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Join us live with Monifa Bandele, asha bandele, Joia Crear-Perry, and Susan Burton for a discussion on Black maternal health, reproductive justice, and more.
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00:00good afternoon to everyone who is joining us on the east coast it's all of our family on the west
00:09coast we wish you a very very good morning my name is asha bandelli and i couldn't be more
00:15honored to join my essence family and bringing you a very deeply critical conversation today
00:23it's about a group of people who have always been on the front lines of both healing and also harm
00:29and that's black mothers today's the last day of a week that's been dedicated to amplifying the truth
00:35about black mothers and our health and it's a call that's especially important during this covid
00:40pandemic the data that's been released by the federal government the cdc has been sparse uh and
00:47it's been inconsistent but here's some of what we already know across all existing data black people
00:52represent just 13 of the population but 32 of all covid19 related deaths and as essence has
01:00reported in some localities like milwaukee and new orleans we are as much as 60 and 70 percent of
01:07those who die of covid related illnesses so while there are those who have said that the infection
01:13does not discriminate although the deaths are discriminatory i think i would argue that
01:19discrimination exists at every inflection point of the virus because despite the failure of our federal
01:24government and cdc to release disaggregated numbers so that we know the exact rates of infection across
01:32demographics here's what we do know black women are the nation's service providers we are the front
01:38line workers at every level of society and that reality alone places us right in harm's way we raise
01:44children who are not our own we hold together families beyond our own we cook and we clean and we
01:50teach we organize we guide we doctor we nurse we do it in homes we do it in hospitals we expose ourselves
01:58to risk every single day to ensure the quality of the lives of other people and their children even as
02:05our own right to live it's not protected at all policy enforced structural discrimination in our society has
02:14led to this stunning and horrific reality the united states has the worst maternal health record of all
02:21industrialized nations and that truth is driven by the mortality rates of black mothers from the point
02:28of pregnancy's inception until a year after that we are postpartum um and so perhaps most stunning of all
02:36within that statistic is that it doesn't matter what your income level is it doesn't matter what your
02:42education level is no prophylaxis is provided for any black woman on that statistic all black mothers
02:50are at risk we're here to talk about that and to talk about the fact that all black mothers need and
02:56deserve a nation that cares for us as well as we have cared for it we want to ask what should that care
03:02look like we want to ask about the socially imposed conditions that must be disrupted ended
03:08in order to ensure that we black mothers are able to live out the full season of our lives and so to
03:15help us have that conversation uh to answer some of those questions and questions including yours which
03:22you can leave in the uh facebook status and we will answer them after we finish filming today it's my
03:29pleasure to welcome to this broadcast three women who i have worked with for a long time and love dearly
03:34dr joy career perry monifa bandelli and susan burton are here with us and they will stay for another
03:4230 minutes or so afterwards to try to help answer any questions you have all you need to do is type
03:47them into the facebook uh status so we can do that but but first let me tell you a little bit more
03:53about these women i love so much and you love them as much as i do and know how critical they are to
03:58this conversation susan burton uh there in california in los angeles is the founder and executive
04:04director of a new way of life it's an organization that has not only shifted criminal justice policy
04:11helping to decarcerate women helping to restore voting rights among a host of other things but her
04:17organization began in 1998 to provide safe housing for women who were coming home from prison and in that
04:24capacity she not only provided personal development support but leadership support so those women
04:29would go on to be those who helped shift policies for other women who were coming home from prison or
04:35were in prison at the time at that particular moment monifa bandelli my god sister is a veteran organizer
04:43and a senior vice president at momsrising.org the largest organization that's online and working to
04:51shift the paradigms that exist around mothers in this nation she has more than two decades of
04:56experience and policy analysis communications and civic engagement and she leads at moms rising
05:03so many vital campaigns including the campaign around black women's uh maternal health and and her ability
05:11to do that has been undergirded by a woman who i would say is the godmother of this movement this this
05:19movement to ensure the black women's black mother's lives are protected and that's dr joy career
