B|E Note #AfterThought: A Conversation w/ Anoa Changa in ATL
A conversation with Atlanta-based political strategist and lawyer Anoa Changa about COVID-19 impacts on underserved communities in Georgia
a B|E Note #AfterThought
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B|E Note Publisher Charles Ellison talks with Anoa Changa, Atlanta-based political strategist, lawyer and electoral justice reporter for Prism Magazine. She describes the challenges faced by already underserved and targeted communities in a Southern state like Georgia, how systemic racism worsens that gap and what public leadership is getting right … and not.
“There is obviously that conversation about how the South has been been hard hit in particular areas,” Changa tells #AfterThought. “Yes, we're in a city [like Atlanta], but then we look at some of the less populated areas that are more rural. It’s a little bit tighter for some folks in terms of just accessibility to goods and services. Everyone had a run on stores everywhere. But it just seems some places that are further out, maybe do not have either the same access to being able to get certain things, they're municipalities that weren't as aggressive about getting people to do the social distancing, and really, really enforcing about washing hands.”
“From a living experience, and caring and building and loving black people position, it is very troubling when you think about how Georgia is a state that refused to expand Medicaid. So right now, we are living in a moment where we have millions of people across the country who have been unemployed, and suddenly, a lot of people have lost their healthcare. So we're living in a state where we already have a good number of people who are uninsured or underinsured. So, we do not have Medicaid expansion. And while there's been a lot of focus on whether or not COVID-19 treatment would be made available or free to people, at the same time when we're talking about all the other things that are still happening in people's lives right now. Getting just regular treatment could still be debilitating for folks who are still having to go out there and go to work and who don't even have Medicaid expansion here. We are looking at areas that are dismissed as cynically disinvested.”
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