 Good afternoon. Thanks everyone for joining us. We have the honor of having with us this afternoon, Radine Cagginolalo, Bill Harrison, and Shonda Sims. Rather than take time away from this short podcast, hey, you're welcome to Google them online and get their backgrounds. They're all very, very well qualified and experienced to talk about our subject today, racial and ethnic disparities in times of COVID, and we're seeing that both in the societal population, in the prison population, and in other sectors of society. Radine, what's been your experience and awareness? Yeah, you know, it's really interesting how COVID has actually brought to light even more how America is not equipped to be equitable or handle crises, and it's overwhelmingly affecting Black and brown people disproportionately in ways that I don't think we've seen before. I think I watched ABC 2020 the other night called the American Catastrophe, where they went through the timeline of COVID in America, and it's quite appalling because a lot of the fact, what we're seeing now is due to the fact that we didn't have access to information, that information was withheld from the beginning, and a lot of when we talk about racial disparity, we also have to look at class. So the quote unquote essential workers who worked in our supermarkets and our fast food and our meatpacking production companies were majority people of color, you know, and they were the ones out on the front lines getting exposed. We're also finding a lot of prisoners are being exposed to COVID without any possibility of social distancing, and that continues to be swept under the rug, which is very concerning. And if you look at the prison population, it's overwhelmingly Black and Latina and Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians. So very concerning how COVID is highlighting the racial disparities in our culture. So it seems to be that one of the things happening is that COVID actually, as some commentators have suggested, seems not to be changing patterns in society, but accelerating and even accentuating those disparities. Bill, do you see that in the work and life that you experienced? Oh, yeah, absolutely. The prison population, as we know, is overwhelmingly unbalanced with the people of color being the largest percentage of the population in the prisons. Now with the COVID epidemic going around the prisons itself, as you said, we don't have the ability to distance ourselves. We don't have the ability to protect ourselves in that close quarter situation. So what's happening is we're getting reports of lockdowns going on where obviously we can't get access to our clients on a regular routine basis to confer with them in preparation for hearings and trials. That really falls disproportionately on those people of color because those are the ones that are in prison. So clearly this COVID issue just highlights our disparity in the prison. You're correct on that issue. Are we getting a sense of the playing field if anything is becoming even more tilted against those people? Absolutely, absolutely. As you know, obviously, the prison population being such a disparity in the population, it falls obviously upon economic lines. And so you have the the poor of the across society being incarcerated at higher levels. They're not getting the nature of the type of representation that they should be getting under those circumstances. They can't get out of prisons because of our pre-trial release provisions in our bail structure. So they are obviously getting the worst of the worst in this situation. And we're seeing that in society as well, I think. Sandra, you shared with us a really cogent article that just came out today where Professor Kalalokula at the Med School and Jocelyn Howard with we are in Shiania have shared statistics and life factors that are accentuating this. What are some of the things that you've seen that are worsening the situation for that population? The article that I sent you really kind of focused on what's happening here in Hawaii as it pertains to the Micronesian and Pacific Islander population, which doesn't get a lot of attention in a lot of the mainstream media because they're focused more on the information that they have at their disposal. But one of the things I kind of wanted to that kind of struck me as we started doing the work and this was the notion that what COVID has really done is that it's just kind of ripped off the scab of underlying racism that is in all aspects at the very core of our society. We're seeing it in criminal justice. We're seeing it in housing. We're seeing it in employment. We didn't talk about the people that are on the front lines of who can't work from home are those that are most exposed and lower income jobs and service jobs and so forth. Not that we shouldn't have them, but at the same time it kind of makes it clear to us who's doing that work and how our patterns in history of discrimination have affected who gets to do those kinds of things. And that's another piece that's kind of concerning. And the piece that I shared with you, basically I was kind of stunned to see it as well when you talked about the percentages of Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians who are affected by COVID is vastly disproportionate to the population more so than what we've seen in Black and Brown communities on the mainland. I mean the figures they were showing is like the gap is something like what is it 25 percent that Pacific Islanders make up like 25 percent of the population that is diagnosed with COVID and we're talking about people that are like four percent of the population. So that number is quite honestly is obscene when you think about it in terms of why that particular segment of the community is exposed. And part of it is again goes back to the notion of the kinds of racism. I'm working with a group at one of the schools and we found out that we were doing some service projects at the school. It has a population that has a lot of Pacific Islander, Micronesian students. And what the principle was telling us that was why our work was so important was that because on Fridays if there was a holiday they were concerned because the kids went home they didn't get to eat because the meals and food had came at school and breakfast and lunch and it was a school had a pantry and we were helping to kind of you know stop the pantry so kids could take food home discreetly not home but take food discreetly on Fridays so that they would have something to eat over the weekend. So you're looking at all of these kinds of disparities they're just sort of being exposed now. Everybody sees some of us were seeing it all along but then you more people are seeing it and I think that's another piece that's happening with COVID is that this inherent racism that's at the core of so much of what we do is really being exposed and shown for all to see. You can't turn your head and say you don't know about it because it's so clearly obvious in housing patterns and education and work and certainly in the numbers of people who are getting COVID and dying from COVID that's the concern. So if we're facing a situation where conditions are actually worsening for the most marginalized and oppressed groups what are the solutions in society? Where are the sources to reverse this time? And so I think help needs to come from grassroots from community level. I think that's the only way that we're going to see a real transformational change. I mean we live in a capitalist economy so even when we talk about prisoners I mean the general public will think while they did a crime they should be in there anyway. But the reality is people don't know that a lot of people who are incarcerated are sitting there pre-trial because they can't afford a thousand dollars bail or they are low-level offenders that are eligible for community level custody. So there's a lot of factors that people need to realize that if we're talking in terms of a capitalist structure you're always going to have folks that are just going to dismiss what we're talking about today and really you can't because if you keep dismissing it we're going to collapse everything is going to collapse. I think another important point of the article that Sander shared with us is that you're looking at groups that come from very cohesive coherent collectivized cultures and this kind of pandemic that actually winds up working against them because they're marginalized and forced in on each other and yet they're deprived of access and disconnected from access to the resources and the information that might enable them to have better health choices better work and economic choices better housing choices and education choices and that's been systemic in the society for a long time now and if anything getting worse. Yes, yeah I totally agree with everyone else in the comments that were made at this point. You know we look at people who are marginalized as we've been says that those people don't have access to the types of programs of types of monies etc to a system throughout the judicial system and realistically we're not going to get any better at helping these folks and we try to to obviously look to education look to equality in terms of jobs and the like but we need as Redine says we need leaders that are going to look at other possible issues such as retrographymin review to to restructure that structure minimum sentences we structure mandatory's all those things that go into this whole process become systemic and and adversely affects that marginal population so clearly we need to rework everything it's not that there's no one matter that's going to actually help individuals in these situations collectively we have to look at all types and all the the available remedies in the system and change the laws wholesale and there's so many I think there's I almost want to say there's a there's a place for everybody to take a stand and get involved in how we address these issues as society because there's so widespread and I think we're kind of realizing beginning with some of us are beginning to see how they're all connected in resulting in these disparities look at our health care system for crying out loud why is it so darn difficult to provide health care to people what's what well we do know why but at the same time I think we're recognizing now that for all that we have in terms of our our wealth designation some of the best hospitals and and clinics in the world we're still not able to figure out a way to get health access to health care to people who don't have money or don't have you know elaborate insurance programs and for a country the country like the United States again that's just an abomination that's just not it's it's just wrong and it's the other piece that is adding to why this why COVID is again impacting more and more marginalized communities because they already haven't had access to care to begin with and so when you add on a pandemic disease like this it just makes it it makes it even worse and the impact on the rest of maybe this is what's going to help because it's having an impact on the rest of society because when you have you know marginalized folks only in positions where they're having to come in day-to-day contact there is a life their likelihood of their catching it the likelihood of their spreading it is even greater just because they haven't had access just because it is Saturday haven't had access to health care it's just so i'm watching things i just get so frustrated you know and and and i don't want to see upset maybe i am upset but we we have the ability to do better that's that's the other part of it we have the ability we actually have the resources to do better i mean we have a congress sitting there debating about whether or not you're going to give people who who can't go to work who can't feed their families $200 or $600 extra but yet until you've got to still talk about putting in billions of dollars and stuff for these um jets and stuff that we don't even i'm sorry yeah i've yeah i've gotten wound up here but i don't think it's off track because the allocation but it's all i mean i see the all of these issues are connected and we're now beginning to see how they're all connected in what covid is doing because we're having you you can't you can't not you can't unsee it i guess it's what it is you can't once we know you can't those that want to pretend like oh the one has nothing to do with the other you don't have that excuse anymore yeah yeah you can't unsee what's happening in our prisons if you're going to say yeah they should be all you know lock them up and throw away the key well they're getting they're getting covid in the prison yeah and we're going to see increasing incidences of that hardly because there's no control on the part of leadership they completely disregard it i mean where in history can you imagine a president in this country or any other country coming out and saying okay you rich guys in your white neighborhoods don't worry about poor people getting a chance to come in there we're erasing all of those protections during the obama area so you can keep your nice white suburbs the way you want i mean we haven't seen that since george wallis and great the problem with that attitude obviously is this this this pandemic is non-discriminatory i mean it reaches every segment of our population and so as we've seen from this article that points out that the the marginalized individuals in our society they're ones who are in the restaurant you know in nursing homes in places where the other segments of the population whether they're they're wealthy enough or not are going to have to come into contact with people so this really exposes like what sandra says this basically takes the scab off of it and and we all have to understand that it's affecting every one of us no matter how wealthy you are we see every day in the paper the news individuals who are in high ranking individuals in high places who obviously are very wealthy um contracting this disease so um this illness so you know it's really important for us to understand and that's what's the beauty of this is a beauty to this pandemic is that um people are understanding that we have to be concerned about our fellow neighbors no matter where they are and what they're doing and you have phenomenon as in portland where what originally begins as a black lives matter protests primarily peaceful with some incidents of violence then gets turned by federal intervention into a much more violent much more dangerous much more destructive set of confrontations and what's striking is that what people the people that come out to provide the buffers to stick up for the protesters the wall of moms the wall of vets the dads with the leaf blowers i mean i don't think we've ever seen anything like that where different sectors of society that were previously uninvolved and uncommitted are stepping forward saying this is wrong this needs to be stopped yeah and that's the beauty of these times that we're in um as we talked about before the you know that the technological advances allows people around the world to see this uh and and to be you know very upset about what's going on and and becoming more and more involved and saying we've got to stop it it stops here um and we have an administration that obviously has no clue to what is right or wrong and allows uh you know federalized agents to go in uh in demonstrations and do what they're doing you know it's a it's appalling uh but that nature of what it what's happening causes people to clearly um coalesce and and and uh reach out and and take a stand where they hadn't in the past which is uh one of the good things coming out of this situation exactly yeah and one of the things that the media has picked up on is that people who have not stepped forth or had this experience before are having it now and their stories are getting covered and saying now i'm beginning to see what other people that we're trying to stand up for have to live with every single day of their lives very true yes so what what's at the heart of the disparity if there were a single element that you would focus on each of you who is it housing is it education is it work and income is it all of them equally yeah you know for me i mean obviously i i think it's that's really complicated i think it's multiple factors but you know lately i've been thinking about this term essential worker and um i think really what we've dealt with in american history is the expendable populations and now we're we're calling them essential but really what they are is they're expendable and until we um have more people see that i mean they're it's going to continue but i think people like you said are waking up and uh what bill said earlier i mean this this virus is no respecter of persons i mean you can be living in a mansion or living on the streets and you're just as susceptible now treatment is a different story but we need to stop looking at people as expendable yeah and i think i mean to be honest and correctly if your information or impression is different but when we see images of people who are saying i have a right to wear no mask that you can't imprison me in a mask i'm a free american these are not the marginalized people who are the victims yeah which is yeah i it's perplexing to me i mean i get it i know the history i know the politics but to be so incredibly um careless about your own health and so angry about and so willing to protect your your so-called rights and privilege at the expense of not only yourself your and your family but everyone else that just i mean i think what's happening is we're converging at the pinnacle where people are realizing that their privilege might eventually become expendable too right that that sense of entitlement that that goes with these folks who are doing that you know that that's really disgraceful um to say i'm entitled to do what i want to do notwithstanding what's happening uh to my neighbors or the society as a general and that's really i think the problem one of the problems that we have obviously as radine says it's very complicated there's no one one problem but i think uh my my idea of the problem is this this idea that um we have individualized rights and we and everyone has to respect those rights everyone has to respect how i think and i have even if i have no concern for the community um and and the body politic as a whole uh i am first and what i do is right in that sense of entitlement it's totally wrong and that has been the problem throughout our our history is that belief that one has that entitlement and isn't that what's really at the core of all of this that the inequality is knowing it's intentional it's at the expense of others and the people who assert and benefit from it they know that they're not apologetic about it and now for the first time at least in our political recent history they're being encouraged at the highest levels yeah go out and act like that behave like that and in fact anybody that gets in your way beat them up shoot them exercise your second amendment rights it's that's exactly right yeah unfettered inequality that that is exactly it i agree that is exactly it because people are empowered because we don't have as redine indicated or we don't have a leadership that is willing to say that these are problems we need to address it's willing to just say you know you go do your thing i'm doing my thing and that's not something we've seen in our leadership and are put certainly at the executive level in a very long time i know we've had a lot of issues to deal with as a as a nation and as a community but this this time just feels very very very rudderless yeah and i also think on that note Sandra we also are local leaders they need to be more decisive because if they're not and they keep going swaying back and forth it's going to continue affecting people of color disproportionately and i think this whole idea of politicizing this virus and who gets to stay in business and who who doesn't and all of that needs to stop exactly and i think like early on in this pandemic if we had leaders that basically shut everything down right for the inception enclosed it all and said no we're not going to do this we're not going to closer 30 40 60 days whatever it was in the beginning of this without considering or thinking that they've got political supporters who say no we can't close our business down we're going to lose money that sort of influence that goes on in the in the politicking around this issue that really caused what's happening now and it's going to continue on and you see the numbers spiking because people are claiming that they're losing business yes we are losing business because our leaders didn't get on top of this timely manner okay and one of the things that we're also seeing is that a different sector of people who have been bystanders acquiescent passive for a long long time are now stepping up speaking up hey look this this is wrong this is offensive and we're going to join and take a stand on this i don't think we've seen that this may be a time of opportunity but the energy the dynamism exactly as all of you said earlier seems to need to come from the grassroots and sundry you have some thoughts on that i i think that may be happening i know you probably had a chance to look at the letter that uh john louis published in today's new york times and also um some of his services today and one of the things that i kind of felt really really encouraged about is in his letter his letter to the young people to the next generation of you know calling upon them and recognizing them for you know taking the leadership he began doing this when he was 18 years old um he began his own you know he got on uh i think president obama was talking about when he got on a bus to go and um do the sit-ins he was like what 19 20 years old uh at that time and so to have that kind of commitment i that early on is president obama said it's like he was the age as the same age as his youngest daughter and he began this fight and he continued it and inspired so many i forget that you i think we most we forget that he spoke at the march on washington he was the youngest person to speak he was about 23 at that time i think i i am a bit encouraged uh because we are seeing a generation like you said people who've not necessarily been involved before who are coming for it um because this this covid among other things has just exposed so much of what needs to be changed in our society and i'm actually kind of hopeful about the way i mean it's it's not pleasant right now there are some things that are just very very ugly but uh i think i think we're we're we're beginning to see some movement um so hold that thought thank you all for your dynamism your energy we'll see you all in a couple of weeks and continue this deep dive okay thank you guys thank you thanks everyone