BISHOP BARBER
BISHOP BARBER REVEALS
“SHAMEFUL AND SHOCKING ”
REPORT OF COVID-19 DEATHS
AMONG THE POOR
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Now, just over two years since the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the United States, over 900,000 Americans have died as a result.
Per a March 26th report in Fortune Magazine, “During the peak of Omicron (BA.1) in the U.S., December through January, Black adults were hospitalized at a rate nearly four times higher than white adults, according to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report by U.S. Centers for Disease Control.”
A new report sponsored by Bishop William Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and researched by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), states that many of those deaths were the result of “preexisting social and economic disparities that have long festered in the U.S.” that were exacerbated by the pandemic.
“The findings of this report reveal neglect, and sometimes intentional decisions, to not focus on the poor,” says Bishop Barber, co-convener of the Poor People’s Campaign. “It is further evidence why we have called for the President to meet, at the White House, with a diverse delegation of poor and low-wealth people, religious leaders and economists to put addressing poverty and low wealth front and center.”
Titled “A Poor People’s Pandemic:Mapping the Intersections of Poverty, Race and COVID-19,” the report notes that:
- During the pandemic, people living in poorer counties died at nearly two times the rate of people who lived in richer counties.
- During the deadliest phases of the pandemic, poorer counties saw many times more deaths than wealthier counties.
- Vaccination status cannot explain all the variation in death rates across income groups.
- Characteristics of counties with the highest death rates include poverty rates of 45%; median incomes on average $23,000 less than counties with lower death rates; population across these counties is 56% white, 21% Hispanic, 16% Black; 4% indigenous and 1 % Asian, accounting for approximately 2%of the U.S. population, or 7.5 million people.
- Characteristics of the poorest counties - there are approximately 31 million people in these counties; more than half the population lives under 200% of the poverty line and people of color are overrepresented; compared to higher income counties, there are more than twice as many Black people in these counties. Nearly 1/4 of the population in these counties is Hispanic, and over half of the population is white; uninsured rates are twice as high as the highest median income counties; more than half of people living in the poorest counties have received their second COVID-19 vaccination shots.
One of the examples in the Poor People’s report of one of the country’s poorest counties is Wayne County, NC, where Bishop Barber lives and pastors a church Goldsboro.
According to the report, “…Wayne County is a rural county in Eastern North Carolina. Approximately 42% of its residents live under 200% of the poverty line, nearly half of the county is rent-burdened, and its uninsured rate (12.6%) is more than two and a half times the uninsured rate in the wealthiest counties of the country. Its residents are 53% white, 30% Black and 11.8% Hispanic or Latino. During the pandemic, it had a death rate of 302 out of 100,000.”
“Poverty was not tangential to the pandemic, but deeply embedded in its geography,” the Poor People’s pandemic report states. “Yet, failing to consider how poverty intersected with race, gender, ability, insured status and occupation during the pandemic created blind spots in our policy and decision-making, which wrought unnecessary suffering to millions of people.”
“Consequently…,” the report adds, “… the structural drivers of the pandemic and its economic impacts persist.”
“This report shows that a poverty-producing and sustaining system was also a death-dealing system,” Bishop Barber adds. “Within this analysis, we can see that it did not need to be this way, if only we were honest about poverty and systemic racism, and the systems of violence that allowed this tragedy.”
Bishop Barber reminded all about the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls—June 18, 2022.
Go to https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/the-poor-peoples-campaign-a-national-call-for-moral-revival-ppcncmr-to-launch-mass-poor-peoples-and-low-wage-workers-assembly-and-moral-march-on-washington-and-to-the-polls for more information.
-30-
GOP LEGISLATORS APPEAL
TO STOP RULING ALLOWING
FORMER FELONS TO VOTE
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Republican lawmakers have wasted no time in seeking an emergency stay pending appeal from the NC Appellate Court of a ruling by a three-judge Superior Court panel last week striking down a 1973 law giving approximately 56,000 felons across the state the right to vote.
The case, formally known as Community Success Initiative v Moore, was a lawsuit filed in 2019, arguing that North Carolina ’s felony disenfranchisement laws were unconstitutional because they were originally instituted to keep Black people from voting.
The judicial panel voted 2-1 that the 50-year-old law, which made former felons who completed their sentences ineligible to vote, was racist because it made them pay the state fees before they could regain their voting rights.
Plaintiffs in the case won in 2021, only to have the NC Court of Appeals and state Supreme Court temporarily restrict the ruling to ex-felons who registered to vote between August 23rd through Sept. 3, 2021 in time for the November elections.
That left approximately 56,000 ex-felons legally stranded who couldn’t meet that temporary restriction.
So the panel’s 2-1 decision last week was the restriction lift many had been waiting for since last year.
“This is a huge victory for voting rights in North Carolina among the more progressive states in the country in recognizing that felony convictions do not deprive a person of this fundamental right to vote,” said Prof. Irving Joyner of North Carolina Central Universities’ School of Law.
Joyner predicted that the 2-1 Superior Court ruling last week would be appealed.
“[But] it represents a huge starting point in securing the Equal Protection of all people, especially African-Americans who were disproportionately restricted by this outlandish law.”
Republican legislative leaders think otherwise.
Concerned that adding over 50,000 ex-felons to the voting rolls statewide might swing various elections to Democrats, Republicans blasted the Superior Court ruling as the court “legislating from the bench.”
“Piece-by-piece the courts are chipping away at the legislature’a constitutional duty to set election policy in this state and seizing that authority for themselves,” opined state Sen. Warren Daniels (R-Burke) in a press release.
Sen. Daniels further complained that the current ruling was designed to come right before the upcoming May 17 primaries, which would give 56,000 former felons until April 22 to properly register to vote if allowed to.
In an immediate reaction to the Superior Court ruling, the State Board of Elections voted last week to hold off registering any more former felons still on probation or parole until it receives clarification from the either the state Appellate or Supreme Court on how to proceed.
As of press time, that clarification had not come down.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment