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MORE STATE AND LOCAL NEWS MTS to Increase Trolley and Bus Service • Beginning Monday, June 15, weekday service on UC San Diego Blue

Line increased to every 7.5 minutes to 7 p.m. • Bus service increases planned for the end of June

• Bus operator seats are being retro

Voice & Viewpoint Newswire

The Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) will be helping San Diego residents get back to work as more businesses and destinations are allowed to open. MTS increased weekday midday service on the UC San Diego Blue Line beginning on Monday, June 15. This will be followed by service increases on many bus routes in late June.

“As we continue the regional re-opening of our economy, we know more people will need the services that MTS provides. We want people to know that San Diego’s transit system will continue to be a safe and reliable option as possible,” said MTS Board Chair Nathan Fletcher. “We’ve strengthened our already-enhanced sanitizing protocols on vehicles and at stations and implemented policies to better-protect our passengers and employees. We are now increasing service to help reliability and allow for greater physical distancing of passengers.” Beginning Monday, June 15, the UC San Diego Blue Line Trolley, which connects the San Ysidro international border to Downtown San Diego, increased its service frequency to every 7.5 minutes

By Vayunamu Bawa

Contributing Writer The 10t h Anniversar y Celebration of the Black Physicians Forum took place on Friday, June 12, 2020, on Zoom and Facebook Live. The conference was a partnership by The Sac Cultural Hub Media Foundation and The UC Davis Health Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Doctors, mothers, and audience members came together to discuss Black maternal health. This year’s keynote speaker was Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH, Vice President, A m e r i c a n M e d i c a l Association and the guest presenter was Dr. Olivia Kasirye, Sacramento County Public Health Officer. Olympic Gold Medalist-American track and field sprinter Allyson Felix and others shared their experiences with motherhood. from 4:30 a.m. until 7 p.m., and keep 15-minute frequencies until 9 p.m., followed by every 30 minutes until the end of the service day.

The new schedule can be accessed on the MTS website at https://www.sdmts. c om/schedules-real-time/ covid-19-updates.

The service increase was initiated to accommodate growing ridership since the week of April 20 on the Blue Line. Average weekday ridership has increased 28% increase since then, topping out at 25,367 the week of June 1. More frequency will give more opportunity for passengers to practice social distancing on board and on platforms when possible. Service on the Orange Line and Sycuan Green Line will remain unchanged.

While Trolley service will first be increasing to closely mirror pre-COVID levels, MTS is also making preparations to increase bus service in the coming weeks. S chedules and routes are being finalized. The goal is to provide service increases that meet market demands. MTS reduced weekday service levels approximately the opening remarks. “Our Black doctors bear the brunt of knowing that even in their white coats, those white coats may not save them from discrimination,” Tull said. Dr. Kasiyre gave a special report on the impact of COVID-19 on Black mothers and babies. Black women, she said, are more likely to die during childbirth and from mostly preventable causes such as hypertension, hemorrhage, and embolism. It was stressed that it is important to meet women’s basic health needs right from birth instead of at the start of pregnancy. A question from the audience touched on how individuals can protect themselves as businesses open up during the pandemic. “If you’re sick stay home. If you go out, do so with face coverings and wash your hands frequently. People also need to get tested now that there are more test2 5% on April 13 to address the reality of record-low ridership while still providing critical service for essential workers and trips.

In addition to service increases, MTS also continues to improve its already-strict safety and sanitizing protocols. It will retrofit buses with germ barriers to better protect bus operators. Barriers will also allow the agency to return to frontdoor boarding giving passengers more room to space out on board. MTS has only allowed rear-door boarding since April 1 to protect the health of bus operators.

Sa fe-t ravel g u idel i nes: Passengers aboard any MTS bus or Trolley should continue to follow the social distancing guidelines and safety measures to slow the spread of COVID-19. Other guidelines and requirements while riding include:

Face coverings: All passengers are required to wear a face covering while using the transit system.

