Poverty is a public health crisis: Lt. Governor

Michigan's Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II (D) joins Yahoo Finance to discuss how COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting minority communities during the COVID-19 outbreak and areas of economic weakness the pandemic has exposed.

Video Transcript

- Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, will soon be announcing his running mate. Now the only thing we know is that it's going to be a woman. Michigan's Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is reportedly under consideration. Back with us for some more is Michigan's Lieutenant Governor, Garlin Gilchrest. Now you clearly work closely with Governor Whitmer. What can we expect in terms of what she can bring to the ticket if Biden chooses her? What would a Vice President Whitmer do for America?

GARLIN GILCHREST: Well let me be clear that I have no inside information as to this election that the vice president is going to make. I think that decision is very deep, very personal, and will be his and his alone. What I can tell you about Gretchen Whitmer is that she is a fantastic and committed public servant. I think people around the country have seen during this COVID-19 pandemic that she is someone who is thoughtful and conscientious as well as someone who is decisive, who will take in information, who will take in perspectives, and then make choices that are in the best interests of the people who she serves to protect and promote their public health and public safety and put them on a path to being successful. And that means right now, successful in surviving this pandemic.

And so I think you'll see a person who has experience negotiating, has experience in developing policies that deliver for people from all backgrounds. She's someone who works, obviously, she helped to create the space for me to do the work on racial disparities here in the task force. She cares about people who live in all sorts of situations-- urban, rural. She has experience as a legislator. So she's someone who absolutely would certainly be ready to serve and to lead if she was called to be the vice president's partner. I know they have a good relationship.

But ultimately she is someone who is focused on the job that's in front of her, whatever that job may be. If she gets called to be the vice presidential, she'll focus on that. As the governor of Michigan, more people in Michigan voted for her for governor than have voted for anybody for governor ever, she is committed to serving the people of Michigan as well. So I've been proud to call her my partner and my friend, and I look forward to her service at whatever level.

- And you've mentioned the work that you and the governor are doing in terms of dealing with coronavirus pandemic, which we know has disproportionately impacted the Black community. Now one of the reasons for that is limited access to health care but also not having proper protections in the workplace. That's what many workers have reportedly accused their employers of doing, not protecting them enough.

Now we're at a deadlock. We need another round of fiscal stimulus. We see that Washington is having trouble pushing that through, the additional $600 in weekly unemployment benefits. And Majority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has said that he won't approve a new round of fiscal stimulus legislation unless it includes employer liability protections. What impact will that have on the Black community should they include that in the next round of fiscal stimulus?

GARLIN GILCHREST: It would be catastrophic. The truth is, this is the difference between Democrats and Republicans, between Mitch McConnell and Amy McGrath, who people need to vote for, by the way, in the state of Kentucky. Because rather than choosing personal protection for people, Mitch McConnell wants corporate protection for companies who may force their employees to go to work and risk getting sick. That is unacceptable and inhumane.

And for the Black community in particular, for people, like I said earlier, who are disproportionately represented in jobs that have been working this whole time during the pandemic, those jobs that are critical to sustaining life, we have to make sure that people who, for other reasons-- due to comorbidities or due to environmental factors, may live in places that make them more susceptible to an upper respiratory infection.

We have to make sure they have the protection. We have to make sure they get the hazard pay. We have to make sure they have access to the testing and treatment infrastructure and make sure that nothing stands between them.

But Republicans want to erect barriers between people, between minority communities, and positive health outcomes. Democrats want to eradicate those barriers. That is the clearest difference. So this negotiation in the Senate has been incredibly problematic, and they need to really get back to the table and get back to work, frankly, and get something done for our communities.

- So you brought up the environment. And I'm just curious, what do you think the role for environmental justice is right now? Of course, we've had the water supply issue in Flint, Michigan. There have been issues of air quality in neighborhoods of Detroit. Is this the time to tackle some of those issues? Or is there too much already on the plate? Do they need to take a back seat to some of the more urgent issues?

GARLIN GILCHREST: There is no justice without environmental justice. I live next door to the least healthy zip code in the state of Michigan in southwest Detroit. And the reason that that zip code has the highest asthma rate and upper respiratory disease rate is because of the companies that pollute the air that the children breathe in southwest Detroit. That is a question of environmental justice that that community, which is already in fighting with persistent poverty, has to also deal with these environmental challenges.

And so we absolutely need to tackle these. One of the things our task force on racial disparities is looking at is how can we deliver more accountability to those polluters who are making people more susceptible to COVID-19? That's a specific example. There always need to be advocacy and opportunity to fight for access to clean water. Michigan has 21% of the world's surface fresh water.

And the idea that there is not enough access to clean water in a city like Flint is inhumane. And that's why we established an office of an environmental justice public advocate in our State Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy that is focused specifically on how we can deliver sustainable and just robust water that's clean and safe to everyone in our state of Michigan so that that is an afterthought in our state, rather than something that people have had to fight for.

- So on this topic of racial disparities, obviously, we've been chatting a lot about this on this show. And COVID-19, frankly, just exposed a lot of the disparities that we already knew existed. You're talking about some of those disparities when it comes to the environment. But I want to look specifically at poverty and crime. We have a couple of stats here. Just in Detroit alone, almost 14,000 cases in 2018, according to the FBI, cases of violent crime.

When you're looking at poverty, a third of the city is living in poverty. I saw a number as well as, as high as 50% of black children inside the entire state of Michigan are living in poverty. And obviously, you guys are being able to collate a lot of data as a part of this task force that you're chairing. But I'm wondering, when it comes to these disparities, when it comes to poverty, unemployment, and even on justice, the justice system there, what exactly can Michiganders expect going forward, hopefully, after this pandemic is over, sooner rather than later, to address some of those inequalities?

GARLIN GILCHREST: Poverty is a public health crisis. It always has been. And one of the things when you talk about the social determinants of health, one of them is access to economic opportunity. And that is not something that's a reality for people who are fighting with persistent poverty. This is an issue that I've taken on for the entirety of my tenure. Last summer in 2019, I led a tour called, Thriving Cities. We went to 19 different cities in the state of Michigan, starting here in Detroit, to talk about how we can increase generational economic opportunity, how we can deal with environmental quality and justice, and increase access to fair and available housing, for example. These are issues that will help us deal with poverty.

In December, our administration created a poverty task force within state government that can better align and coordinate the anti-poverty programs that exist within state government. During COVID-19, we've exposed many opportunities to connect more people who are fighting with poverty to the programs that were designed to benefit them but they may not have had access to.

We also are looking on a policy level to do things like advocate at the state level for a waiver from the federal government so that people who have had criminal histories, who have had felonies, can access benefit programs like SNAP and EBT and WIC-- things that they are currently blocked from because of yet another piece of our criminal justice system that is broken, that is antiquated, and that is discriminatory.

So we're working to change those programs and those policies that can unlock access to the resources people need to sustain themselves and then to provide the training opportunities, the educational opportunities. We passed the program in March called Michigan Reconnect that actually enables any person to get a tuition-free pathway to a professional certification or community college degree in the state of Michigan, no questions asked, just if you're an adult. This is the kind of thing we want to do to unlock opportunities for people to be able to work and remove those barriers that are keeping them in poverty.