Ok! November 6th, three days post-election, still counting. Cool.
Obviously, yes, count every vote. Every vote counts. I am just impatient. And every minute that passes without Biden being declared the winner is another minute that Trumpsters can try and fuck it all up. Runoffs and recounts and lawsuits, oh my!
I was awakened this morning by a text from my daughter that just read, “BLUE GEORGIA!!!” 💙 I would dearly love for Georgia to go to Biden, and even better if we can pick up those Senate seats.
It seems fortuitous that today is the official release date for the Pylon box set. I pre-ordered mine and received it early so I have already pored over the book filled with pictures and details I hadn’t seen before. The four albums, two reissues and two records of singles, b-sides, and previously unreleased songs, are beautiful. My stereo is not very high end so I can’t say that I really notice a difference between my originals and the new copies of Gyrate and Chomp but I am delighted to have them and I am really excited about the two other records, Extra, and Razz Tape. Now I have the song Cool on vinyl. I had it on the CD compilation called Hits that came out in 1989 (which is when I saw Pylon play at City Gardens and got my beloved t-shirt), but it’s great to have it included on these records. I was so happy about all this that I even posted an unflattering picture of myself in the t-shirt on Instagram. 31 years ago and today. Some things never go out of style.
If the box set is out of your price range (this was a combo birthday/Christmas present for me) you can buy Chomp and Gyrate separately and you can stream Extra and Razz Tape. Something to do while we wait for Georgia to be called. Come on!
Welp, these are some pretty fucked up times we find ourselves in, friends. Staring down an election that should be a slam dunk but Cheeto is causing chaos left and right, not to mention there’s a global pandemic and we’re trying to stave off another theocratic fascist from taking the seat of the most beloved supreme court justice of all time. Meanwhile the planet is burning, cops are still killing unarmed black people at an alarming rate and facing zero consequences, and millions of people are unemployed.
Not like I need to summarize for anyone reading here today, but I like to look back and remember just what kind of crazy shit was going on. I have toughed my way through several years of November NaBloPoMos and while I mostly can go back and figure out, or remember, what the details were of the issue of the day, it isn’t always obvious. Muddying the memories are things like this song, eerily as appropriate in 2020 as 1992!
The past six months have been unbelievable and at the same time, not a surprise at all. No, I didn’t see a pandemic coming but if one was going to hit while Twitler was in office, then you knew it was going to be an utter disaster. I really hoped RBG could have held out until 2021 but was anyone besides maybe Susan Collins surprised to see old Turtleface change the rule he created about having hearings for an open SCOTUS seat during an election year? The man has no scruples whatsoever and nothing would make me happier than for him to lose, and lose big. I don’t think it will happen but if ever someone deserved his comeuppance, it’s him.
A week ago I put out a Biden/Harris sign in the yard, along with one for a local candidate. This is not the ticket I dreamed about but if we are to have a constitutional republic rather than an autocratic dictatorship, this is no time to be picky. By the end of the week, two of my neighbors had followed suit, then another couple of signs popped up down the street. There is strength in numbers. I encourage you to declare your support. Maybe you’re in more hostile territory than I am but I guarantee someone will pass your house and feel just a little bit better knowing they’re not alone.
“If we are interested in building the mass movements needed to destroy mass oppression, our movements must include people not like us, people with whom we will never fully agree and people with whom we have conflict. That’s a much higher calling than yelling at people from a distance and then shutting them out.”
I was 12 when my 17-year-old brother died. He was not shot by police or targeted by white supremacists, but racism killed him.
Richard had bipolar disorder, and our family relied on Medicaid for health care. After a brief stay in one of very few mental health facilities that accepted Medicaid in Chicago, he became extremely ill with a high fever and trouble breathing. We took him to the hospital, where he was not tested or x-rayed. Instead, he was given an inhaler and told to take ibuprofen. When his condition worsened, we went back to the ER, where staff diagnosed him with pneumonia in both lungs. He was admitted to the ICU and put on a ventilator. Five days later, as my mother and I finally took a break from living in the ICU to shower and change clothes at home, Richard died.
