Health care workers see the societal issues that lead to health care disparities in the African-Americans in America. We are emerging from a pandemic where people of color have been disproportionately affected than whites. The lack of insurance, the effects of poverty on health, and the lack of access to health care are all factors that lead to pre-existing risk factors. In my state, where the majority of the meat in the United States is processed, workers are working shoulder-to-shoulder without PPE and they have tested positive for COVID in astounding numbers. These workers are immigrants with brown and black skin. These things existed before George Floyd was brutally murdered by a police officer in uniform, while three other officers looked on.
In that one shocking event, which comes heaped upon many others, but in close proximity to a video that demonstrated white vigilantes gunning down a black jogger, and a white woman on video threatening to call the police and tell them a black man was threatening her because he asked to to leash her dog. It is just too much, and so today, we kneel.
Tomorrow we continue to work for social justice, but today we take a moment to kneel, to mourn, to pray, and to acknowledge the pain of those that we provide medical care to.
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