05:25founder and president of the national birth equity collaborative this woman has educated people
05:32at the u.s high commission on human rights she's educated congress people across the board as well as
05:39working with all of us here on the ground including the life-giving and life-saving work she did in the
05:45immediate wake of the horror that was hurricane katrina uh and working with the city's uh uh department of
05:52health i want to welcome you all to this program today and and with that said i'd like to begin
05:59by talking first dr joya and ask how are you feeling and how are you doing is your family okay
06:06yeah thank you so much for asking um and it's so wonderful to see all these beautiful faces and
06:11asha and monifa and susan thank you um we're good i'm i'm pretending to be a third grade teacher right
06:17now i'm homeschooling my nine-year-old and i have to say if we could invest in teaching today if we
06:22could figure out a way to put that on the stock market i would give all the dollars all the coins
06:27because they're totally under invested um so right now a little movement in my house because we're
06:33trying to homeschool and also be on and work at the same time um but yes we're good everybody's safe my
06:39family my mother my father my sister everybody in new orleans um we're doing well although it's a
06:45hot spot and so thank you for asking well and thank you for for sharing that with us and i think that
06:50many of us are trying to figure out how to be um teachers and uh you know read a little bit every day
06:57do some exercise and don't try to be what the professionals are doing just drawing your child's best
07:04teacher but let me let me ask this you know i want us to think about what the biggest risk factors were
07:10for black women pre-covid 19 and how has povid 19 exacerbated uh uh those risks you know the thing the
07:19word risk factor the term risk factor is really jarring for me honestly um because as a medical
07:24professional i was taught that risk factors were these very clinical things hypertension diabetes
07:29um premature birth and all those things always had people who look like me as the most um common
07:35person to have them so it said me just existing was the risk factor so we spent a lot of time really
07:41unpacking why would people who look like us have higher rates of hypertension and those and the risk
07:47factors for maternal mortality a lot of those maternal those medicalized things but the reason that we
07:53have higher risk of those illnesses is because of racism because of white supremacy because our bodies have
07:59been harmed biologically by the impacts of the stress and the worry of structural and interpersonal
08:04racism so that's the biggest risk factor we despite as you mentioned in your opening despite income or
08:09education so black women who are phds and mds and masters and running companies and uh sitting in the
08:16in the boardroom still have higher rates maternal death than a white woman who has no has an eighth grade
08:21education so that is not based upon her biology or her genetics or her hypertension that is when we show up in
08:27our beautiful fabulous bodies but we're dealing with the aggressions of racism every day we're stressed
08:33on the inside our bodies are fighting and so we're showing up in the hospitals and we're not being listened
08:37to we're not being heard and all covet 19 did was was really exposed what we already knew we already
08:44were policed we were asked as black women how many people are you going to bring into the room when you
08:48have a baby now you see everybody's being policed the same way so there's a mass panic so welcome to be a
08:54black woman that's been our existence inside of health care for a long time um and so this policing
08:59of our bodies in all spaces even when we're trying to give birth is harmful and killing us in birth
09:04thank you so much for that i think it was um doc children in the heart map solution who said that
09:10stress much of it driven by white supremacy and racism um is actually more predictive of death cancer
09:18than even smoking cigarettes is and so i just wanted to underscore that point uh as i as i turn to you
09:25um susan and think about the stressors that must be present in the lives of women who are both
09:31incarcerated and recently decarcerated and i know that you and i have been having some conversations
09:37about some particular things that are occurring right now with women who are just coming home from
09:43prison and would you um talk with our audience a little bit about some of the stressors the black mothers
09:48who are recently just decarcerated experiencing yes so um we work at a new way of life to reunite
09:58mothers who are being released with their children when possible uh many times these women cannot
10:06even re be reunited because their child has been been adopted out while they were incarcerated
10:13but right now we have a few women in our homes who the social worker is working with dcfs to reunite them
10:21with their children and uh covet 19 has stopped all visitation uh that has been mandate mandated by the court
10:34that these women have um weekly visits with their children so they've stopped all of those weekly visits
