate way the coronavirus has hit African Americans. Alexandria Mason looks back at the recent election and discusses what some people feel is voter suppression for the November election. And I have a conversation with a new County executive, David Crowley. We'll talk about his priorities. But first, here's a status report from Everett Marshburn. This thing is dangerous. It's just, it's relentless. I mean every time we think we got a handle on it. We're not, we don't have a close cause this thing continues to morph. -

Everett

At the end of April, the United States and 1/3 of the reporting coronavirus cases on earth, African Americans in Wisconsin make up less than 10% of the population are overly represented in contracting the coronavirus. So far more half of the 300 people who have died from the disease are African American. Marvin Bailey is the Dean of students in Washington high school. He tested positive for the virus. Not long after the school closed for the shut down. On Monday I woke up in the morning and I knew I needed some things from Walmart because we didn't know how long we were going to be in the house. And so I went shopping and I was in a store maybe for about an hour and I just started to feel real fatigue and chest (mumbles) started hurting and you know but steel didn't think much of it. I got to the house unloaded the groceries and by the time I got the last bag on the table just got real tired and literally stumbled over to the couch and slept. Literally about three or four hours straight. I got up and was extremely busy and frail trying to go to the bathroom. And I realized at that point something was wrong. -

Everett

But it took him a while to realize just how sick he was. I lost taste, I lost the ability to taste and smell. My appetite started to dissipate. Which is real bad. And I think that's when I got scared and I think that's when I called my doctor and they weren't seeing anybody. So you had to do the video conference. Well, actually we did it over the phone at that point. We did it over the phone and at that point she diagnosed me as having COVID-19 but she didn't tell me that was the case. -

Everett

Mark was an athlete college and he kept up his regimen after graduating. But yeah, I typically run get up at about five o'clock in the morning. And start my morning off running then I go into... I run anywhere from three to five miles and then I go to my core workout. And then when the gym was open I was able to do my weights as well. -

