Featuring Janel Bailey, Co-Executive Director of Organizing & Programs of Los Angeles Black Worker Center:
How do U.S. policies intensify the vulnerability of Black communities, including during pandemics? What caused the historical distrust between the Black community and the American healthcare system? Code WACK! host Brenda Gazzar and Janel Bailey, Co-Executive Director of Organizing and Programs at the Los Angeles Black Worker Center, discuss how public policies around eviction, employment and medical exploitation combine to harm Black workers and their families. Could Medicare for All help?
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Health Care & The Politics of Black Vulnerability
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Welcome to Code WACK!, your podcast on America’s broken healthcare system and how Medicare for All could help. I’m your host Brenda Gazzar. Today, we’ll continue our discussion on how Black workers are faring amid the coronavirus pandemic.
African Americans have long faced obstacles in accessing jobs and decent wages. They’re also more likely to be uninsured than Whites because they tend to have lower-paying jobs that don’t offer benefits, like health insurance.
Janel Bailey is co-executive director of organizing and programs at the Los Angeles Black Worker Center.
Welcome to Code WACK!, Janel.
Q: You’ve said that the pandemic has exasperated the challenges Black workers are facing. What do you think can be done to address this issue?
Bailey: I think there are a number of things that folks can do and that folks are doing. I mean one of the most obvious ones is advocating because the most infuriating thing about the whole crisis is that this was entirely preventable. This was entirely preventable, and it’s quite clear, especially looking at other countries, that this was an issue of policy. This was absolutely political. The data was there. We knew that a pandemic, that people in this country could be vulnerable to a pandemic. We might not have known it was specifically coronavirus. There’s the issue of being civically involved in making sure that we don’t just have people in these annointed positions and that we elect leadership. At this point, considering all the harm that’s been done, it’s really about leaning on elected officials and keeping them accountable around policies that at this point is going to help folks to rebuild. A lot of damage has been done but a lot of damage can be prevented. Some of it is irreversible. We can’t bring anyone back. We can’t take the illness away from folks who have already been impacted but there are so many more who will not be impacted if we can change and influence policy today.
So I would say definitely there’s that aspect and to be a little bit more specific, you know, there’s a coalition called Healthy L.A. and Healthy L.A. is really leading the charge in identifying and pushing policies that keep folks in Southern California really healthy, making sure that people can remain in shelter, making sure that people can stay in their homes, making sure that there are rent moratoriums (in which) rent could be canceled.
One of the strong crises for workers especially — once the moratoriums are over — is the question ‘will there be an eviction crisis?’ I would argue there’s already been an eviction crisis. That’s something, looking into it now, we can try to start to prevent.
As local economies heal, we need to make sure that Black workers share in that prosperity. We need to make sure that folks get their right to recall, meaning that folks are able to return to work, people who lost their jobs as a result of their place of business closing from the coronavirus, if it starts to reopen, you got to call folks back. Unfortunately, there are some bad actors who will use this opportunity to turn over their workforce in a way that’s not fair and equitable to the folks who helped them build it in the first place. It’s really about making sure that we hold those folks accountable. I don’t think it’s the many, I do think it’s the few but nonetheless it has a huge impact.
Q: Thank you. Do you think having universal health care, like Medicare for All, would address some of these systemic inequalities in your community?
Bailey: If health care was truly accessible for folks in our communities, that could make a world of difference to how this crisis plays out for people.
Q: And why is that?
Bailey: The reason being is that a lot of folks in some communities do not have access to health care and that could be for various reasons. It could be that they don’t have a job that provides it, or it’s too costly, or simply because it’s not nearby and they have to travel far and they don’t have the means to do that. And still, once they get to the doctor, again, they’ve got to be able to communicate. Can he communicate in the right language? Is that doctor knowledgeable, for example, about signs of domestic violence? Is that doctor knowledgeable about gender diversity? Can they have a competent conversation with patients? So all of that goes into accessibility around medical care, especially for Black folks and so that’s why I say accessible health care is what’s really going to matter and make the difference,
Healthcare systems, especially in this country don’t have the greatest history with Black folks. Folks may be familiar, for example, with the Tuskegee experiment where a lot of folks were unknowingly infected with syphilis. Some people know about women going to the doctor and unknowingly being sterilized. With these things in our collective memory, it’s not far-fetched that people would be distrustful of certain medical care. A lot can go into making that accessible and demystifying some of that process and rebuilding trust to make sure people have the tools that they need to combat corona.
Thank you so much, Janel.
Find more Code WACK! episodes on ProgressiveVoices.com and on the PV app. You can also listen at HEAL dash C-A dot org. This podcast is powered by HEAL California, uplifting the voices of those fighting for healthcare reform around the country. I’m Brenda Gazzar.
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