10:41but the women still have to call a number every morning and if their letter comes up
10:50they have to make their way to a testing site to test whether or not they've been using drugs
10:59during colbert 19. so i've been talking with the uh our county board of supervisor
11:06and the department of children's and family services say asking why are you exposing them
11:14in in in in in a time of pandemic to collect a body sample and put these women black women who are trying
11:25to get their babies back you know uh uh uh exposing them uh to uh contact with colbert 19. our mayor
11:36our governor you know and the other man in place you understand that's right and and so uh they can't if
11:49they miss testing then automatically they are given a dirty ua they are reprimanded for taking care of
12:02themselves and not exposing themselves to colbert 19. so i asked them why hadn't they relaxed it they relaxed
12:10visitation why haven't you relaxed um uh uh uh the the the need the requirement to test that's the same
12:21court order that said visit with the children right so uh i'm watching this and i am just livid
12:30uh and you know we are working to get as many women as we can out of incarceration safely back into
12:40their communities and communities and we're asking the sheriffs our county our health department to
12:48release those people with immune deficiencies to release those women who are pregnant to release the
12:55old and aging to release those with with compromised uh with with with health conditions and you know asha
13:03i went out yesterday and i signed the lease on a new house out you know i was resigned not to ever
13:09open up no more houses right i just wanted to say that you mean a new safe house where women
13:15a new safe house come home to same house we have eight homes in the la and long beach area that house
13:23women and provide them with support leadership development all the things you talked about
13:29so i went and got another one uh i went and got another one and i'll get another and another one
13:34so that uh you know i could assure women to safety and allow them to heal and get a foothold on their
13:45lives and dream again get their babies back create the families and the the unity and health that our
13:54communities deserve and that they create our communities great you know susan there's a reason
14:00that michelle alexander long ago called you the harriet tubman of our time uh you know more than a
14:06thousand women who have gotten uh to a whole new place in life women who would have been otherwise
14:12written off and i just want to underscore the important point that you made you know uh drug
14:16testing doesn't tell you anything about the kind of parent someone is right and you know that people
14:23use drugs across uh race and class um and there's some stats that even say that uh people who are
14:30not black use uh drugs at a higher higher um rate yeah so when we think about um testing it's also
14:39important to think about the testing that's not been done right so they're doing that testing and yet
14:43i don't think the united states has reached five percent doing all the testing for covet 19.
14:49i certainly know that we are well behind testing like testing and rape kids yes yeah
14:56but you want to yeah but you want to continually put pressure on women on black women to go and give
15:04their body fluid to say whether or not they can reunite with their children and none of this is an
15:11indicator of of of your parenting skills just because you're incarcerated does not mean you're a bad
15:18parent but that's the way that the the the lens in which they operate so uh i'm showing up i'm showing up with
15:27all of myself and i'm standing and i'm fighting and i'm i'm i'm guiding and i'm i'm i'm just uh you know
15:37i'm not just hoping i'm fighting too uh so um you know i've watched so many women come home from prisons
15:49and their ability to have children had been stripped from them they had been sterilized while doing time
15:58in our state prisons and so it goes on and on and on and you know just like you said asha you know we
16:09um black women have been showing up in so many different ways um uh uh uh uh toting the line and
16:21and holding and bringing our community together and you know rooting and growing you know uh speaking
16:30of growing you know during covet 19 um i started growing a garden here uh i couldn't get out and
16:37i just went got some seeds so you know uh and i'm feeling good about that um that piece to kind of
16:44change my whole lifestyle but uh but i'm still fighting i'm emailing you are you are one of the
16:53staff is on their way now to the prison to pick up a woman that's being released and we're going to keep
17:00doing that thank you so much for that susan i mean and that and that actually um sort of beautifully
17:07leads me to where i want to turn to you monifa because i think you know the statistics are hard
17:14and they are harsh you know we talk about black women in prison because it's our numbers that are
17:19driving those numbers as well and i think it's you know it's important to say things like uh the
17:25united states has five percent of the world population 25 of the prison population that's
17:30even higher when it comes to women but it's also important to look at that next to covet 19.