Everett

He believed that helped him survive the virus. I would say about day 14 was when I think I started to get some of my energy back. I tried to exercise in a bit still fatigue but I was able to finish some of it. Day 15 do a little more. Day 16 actually got up and ran. I think I ran like two or three miles and then I just progressively start getting better. I think by day 21 I was up to four miles. I started feeling better. Still not quite myself, still getting to the even at this point I think I'm like day 36 now. Coronavirus has disproportionately affected Milwaukee's African American community. But it did not come as a surprise to our guests. They had been on the front lines of a healthcare system where race and income frequently affect outcomes. Joining us are Dr. Patricia McManus president and CEO of The black health coalition Wisconsin. And Dr. Tito Isard president and CEO of Milwaukee Health Services, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Black people are dying at higher rates of COVID-19 than any other racial group in the state. Dr. McManus, how does racism factor into black and white health outcomes? Well, there's a lot of, there's new science it's been out about 15 years now. It's called epigenetics. And it really talks about how genes work and the fact the impact of what happens in our daily lives especially over generations. And so there's some data out there that speaks to the fact that all the way back you can go all the way back 400 years. Because it talks one thing that people quote is that some of the people that's been doing this work is that where you live matters and if where you live changes, then that matters. And for us to be taken from Africa and brought over here and then still been in servitude and still in some ways are. They find that that you can't change the gene but you can change some of the substances that impact the gene. And so this epigenetics talks about cortisol was one of them but talks about some of the things that does that. And so trying to give you something really very quick and also every other health indicator you can look at, we die more than everybody else. So why wouldn't people think that this would be one of them as well? I'm always amazed that people are surprised about it. Dr. Izard, politicians and commentators say blacks are more susceptible to COVID-19 due to their underlying health conditions. But let's go a bit deeper. What's behind those underlying health conditions? Well, first of all it's not that we're more susceptible. It's nothing that makes the African American body of the black body different than the white body. I think we dismissed that myth years ago. What it is is that we're more vulnerable and we're more vulnerable because as African Americans when we look at the potential risk factors the health disparities that we have it puts us in a vulnerable position. So I kind of break it down and say if we look at health disparities we look at our overall our economic condition. We look at the fact that we live in multi generational living situations where you have young kids all the way up to the grandparents all living in the same house. Whether you look at marital status issues, look at institutional racism that happens in healthcare as well as individual implicit bias at the provider level. When you take all these things combined together you see that, it makes African Americans extremely more vulnerable to or susceptible to the COVID-19 virus. So speaking with two doctors, we're hearing stories by African Americans who said they tested positive but they received an inferior healthcare at the hospital. And in some cases they were just sent home. What are people supposed to do especially if they're under insured or don't have any type of insurance at all? Well, currently in our communities the fairly qualified health centers also referred to as community health centers. There's probably one within five minutes near you. And we're started this past week. We've kind of ramped up our services. So now that we have access to the personal protective equipment as well as the testing kits we're able to offer for anyone that has symptoms for you to come in call first of course so that we can do the clinical assessment. And that way we can make sure that you get tested in a timely manner. So any of the qualified health centers a federally qualified health centers in the community near you will be able to offer services whether you're uninsured or if you don't have a primary care doctor that you have. So, social distancing, washing your hands, wearing a face mask started a norm today. Dr. McManus what should the government be doing to curb the numbers, especially in the black community? Well, clearly one of the things that Tito just talked about in terms of having those community health centers which are part of the community and doing this is getting more testing, that we need to have that because we're tested lower even though we're dying higher. There hasn't been a move to do more testing in the Milwaukee North side even though that was first. And that's certainly where most of the active Americans are. So we need to get testing. We also need to I think another thing by having the community health centers get involved is that cause I've been watching even with my own family at the hospitals. They really go by well I got 20 people in the ICU already. So people that should get the test they're not testing they're making that decision and not testing people even when they have symptoms. They're still telling them to go home if your symptoms get worse. And we have some people that we know have died because they live by themselves or they didn't go back cause they figured they wouldn't take them. So clearly, we need to have them be able to go to places or talk on telehealth with people from the community health centers who know care about them as human beings that will make them listen more and then try to adjust to what they need to do. Now, we all got folks that we know the millennials and all these other folks they think where everybody did when they were teenagers. You think you're invincible. It's not gonna happen to us but we just need to keep doing it. They need to hear us. They need to hear people from our community talking to them about what they need to do rather than having a health provider who doesn't even care that much about the community. Telling nurses don't even wanna be there telling people what they ought to do. So, this is the first big move. Now it's the city as we get and more people tested. And now we also know too, that was talked about, Tito knows in terms of talking about the other symptoms. We've gotta get people more educated. Now there's more folks are looking at those three, not thinking about the other one. So information that's all I can say. We've got to get as much out there as possible. Real quick, I'm down