Opinion Piece: The Unsettling Truth: Racism and Addiction are Epidemics that Need Community Solutions.
Urban Milwaukee ran this as an Op-ed on October 17th, 2020. Link here. By Maria Teresa Noth Milwaukee, the black community, the police, addiction, first responders, and medics all collided on my first day back at work at a hospital this summer. I have been reflecting a lot on that rainy Tuesday evening. Our department for Integrative Medicine was initially closed for a few months anticipating the pandemic. George Floyd was brutally murdered by police just a couple of weeks earlier and civil unrest had begun before similar situations in Kenosha and Wauwatosa boiled over. The unrest in the community was palpable. I have lived in Milwaukee most of my life but now the overwhelming wave of fear of having one of my high-risk family members contract COVID-19 was superseded by a wave of white guilt after yet another video of police brutally. That June this disease was little understood and scary but after several months without pay, I saw little option other than gettin...