It is not a question to me whether Richard would have received better care if he wasn’t Black. There is a straight line from his Blackness to the health care options available to him to his treatment to his death.
Racism is a public health crisis. It manifests in dramatic inequities in health outcomes across the board — including three times as many COVID-19 infections among Black people and nearly twice as many deaths than white people. It manifests in the daily grind of discrimination and stress on Black bodies. It manifests in where we live, the health care available to us, and how we are treated. It manifests in which mothers must mourn sons who died too early, which sisters grow up without brothers.
Because of the long legacy of redlining and an economic system built on racism, Black Americans are disproportionately relegated to living in poverty-stricken areas. And since most health outcomes are determined by things like poverty, income inequality, wealth inequality, food insecurity, and the lack of safe, affordable housing — the social determinants of health — in all of these areas, Black people have to overcome 400 years of the deck being stacked against us.
If we do manage to get care, we often receive a poorer version in comparison to white people. In 2016, half of white medical students and residents surveyed held false beliefs about biological differences between Black people and white people — beliefs with deep roots in slavery, when physical violence was seen as acceptable because people believed enslaved Black people had “thicker” skin than white people. The medical students and residents with these false beliefs rated Black patients’ pain lower and made less accurate treatment recommendations.
Black women are doubly dehumanized. For centuries, we have been denied the rights and resources to make our own decisions about our bodies. Our desires are dismissed, our pain is ignored, and our needs go unmet. And it kills us. It’s why Black women are more than three times as likely to die of pregnancy and childbirth-related causes.
The racism in the U.S. health care system is borne out in these numbers, and in stories like my brother’s … and mine.
In 2018, I made the decision to get an abortion. I went to a local clinic in Brooklyn. I did not feel ashamed about having an abortion, but I was treated as if I should be. I was forced to have two visits with two ultrasounds before the procedure, and was ordered to go from room to room without being given any information about what was going on or what would happen next. I was seen by several doctors who didn’t even attempt a decent bedside manner and couldn’t pronounce my name.
The first doctor simply told me, “You can’t smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol,” without giving me any information on my options or asking me if I’d like to continue the pregnancy. I had to ask several times for information on abortion. I was then reluctantly, coldly told that medication abortion was “out of the picture” because insurance wouldn’t cover it. I felt like I had no control over my body.
If this was my experience in Brooklyn, in a state with liberal abortion laws, I can only imagine what people in states where access to abortion is even more restricted must be experiencing.
Trust me when I tell you: Black people feel pain. And we thrive in spite of it. For decades, Black people — Black women in particular — have been at the forefront of the movements to hold this country accountable to its promise of equality and justice — the Civil Rights movement, women’s suffrage, the LGBTQ+ movement, and reproductive justice. Black women started Black Lives Matter, now recognized as among the largest protest movements in U.S. history.
It isn’t enough to tear down statues of Confederate generals (as much as they should be). As American white supremacy meets this moment of reckoning, Black people still suffer from health inequities because of racism and a for-profit health care system. We will only see change when we start to break down and rebuild the longstanding institutions that have historically been used as tools of oppression. We need to tackle the racial inequities in health care head on. Racism as a public health issue needs to be widely understood, especially by all who enter the medical field.
The health care system is killing us, as surely as police are. No more Black people should die from racist violence, or from illnesses that could be treated with just a little more care. No more Black women should experience the dehumanization I felt while getting care that is my right to have.
Racism is a public health issue, and all lives will matter when Black lives do.
-Leanna at PPFA
Leanna Burton is a media assistant in the Communications & Culture division at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was born and raised in Chicago, IL and studied journalism at City University of New York - Brooklyn College. She is also a musician and freelance writer whose main focus is lifting the voices of people in underserved and undervalued communities.