to about 30 seconds. What needs to happen to change in the healthcare industry to ensure that all patients are treated fairly? And who's that directed to? Anyone can take that. Well, I definitely think that we need to this country has to wake up and realize that we need restorative health equity for especially for African Americans who have lineage to slavery. And that restorative health equity is one component of a much larger, comprehensive reparations plan. Because without access to wealth and resources there's no possible ways to close the racial wealth gap. And I think too, just to say that now and I don't know if somebody is doing now, I don't know if you heard about Tito but now they're talking about even people insurance that healthcare facilities are telling people they gotta pay cash and then get the money back from their insurance company. I mean, that's had you heard that? No, I think most people are trying to move try to ensure that people can receive COVID-19 related chair without any out of pocket expenses. And then James just what they know is very important for us to realize is that Dr. McManus and myself we've been fighting for years trying to make sure that we're represented in nursing and in medical school And right now, African Americans are really only about 3% of the medical students African Americans willingness to slavery. And therefore we don't have doctors in our own community. So when you have a crisis like this and the other providers community gets scared who's left? It's gotta be the people who came from those communities. So that has to be one of the core components that we fight to make sure that they are African American doctors taking care of and nurses taking care of our communities. Yeah, there's only five nurses. Black nurses make up only 5%. Well, thanks for joining us for this important conversation. This is the subject we're gonna continue to explore. I appreciate it, thank you. Thank you. Great, thank you. Since my paper ballot or my mail-in ballot hadn't come in the mail. I said to myself, well, I need to get out here and vote. So that was something that I was going to do. But at the same time I started thinking about the fact that because of this pandemic and that there was this battle between the folks in Madison as to whether they were gonna have it or not and then when they decided to have the voting. I thought that my other duty would be to go out and to photograph other polling sites in my area to find out what was it like and to see exactly how many more people were gonna be out voting. And when I saw the long lines literally blocks long and around the corner. You gotta document that because this is obviously some type of history. History was made on April 7 2020. Wisconsin was the only State asking its citizens to vote during a health crisis. Was this voter suppression. 14 other States had postponed their April election until a later date. Today we're talking with historian Dr. Robert Smith, Director of the Center for Urban Research Technology and Outreach at Milwaukee University. We're also joined by Molly Collins Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. So thank you both for joining me. Good morning, it's a pleasure. How are y'all doing today? Well, thank you. Hanging in there. So first off, 14 other States postpone their election. Why do we think that Wisconsin went in another direction? Well, I mean I think that a lot of the States that postponed elections had only the presidential primary on the ballot which made it a little more complicated to postpone in Milwaukee Wisconsin. But I think like largely it was a political decision. The governor and the legislature could have acted. And then the governor, when he did act the legislature acted immediately to block his postponements. And that's part of a pattern of them being willing to disenfranchise people and they thought that they would only be disenfranchising. I think the voters who don't generally vote for them but it turned out they disenfranchised everybody. So one of those points that assembly speaker Vos was pointing to was that we don't know when the COVID-19 will calm down. We can't guarantee that in May or June it will be necessarily be safer for people to go back to the polls. So why are people calling this voter suppression? There were things that they could've done that would've made it better and easier for people to vote. We know that people of color are less likely to use mail in ballots and part of that is because there was they require some in person registration. Because if you move, it's harder to get a ballot online. Like it's very easy for privileged people to say like, Oh, you can just request a ballot online. It's really easy. Well, it's easy if you have a state issued ID specifically one from the DMV and it's easy if you have access to online and internet connections and you haven't moved since the last time you voted. We know that there are groups of people who vote who move more often. And so mail ballot is more likely to disenfranchise people who are renters and who move students also. Even just extending the deadline for a month to allow people to register and vote and allow the clerks to deal with the massive influx of ballot requests because we know that a lot of people never got their ballots. They got empty ballot envelopes. They got the wrong ballot for the ward that they were supposed to vote in. There were huge problems and that was not due to I think nefarious behavior on the part of the clerks just the more than 10 times as many people requesting absentee ballots than had ever requested them in the state's history. You had mentioned Dr. Smith that we haven't seen anything like this since the 1960s. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah we have to be very honest about the outcomes of April 7th in terms of the health of folks who had to vote in person. On the one hand, it was just simply a terrifying experience to see people lined up and whatever kinds of protective equipment that they could find. Many folks didn't have any. And knowing full well that being in the world being in the public space of voting locations could very well they expose you to a deadly virus. Our elected officials, those who made those decisions knew that all too well. And to suggest or to even give them the benefit of the doubt that they did not know would be foolish. And in that respect, it's very much like the kind of voter suppression we've seen during the Jim Crow era where folks are not only meeting challenges just to register to vote and to cast a vote. But in doing so, they could be met with some form of physical violence and or death. And while these were not specifically Night riders or the KKK. The forced in person voting certainly put folks life at peril. And in that respect it was very Jim Crow like. How would you describe what you saw that day? I saw a