Mackinac Policy Conference Returns
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Michigan Chronicle
Vol. 85 – No. 4 | Sept. 29 - Oct. 5, 2021
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It’s a Gift: Why More Organ Donors are Needed in the Black Community
By Sherri Kolade It didn’t take long for Canton resident Lawrence Bailey, 67, to see the critical importance of organ donors, especially in the Black community. Dealing with kidney disease since he was 22 years old, Bailey battled to stay healthy as he faced numerous bouts of kidney-related issues that kept him less than 100 percent. When he eventually went on dialysis decades later, the local deacon had a moment of concern when thinking about where his life was headed. “Dialysis is tough -- it’s a poor quality of life,” Bailey said. “But when you get a transplant, it is like a new life for you, a rebirth.” Bailey, who received a kidney transplant in 2013, said that getting a transplant was a “gift from God,” which “enhanced” his life. “That’s why I volunteer like I do because I’m thankful to be able to have gotten that organ because everybody on the list don’t get an organ.” Bailey said that donors’ organs have to “match up just perfect” with recipients who are waiting on the list. “You have to be healthy enough to take a transplant,” Bailey, said adding that he encourages the Black community, in particular, to eat healthy so they don’t have to go on dialysis or have to be on a waiting list for an organ. “Your diet means so much and we take it for granted,” he said, adding that the Black community should also consider being more involved in organ donations. “It’s something that’s precious. … We don’t like to donate ...that is why I do what I do, go around and educate African Americans on why it’s important to be donors because the best possible match is a match of the same bloodline... other matches can work, too.”
Pandemic Effect
Leads to Automotive Chip Shortage, Leaders React By Andre Ash The global shortage of semiconductors continues to worsen and the auto industry has been a major casualty. The low supply is a direct result of the pandemic and its disruption on the global supply chain which has created a trickle-down impact on local jobs, low car inventory and increased prices on vehicles. In recent weeks, GM, Ford and Stellantis announced production halts across its global footprint including in Asian countries still dealing with major COVID-19 outbreaks and lockdowns. Some of the auto plant closures and/ or changes to shifts will directly impact workers and families across metro-Detroit. A semiconductor has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as metallic copper, and an insulator, such as glass. This microchip has become an important material for the operating of many electronics.
The microchip shortage has proven to be costly as a new study predicts $210 billion in lost revenues this year, according to estimates by AlixPartners, an automotive management consulting firm. The updated outlook is up 91 percent from its recent May forecast of $110 billion. “The chip shortage is one of the biggest crises to hit the automotive supply chain, at least in my career, and I think maybe for a very long time,” said Mark Reuss, General Motors Co. president, in a one-on-one interview with the Michigan Chronicle last week at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference. “We’re all doing the best we can from an industry standpoint and we’re looking at where we can allocate chips and build vehicles and then retrofit those vehicles with chips.” The pandemic effect which has led to an unprecedented chip shortage, has also created a standstill in other areas of the automotive job market -- auto suppliers and in training. “A lot of our employees or students who would come in and go to employment at one of the supplier com-
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Mark Reuss, General Motors Co. president.
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In her recent announcement of the MI New Economy Plan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer briefly highlighted how this critical material is coming to Michigan for production. “We’re helping to open a new chip-maker in Bay City, creating 150 jobs and bringing the supply chain from China to the State of Michigan,” she said.
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SHORTAGE page A2
Is it Unjust to Send Federal Prisoners Back After Early Pandemic-Related Releases?
It’s no shock that COVID-19 has seeped into every facet of life in America and around the world.
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Stellantis most recently announced the production of some of its heavy-duty Ram pickup trucks will go idle.
“We make and sell things all over the world. We don’t have one supply chain. Our supply chain is global. So, if we’re making things in China for the Chinese market, we’ll have a supply chain that is both, the United States wherever, plus China.
By Sherri Kolade
Tastes Around Black Culture: African Cuisine
GM shut down pickup truck plants in Fort Wayne, Ind., and Silao, Mexico, for a week.
As state government efforts forge to stabilize this global supply chain disruption by bringing microchips to Michigan for domestic development, Reuss doesn’t envision a full-scale change in production strategy of where key components are made.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Gift of Life is on pace to recover 426 organs for transplant this year; that would exceed the totals of each of the previous two years and also set an annual record, according to a press release. In total, 1,048 organs were transplanted from 374 donors in 2020, which represents about a 10 percent
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Previously, Ford stopped making pickups at its Kansas City Assembly Plant for two weeks. Shifts were cut at two truck plants in Dearborn and in Louisville, Ky.
SK Siltron, a South Korean semiconductor wafer maker, plans to build a $300 million manufacturing plant to aid in the production of this high demand product in the automotive industry.
Gift of Life Michigan, an organ and tissue donation program, is all about helping match up organ donors while bringing hope for healing to the thousands of people still waiting for a life-saving organ.
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panies, there is no work right now,” said Portia Roberson, CEO of Focus: HOPE, a non-profit organization in Detroit which offers workforce training. “We are waiting patiently to see at what point they think the Big 3 would pick back up, open some of the plants that were otherwise closed, and then the suppliers would start making things again so we can get employees into those facilities.”
Even prisoners were not exempt from the impact of the virus. In fact, throughout America’s prisons, COVID-19 spread from inmate to inmate at six times the rate as it did in the general population outside of prison walls, NPR reported. Due to the devastating pandemic, tens of thousands of the incarcerated sought an early release from prison because of their susceptibility to COVID-19 including old age and health problems, which could have made them especially vulnerable, per NPR. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, of the nearly 31,000 prisoners who requested compassionate release, only 36 were approved.
Anthony Boyd, a director at the Michigan Liberation nonprofit organization, shares his two cents with the possible rescinding of the CARES Act early release prison program. – Photo provided by Anthony Boyd Last March, former President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act, that broadened the Bureau of Prison’s options to put more inmates under home confinement, according to a CBS News article. Trump’s administration released inmates who previously didn’t have violent offenses, along with no disciplinary issues while inside prison.
Other prisoners allowed to be released were 8,300 federal inmates who were allowed to go home last Spring in an attempt to reduce the spread of the virus. However, last year, the Trump administration’s Justice Department required these same inmates to go back to prison when the pandemic is over – when that is, is unclear. Yet, some exceptions are in place for inmates with less than six months or 10 percent remaining on their sentence who would have qualified for home confinement anyway. At the time of this report, about 4,700 inmates are currently at home under federal supervision, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons in the CBS News report. In April, the Biden administration loosened the program’s criteria, allowing prison wardens to refer inmates for home supervision.
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