Rear-door boarding: Passengers must board from the rear door on buses to ing sites,” Kasiyre said. Maybank acknowledged the role of capitalism, slavery, and the settlement on native land to the health disparity between races. She quoted W.E.B. Du Bois who noted that social conditions, not inherent racial traits, deter mines health and she noted the need to recognize the root causes of health disparities in order to understand the situation today. “It’s not just about lifestyle choices; we have to understand where the choices come about. Everything isn’t about behaviors,” Maybank said. When asked about documentation when a person is being discriminated against while receiving tests and treatment, Maybank responded, “I’m a full advocate for accountability and we hold systems we record and measure. As physicians also, we need to increase distance between passengers and the bus operator.

Social distancing: While sitting, passengers should keep a 6-feet distance between each other and the bus operator when possible.

New studies show that limiting conversations when traveling on transit also helps limit transmission of viruses.

No-Contact Fare Purchase: Riders are encouraged to get bus or Trolley fares through the Compass Cloud app to minimize contact with machines, or other people. Cash is not accepted on bus, but fares are required to ride.

MTS continues to operate about 95 bus routes and three Trolley lines. Frequencies and spans have been modified due to COVID-19. Updated schedules can be accessed on the MTS website: https:// www.sdmts.com/schedules-real-time/covid-19-updates. MTS asks that people wear face coverings and practice physical distancing at all

Black Physicians Forum on Racial Disparities in Maternal Health

a ccountable in part by what times. support patients document ing their experiences because advocacy needs to be deeper.”

Shonda Moore shared her story about her unconventional process for having a c hild and her experiences dealing with a rare type of cancer. Her greatest challenge in interacting with healthcare providers was, she said, “Definitely the implicit bias that African American women can withstand a lot of pain. It was also the physicians’ lack of experience with this type of cancer.”

Black physicians and healthcare professionals do great work in the community due to their commitment to achieving health equity. One takeaway from this forum is that other community members can do their part by leading policy change and community-based education efforts.

Black with a Capital“B” Mainstream Media Join Black Press in Uppercasing Race

Tanu Henry

California Black Media

Last week, Norma n Pearlstine, the editor of the LA Times, sent a memo to staffers announcing that the publication will begin capitalizing “B” in the word Black in its articles when referring to a race of people. That move puts the publication with the largest circulation in California in line with the way the majority of the Black Press in California and around the country have referred to African Americans for decades since they retired “Negro,” beginning in the 1960s to the early 1970s. Pearlstine also announced that the LA Times is taking steps to add more diversity to its newsroom by increasing the number of Black and Latino journalists on its staff. “Within the next two weeks we shall form a group to work on overhauling our hiring process,” Pearlstine wrote to employees. “The global pandemic and the global financial crisis constrain our ability to make a hiring commitment by a specific date. We can commit, however, that the next hires in Metro will be Black reporters, as we begin to address the underrepresentation.” In the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the vio lent protests that followed it, across America, more and more people have begun to point out, own up to, and apologize for abetting racism and anti-Blackness in all of their forms—explicit, subtle and systemic. Americans from all backgrounds have begun to publicly acknowledge how discrimination, over the years, have hurt and held back African Americans for centuries. Last week, other media organizations across the country, including BuzzFeed

N ews, NBC News, MSNBC, Metro Detroit, and others, announced that they have made the decision to begin capitalizing the “B” in Black as well. The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the country’s largest professional organization of Black media professionals and journalism students, released a statement that said the organization has been writing Black with a capital “B” in all of its communications for about a year now. The NABJ is also recommending that “White” and “ Brown” be capitalized, too, when referring to race. “It is equally important that the word is capitalized in news coverage and reporting about Black people, Black communities, Black culture, Black institutions, etc,” the NABJ statement said. Sarah Glover, past president of the NABJ, wrote a letter to the Associated Press (AP). “I’m writing today to request the mainstream news media begin capitalizing the “B” in Black when describing people and the community,” wrote Glover. “I’m also asking the AP to update its Stylebook to reflect this change, effective immediately,” Glover continued. “ This book is the bible for working journalists [and] has tremendous impact as a wire service with more than 1,000 subscribers worldwide.” The New York Times, which adheres to its own style guide that is different from AP’s, also still uses Black with a lowercase B.

Allyson Felix, Olympic Gold Medalist

Flojaune Cofer, PhD, MPH