CLEVELAND — The Cleveland City Council unanimously voted to declare racism as a public health crisis.
The council will be setting up a working committee of experts to study and make strategies to bring about racial equity.
“Racism is a sickness,” said councilman Blaine Griffin, chairman of council’s Health & Human Services Committee, at an earlier committee meeting. “We want to institutionalize racial equity.”
The resolution comes after a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a black man, cutting off his breathing.
It also comes at a time when coronavirus is killing blacks and minorities at a higher rate than whites, revealing inequities in health care and healthy environments.
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