New Health Care Report Stresses 'Racism Kills'

Crisis Watch, Sept. 9, 2021

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We’ve been hearing the adverse health care stories for decades, and the past year’s death toll from COVID-19 has proved especially devastating to Black people. Now The Marshall Project has new documentary evidence that racism kills.

Carroll Bogert, president of The Marshall Project, summarized the latest in her monthly newsletter:

“Racism kills. If Black Americans died at the same rates as White Americans, 62,000 more Black people would have survived 2019. Those Black Americans died at a younger age in part because of stark and longstanding disparities in healthcare in this country. The Marshall Project’s Anna Flagg digs into a consequential 1910 report on medical education that set in motion a series of devastating outcomes for Black medicine. Co-published with The Upshot at the New York Times, our analysis makes visible the latest data on mortality, shedding new light on an old and tragic story.”

If you care about racism in America, especially as it pertains to the criminal justice system with its mass incarceration practice, we encourage you to sign up for The Marshall Project. Founded in 2014, the nonprofit online journal about criminal justice has since won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting along with dozens of other accolades. It offers the best source we’ve found so far for fact-based journalism documenting the U.S. criminal justice system that holds such sway over Black lives.

Webinar to feature freedom fighter

Longtime “freedom fighter” Bob Zellner will be featured in a webinar, More than Allies: Justice, Faith, and a Place for All in the Struggle for Freedom, scheduled at 7 p.m. CDT Thursday, Sept. 16, announced David C. Teel, Director of Laity and Spiritual Leadership at Discipleship Ministries. The Rev. Tex Sample, who marched from Selma to Montgomery with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will interview Mr. Zellner during the hour-long webinar.

“The son and grandson of Methodist pastors from L.A. (lower Alabama), Zellner is the subject of the new Barry Alexander Brown film, Son of the South, and author of the book, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement (foreword by Julian Bond),” the announcement said.

“…As an organizer of The Freedom Rides of 1961 and the first white southerner to serve as field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he worked alongside Ella Baker, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Diane Nash, Julian Bond, Fannie Lou Hamer and many other civil rights leaders. Famous for battles with the KKK, segregationist lynch mobs, and violent police, he is now one of the key individuals that a new generation turns to with questions on the racial, historical, and cultural assumptions on which they were raised, as they ask themselves, ‘What is my place in this struggle?’"

“Dr. Sample is a United Methodist elder and an expert on the culture of the working-class and an advocate for ministry with underrepresented folks. He retired after a long tenure at St. Paul School of Theology where he continues to serve on the board.” … He currently serves a Methodist church in the Kansas City area and works as a community organizer with multiethnic groups advocating for better pay, benefits, and access to healthcare for working class and communities of color.

Prayers for the 20th anniversary of 9/11

As with other significant historical events – such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassination, the moon landing – a majority of Americans still remember precisely where they were when they learned of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Al-Qaeda operatives. The events of that day will be commemorated by countless churches over this coming weekend. The Rev. Derek C. Weber of Discipleship Ministries has written and compioed prayers for the anniversary. Click here to read the prayers.

‘Monster risk’ of COVID resurgence

Our best infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told Axios' Eileen Drage O'Reilly this week that “Americans are getting infected with COVID at 10 times the rate needed to end the pandemic.” This matters because the longer it takes to end the pandemic, chances are greater that a monster variant" will develop that vaccines won’t stop and will be even more lethally transmissible.

Right now, “The U.S. is averaging 1,500 deaths a day for the first time since March,” Axios health care editor Tina Reed writes. “The New York Times calculates that U.S. daily death totals have more than quintupled since the start of August.”

What’s more, there’s a tremendous risk to children of catching some of the latest COVID-19 variants. The Dallas Morning News reported: Pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations hit all-time high in Dallas-Fort Worth, officials say. The Guardian reported: “A total of 750,000 children tested positive between 5 August and 2 September, the [American Academy of Pediatrics] said. In the same time period, 54,859 children were admitted to hospitals, according to the CDC.

Axios’ newsletter says: “Kids now make up more than a quarter (26.9%) of new weekly COVID cases nationwide, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.” Click here to see Axios’ map of COVID-19 cases in the United States.

Churches continue to play an important role in public health efforts against the pandemic, serving as vaccination sites, encouraging people to get vaccinations, and practicing coronavirus protocols for safe gatherings.

David W. Scott of UM & Global recommends reading an article  by United Methodist Professor of Mission and past UM & Global contributor Rev. Dr. Peter J. Bellini, "Would Wesley Get a COVID-19 Vaccine?" “With the delta variant driving a current surge in coronavirus cases, especially among the unvaccinated, Bellini's piece is well worth revisiting,” Dr. Scott writes. Dr. Bellini concludes that Methodism’s founder John Wesley, with his appreciation of religion and science as complementary disciplines, definitely would get vaccinated against coronavirus.

Beware ‘climate delay tactics

Covering Climate Now newsletter reports on a disturbing new development: climate “delay” as a form of climate denial by the fossil fuel industry. The newsletter says:

“From the industry that has denied climate change for decades, now comes a new tactic: ‘climate delay.’ Some of the world’s biggest oil companies now appear to be ditching climate denial in favor of posing as enthusiastic backers of climate solutions. Left unsaid is that their ‘solutions’ do nothing to alter the industry’s business model. A skeptic might say they’re kicking the (oil) can down the road.” 

CCN recommends reading an article in The Guardian’s “climate crimes” series: “Big oil’s delay tactics are the new climate science denialism.” The article by Amy Westervelt cautions:

“A casual social media user might get the impression the fossil fuel industry views itself as a social justice warrior, fighting on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, and women – at least based on its marketing material in recent years.

“These campaigns fall into what a handful of sociologists and economists call ‘discourses of delay’. While oil and gas companies have a long track record of denying climate change, even after their own scientists repeatedly warned of the harm caused by burning fossil fuels, now the industry’s messaging is far more subtle and in many ways more effective than outright climate science denial.”

Let’s not be fooled by these new tactics. Longtime faith-based climate activists such as United Methodist layman Bill McKibben have warned for years about the duplicity of the fossil fuel industry; we can trust his witness and that of other United Methodist climate advocates.