remarkable display of human beings, neighbors, friends willing to stand up for their constitutionally protected rights to cast a meaningful vote. That's what I saw. And I also saw a community of folks in Milwaukee making it very clear to our Republican controlled legislature, our State and federal Supreme court, our highest tribunals, Folks very clearly saying that their vote will be counted and their vote will matter even in the face of a pandemic. It was remarkable, quite honestly. So given all that transparent on April 7th, what do you both think lies ahead for the November election? Well, on the one hand it does present some concern in that the elected officials and the folks who agreed to the judges and justices who agreed to move forward in that way. There may be some ideas that that kind of in person voting option could happen even though the pandemic will still be with us. So there is that fear but that fear is heavily outweighed and met with what I think is a deep infusing of folks who will work desperately to make sure that the access to the voting box, access to voting will be expanded as broadly as possible. To as many people as possible. And I think we're gonna see a dramatic increase in the number of folks who vote this November. I believe we're gonna see record numbers of people voting in the November election as a show of resistance. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think the ACLU, one of our tactics for a long time has been to think that if we bring a lawsuit, the better minds of the judges will prevail over the politicians. And that's one way to access equality and civil rights. I think what we learned was that sometimes politics wins. And so the strategy that we need to use is educating people about these options. There's tons of really dedicated community organizations who are trying to make sure that everyone can cast a ballot in November in a safe way. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thank you again, Dr. Smith and Molly for taking the time to talk to me about this. Still very much important topic. Great, thank you. Earlier this week, David Crowley became Milwaukee County executive. I talked with him before his swearing in and we discussed his priorities. So County executive, David Crowley welcome to Black Nouveau. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to be here, Joanne. So I would think that your first priority as it is with almost everybody right now is dealing with coronavirus. What's your plan? Oh, well the plan is to make sure that we're bringing more people to the table as we see. This has definitely had a major impact on the African American community. And we see an increase in cases in the South side of Milwaukee with the Latinos community. So we have to make sure that we have all the players at the table that is our public health officials, our public safety folks, other municipal leaders as well as the business owners at the table to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to make sure that we're flattening the curve and we're on the road to being a healthy community. Before we open up the doors to many more businesses. Do you think that's the major role of the County executive is to bring people together? Well, when you think about with this COVID-19 crisis we don't have a robust health department here within Milwaukee County. We have 11 health departments across this County. And so we have to find ways to bring everybody to the table. The Milwaukee County does not have the authority to make decisions for every municipality. And so if you wanna move forward and making sure that we can flatten and this curve is critical that we have other municipal leaders at the table. When the election was held because of COVID-19 there was quite a lag between the day of the election and the day you found out you won. What was that like? Waiting six days is pretty gruesome for anybody to find out whether they won an election or not. So I would not wish that on any candidate. But I basically used that time to spend a great amount of time with my three daughters, with my wife. To take my mind off the election. But as soon as we got the results on April 13th, the next day, April 14th Milwaukee day we were up and running again and started the transition. What are you gonna do to bring these various municipalities in the County together? This is quite a vast area and it's gonna take some sort of a fortitude to bring all these mayors and other folks together at the table. It's absolutely a definitely a challenging lift. But when you think about it. 19 different municipalities, 19 different personalities when you think about, all the municipalities and the mayors but when you think about this COVID-19 crisis, I think it has presented an opportunity for us really to make sure that when the tide rises, all the boats rise. The health disparities that we see here in Milwaukee County largely lay on racial lines. And the COVID-19 crisis has really exacerbated that. And so I think right now we're gonna have to continue to have those conversations. it's been pretty positive thus far. But also know that once we get on the road to recovery, we're gonna have many different ideas. But it's really about how do we compromise how do we come together not just as government but as public health officials, public safety and businesses, and have a conversation about what the opening looks like and what is the road to recovery. What priorities do you wanna address beyond COVID-19? When this passes and we go back to what is our new normal what are you going to be focusing on? Well, at the end of the day we have to continue to focus on bringing more resources to Milwaukee County. We provide many quality services for many people and mainly for the most vulnerable. When you think about seniors, people with disabilities and our homeless population of those who may be struggling with a mental health crisis. You have to make sure that we can continue to operate and continue to serve those needs. And I do expect for more people to Milwaukee County when you think about what is happening and as a result of COVID-19 crisis. So we have to make sure we have the resources, we have to continue to make sure that when we think about this economic road to recovery that we're in the best position possible. And I think that's making sure that we can strengthen things like our public transit system, making sure that we're thinking regionally. To show folks that Milwaukee is a place for folks to move for them to build and create a family, to build a new business. And so, we wanna make sure that we're being good partners and being good stewards with our neighbors. And before we close tonight, remember to fill out your 2020 census form. It's very important. If you don't get counted, you don't count. For Black Nouveau I'm Joanne Williams. Thanks for joining. (soft instrumental music)