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December 10-16, 2020 VOL. 35, No. 50
Receiving that solemn COVID Call By Kenneth Miller, Publisher
I received that call the other day. The one we all dread and hope against all hope to not have to answer. It was my childhood friend Wilson Brown. “I know you don’t have much time, so I am going to make this one quick. Tiny Man died,” he explained to me on Monday. Tiny Man was his only sibling, a brother named Raymond Fields. The phone call was not as quick as Brown expected it to be. He went on to tell me that COVID had claimed Fields life on Dec. 5. “Man, I am just numb right now. I can’t believe it. He was healthy didn’t really have any underlining health conditions and he’s gone. He had went to a band rehearsal with about six of his friends and that is where he got it. An unknown super spreader,” said Brown. Many, particularly in the Black community are wrestling with the information regarding COVID-19. Some ascribe to the theory that its not real other assume they won’t catch it, of course until it does. With a vaccine within reach, there is growing speculation that many people of color will not take it. “I just wish that my brother would have held on long enough so that he could have gotten that vaccine,” Brown admitted. Brown said that his brother’s symptoms advanced from losing the ability to smell and taste food to severe breathing problems before he succumbed. He was 64 years old. I vividly remember the days when we were all growing up and he played the drums, kept a set in his mother’s home. Fields was always smiling and uplifting to his brother and me. For Brown the loss was more than devastating. Just a month prior he lost his wife to cancer. Discovering someone close to you had contracted COVID was not new. Just a week ago a friend Aaron Moore informed me of the same symptoms of the disease that Fields died from lost of appetite and smell, but he survived it. The growing number of COVID cases is mind-boggling and the ongoing debate over when the vaccine will arrive and whether or not one should take it is even more troubling. However, when you receive that COVID call all of what you thought about this pandemic hit home, and it really hurts.
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Shared Responsibility of OUR Press is a MUST Now is the time for stakeholders to fund the cause By Kenneth Miller, Publisher
For more than a quarter of a century one man staked his money and his reputation on the City of Inglewood. He had decided that it was paramount for a publication to born that was reflective the institutional good. The children despite their circumstances exceeding in classroom and demonstrating good character deserved notice. Holding the fire to the feet of elected officials who were delinquent in their responsibilities of carrying out their duties, and then praising and recognizing those who advocated and legislated on behalf of Inglewood citizens. Many had scoffed when Willie Brown shelved a lucrative advertising and marketing career to do the unthinkable and launch a newspaper in what was then a high poverty and gang infested Inglewood. However he did so against many who had deemed it not to be a good business decision, but it was an outstanding moral choice. Now we stand, still printing on a weekly basis and memberships with two of the nations most prominent media associations the National Newspaper Publishers Association and California Black Media. A lot has transformed the media industry during the past quarter of a century. A social media craze and information hording search engines such as Google and Facebook and a rash of blogs, websites and video streams parading as news or media outlets. As a result many newspapers have outright folded or were purchased with the intent of being shuttered
Los Angeles Rams players participate in ‘Giving Tuesday’ by awarding $750,000 to local social justice non-profits
Continued on page 8
The Tuskegee Experiment and The Covid-19 Vaccine By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher, The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint
As we rapidly approach the availability of three vaccines to deal with the Covid-19 virus, the topic at hand becomes, who will get the vaccine first and whether or not those designated as being of greatest risk will actually take the vaccine when made
available? Among the skeptics, African Amereicans are at the top of the list and not without reason. In 1932, Tuskegee Institute partnered with the Public Health Service to conduct what was called, “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”. The study was done in the hopes of justifying a treatment program.
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This was before the development of penicillin, which became the preferred treatment for syphilis in 1947. There were 600 total participants. 399 men with syphilis, and 201 men in the study without syphilis, who were the placebo group. Both were without the knowledge of what they were being Continued on page 2
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