17:35we have five percent of the world population and 20 of the covet 19 infections and so and that
17:43number will probably go up and we see how many people we've unneedlessly lost and so when i think
17:49about the history of black mothers in this nation from the very first baby that was stolen from the
17:56first kidnapped african woman to all of the ways in which there have been um state-sponsored incursions
18:04into our motherhood whether we were put in prison or our children were taken from us
18:09who supposedly being bad parents and as somebody who grew up around uh privileged white uh parents
18:16i know what bad parenting looks like the white kids who were sent out to buy you know all kinds
18:23of drugs for their parents beaten by their parents everything they ascribe to us i saw white people do
18:28and do often works um but without being criminalized uh for it and so with all of this reality all of this
18:37uh it's not even uneven playing through monica where where is the hope where is our power line
18:47because i also know that for every movement for change it's been black women at the forefront whether
18:51it was at the abolition movement or whether it was this military strategist as harriet tubman was
18:57whether it was ending anti-lynching campaigns or the civil rights movement whether or not we were
19:02recognized we were leading sometimes leading from behind but leading nonetheless uh right down onto
19:09the black lives matter movement which was started by three black women um so talk to us about power
19:18you nailed it asha i mean look at our panel right this is the hope we represent the front line in every
19:27sector of the community that is fighting maternal mortality so you talked about us being on the
19:32front line pre and post civil war that was also the case with maternal health black women delivered the
19:38babies we have cultivated and developed and and perfectionized um the art of midwifery before it
19:46was hypotheticalized um by doctors who by the way use black women's bodies to develop procedures
19:53and essentially once again using our bodies as torture to develop science but the hope is that
19:59we continue to fight and we continue to win right all of those instances when you pointed to where
20:07black women were on the front line we were able to advance so we hold the line and we push it forward
20:13it's important to point that out whether it's the civil war whether it's the civil rights movement whether
20:18it's the movement for black lives black lives matter today we are continuing and the same issue with
20:23this maternal health crisis i mean four or five years ago nobody knew the u.s had a maternal health
20:29crisis but the united states had a maternal health crisis right and it was doctors like dr joya it
20:35was women who were legislators it was women who were activists it was women who are our modern-day harriet
20:40tubmans like susan has said look this is what's happening we're sounding the alarm it doesn't matter if you
20:45are serena williams or a woman recently cycling out of prison you have risk when you walk into a hospital to do
20:52something that's natural as having a baby right and so then not only did we sound an alarm just like
20:59always as black women end up being the patient and the doctor right so we've been developing what all
21:06the tools are to pull this ship around right to really turn it on its nose because we know it's not
21:12piecemeal there's no one piece so black women are key in creating a massive piece of national legislation
21:19called the black maternal health momnibus that talks about accountability data collection doctor
21:26training um allocating resources locally to doulas and midwives opening up access to health care
21:32that's black women just like we see here today developing that you know they are architects in the
21:37community like susan saying this is what you need when you cycle out for your children and then we have
21:43dr joya who's pushing her colleagues in the medical field to say no it's not because black women uh have
21:50higher rates of obesity no it's not because black women have higher rates of this and that there's
21:55nothing sick inherently sick about being black it's what is happening when they come into our hospitals and
22:02interact with you with one of the two guys probably and so we're pushing on all the fronts you know which is
22:08what we have done and that gives me hope because that's how we've always advanced so what colvin has
22:14allowed us to do is also look at how you see the narrative that came from the surgeon general last
22:20week osha when he was talking about the health disparities the first thing he said was that well
22:26black people need to step up and start drinking alcohol abuse as well it's the bill crosby it's the bill
22:30crosby right but because of the work that dr joya has done you saw the responses people were like no when we look at health
22:37disparities and um maternal mortality outcomes when you strip away all that there's still
22:44a racial disparity and we're going to see that in the forensics when you look back at covid
22:49right so we kind of laid the groundwork for how we need to look at covid and how we're going to have
22:54to build back better stop with these um dog whistles about how unhealthy it is just to be black
23:01and fix the system it's systematic but the hope is that we're going to design it because you know if we
23:06don't design it we'll be left out right 10 years ago the state of california went to deal with their
23:14maternal health crisis and put out a bunch of protocols that won't race specific then talk
23:18about racism it was you know how people race right and so what they saw is that the race went down
23:25but the disparities increased black women still die right in california so it's important that we design
23:32the solutions and that's what's happening today and that's what's getting the hope thank you so much
23:38for that and i want to say a couple of things first i want to just thank everybody who is um watching and
