View as Webpage...Get Vaccinated / Cannabis Lottery Transparency?..........Aug 2, 2021
Greetings!

Please note: The August Coalition Power Breakfast will be held on the 2nd Saturday, August 14th.

As the nation re-opens in an uneven manner, please remain cautious and keep safe; Covid-19 and its highly-transmittable variants persist and many still have not gotten vaccinated.

Also, please read the short piece on the Illinois cannabis license lottery and lack of (?) transparency.

Respectfully,
COAL Board of Directors  

"The time to work seriously and collectively, to improve the state of our Community, is upon us..."
Let's Continue the Work
Please Get Vaccinated
PLEASE GET VACCINATED

COAL, leveraging expert information and advice, strongly encourages its membership and larger community of interest, to get vaccinated.

However, recognizing that many of our readership were vaccinated as soon as vaccines became available, COAL further recommends that each of us strongly encourage friends and family experiencing any form of vaccine hesitancy, to also get vaccinated.
Lives depend on it and the arguments against getting vaccinated make little to no substantive sense.

Dr. Everett White, COAL Board of Directors, states it in a straight-forward manner, "Vaccinate to stop the Deadly Variants".


Covid Reminders;
  • Delta doesn't care;
  • Delta is deadly;
  • Must mask;
  • Vaccinate. 

And Facts to Know: Delta v Alpha Variant of Covid:
  • Delta variant attacks the immune system in three days instead of seven. 
  • Delta virus gives off one thousand times more viral load. 
  • Now even the young are getting sicker quicker. 
____________________________________________________________
COAL Partner, Dr. Terry Mason posits:

Vaccine hesitancy or I just don’t trust the process.
 
I have heard, as many of you have, those of us who are not comfortable with taking the COVID-19 vaccine. Many of us have heard about the United States Public Health Services Syphilis study done at Tuskegee University. To set the record straight, persons were not injected or given syphilis. The study was to observe what syphilis would do to people. The study was started in 1932, 8 years before penicillin was used to treat syphilis if left untreated.  The men had penicillin withheld despite the knowledge that in the 1940’s it was an effective treatment for them and their wives
 
For the record I have taken both doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine and I, like thousands of others, without any issues or problems.
 
Some of the justification for the mistrust are, the vaccine was put together too quick, it has not been tested long enough and/or there were not enough blacks in the testing.  The truth is nearly 10 percent of the people in the initial testing of the vaccine were black. The vaccine will not change your DNA.
 
Black people make up nearly 29 percent of the population of Chicago but made up nearly 70 percent of the deaths. 

Remember COVID-19 is not thru with us.
Cannabis Lottery Transparency?
COAL is already hearing about issues of certain connected and 'squeaky-wheel' applicants being pre-selected to receive cannabis dispensary licenses with the first of the three scheduled lotteries, which was held on July 29th; in other words, it not being a truly open and fair process. And this process is in place to address the major issues everyone, blacks in particular, had with the original process to award dispensary licenses.

Now State Rep. LaShawn Ford and other legislators did an admirable job of passing legislation to address the initial problems toward ensuring that minority applicants had a fair chance of gaining entrance into the multi-billion dollar, all-white cannabis industry in Illinois.

However, legislation is not execution.

Governor Pritzker and Cannabis Czar Toi Hutchinson stated that there would be full transparency with the awarding of cannabis licenses. Consequently, COAL asks, who is observing the three corrective lotteries to assure applicants and the public of its fairness? Independent media? Oversight commissions? State legislators?

BTW, shouldn't the Black Caucus have some of its members or at least some of its staff in attendance at the lotteries to ensure that its legislative changes are acted upon in a manner that is above board and beyond challenge?

BTW, shouldn't the Governor and Hutchinson have made the actual lotteries public for all to observe, with the legendary Merri Dee pulling the names of applicants to award licenses.

Things that make you go hmmmm...
From James Hill: Phalanx Family Services - Rental Assistance - Details Here