23:45who is listening out there i see i see the men out there cheers yeah i see you from all around the
23:52country and it means a lot we thank you for the salute we thank you for being willing um to get out here
23:58at el francois that's mara misha decui i see all of you out there and we are so grateful that you
24:05were joining us in this conversation one thing that i do want to say because i want to get to like
24:09see what some of our demands are and what some of the outcomes are i can't have all your billions here
24:13and not have it shared one thing i do want to say that he's been driving me crazy is something um i
24:19learned from one of my mentors dr carl hart who is a neuropsychopharmacologist at columbia university
24:28we don't even use the word disparity disparity is a neutral word right speaks to numbers but
24:35we use this discrimination to go to your point um dr joya what we're talking about is health
24:41discrimination where we talk about discrimination at every level discrimination the criminal justice
24:46system arrest because that is an active and targeted um action that's being done we know that
24:54people who are arrested are not the people who are the only people who've done something that is a
25:00violation of law and some of them haven't violated law at all and we know there are plenty of people who
25:06will never see the inside of a prison who've done horrific crimes yeah horrific horrific crimes
25:13whether they've lied us into wars we didn't need to fight they didn't respond when they needed to
25:19respond as people were dying at their doorstep but that so that said um dr joya what is the demand
25:27what would you make uh america and and and health care or i don't want to put uh boundaries on a mind
25:35like right what's the man right yeah you know so as a hurricane katrina survivor honestly this moment
25:42feels so familiar to me it feels really surreal sometimes and it's really quiet and peaceful
25:48and i'd like to believe in the 15 years since that moment that i've learned something i've learned how to
25:53really think about what is it that we want instead of at that moment just like most of you right now
25:57listening we're just happy for anything if they give us a check people are excited if they give us if we
26:01get some access but our demand really should be health is a right and when i say health is the
26:07right i don't mean health care i mean all of health so that means the incarcerating that means having
26:12access to environmental justice that means all the building blocks to agree that all americans no
26:17matter our color no matter our gender no matter our religion are valued and that they're invested in
26:22so that they can be healthy so that requires a whole re um undoing of the current system that we have
26:28that devalues us based upon gender based upon skin color like all those things would have to be undone
26:34if we believed all people have a right to help thank you thank you so much i'm going to name that we
26:40have only four minutes um left and i want to shout out atlanta because i've seen atlanta come up a couple
26:45of times hi atlanta um um we're grateful for you um and south carolina i see you um susan um in our remaining
26:57now three minutes sorry for that what would be the demand that you would want to make right now before
27:03america so it's a disinvestment in our uh uh all the criminal justice structure and a reinvestment in
27:15health and healing and well-being when the amulets come to our community now they leave with the empty
27:26ambulance yeah when the police come to our community they leave with someone handcuffed in the back and
27:34that's because there's been an overinvestment in the incarceration system and an underinvestment
27:42in our health systems we can't even begin to respond so black people once again is left laying in their bed
27:51to die and i literally saw this um happen with the man thank you so much for that susan and
28:03and uh in in 60 seconds or less uh monique what would you offer your demand before our audiences
28:12yes i think a term that is growing and becoming more powerful throughout the movement of black women
28:18is a call for abolition yeah and it is exactly a part of what susan is talking about we have to
28:24reimagine what health and safety looks like that's right and when we do that then we'll have the will
28:32to pass all the pieces of legislation that we're demanding to get the protocols in place that we're
28:37demanding we're kind of locked out of being able to achieve that because there's not the imagination
28:43of what health and safety really can be so abolition as a big demand well you know that
28:50i'm right there with you and so hopefully we'll have another conversation on why it makes sense
28:55in terms of keeping us both uh healthy and safe to abolish um prisons it seems counterintuitive but
29:02it's probably the only thing that's going to save us and i don't want to get um out of this call
29:08with not only thanking with the whole of my heart all of you who pulled it together with me at the
29:14very last minute but i have to shout out kirsten westavali the newly appointed executive producer
29:20of essence.com who i know has been working around the clock at night at noon at the wee hours to make
29:28sure that this happened she's undergirded by an incredible team that i know i've been proud to be
29:34a family too for 21 years now um and and right now um there couldn't be any better partner for her
29:41than allison mcgevna essence's deputy editor and stephanie hodges donovan who was right there with us
29:48and took some low-tech women and made them high-tech and look good on this camera make sure the lighting
29:53was working um and to all of you out there know that you have our thanks for joining us in this
30:01conversation for keeping it going in your own communities have a very blessed day and be tender
30:06with each other we deserve it
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