POLITICS
Georgia mask feud exposes America's fault lines
The Republican governor's decision to sue Atlanta's
Democratic mayor over the city's mask requirement is more than a public health
dispute.
By MAYA
KING
07/17/2020
08:25 PM EDT
On its
face, the legal showdown between Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor
Keisha Lance Bottoms over the legality of the city’s face mask mandate is a
dispute over the right balance between personal freedom and public health.
But the
increasingly bitter feud between the Republican governor, an acolyte of
President Donald Trump, and the Democratic mayor, a possible vice presidential
pick who, herself, has tested positive for Covid-19, is also a microcosm of the
fault lines — political, racial, geographic — hampering the country's response
to the coronavirus pandemic and fueling an outbreak that now appears to be
spinning out of control.
Atlanta
City Council Member Antonio Brown says the failure to contain the virus is
hurting “our most vulnerable communities, which are black and brown
communities,” the most. “While we're pointing fingers, we're not getting the
work of the people done. We're not saving lives. We're not protecting our
communities that need to be protected.”
The data
matches his claim: the parts of the country where the coronavirus outbreaks are
now the largest are metro areas across the country's south and west, areas with
local Democratic leaders and large communities of color in states that are
predominantly governed by Republicans. That's heightened the political tension
between governors like Kemp, who is playing to one constituency in the state,
and Bottoms and other city leaders fighting to protect their local communities.
Kemp filed
suit against Lance Bottoms and Atlanta’s city council on Thursday, arguing the
city’s mask requirement violates a statewide executive order he signed
Wednesday that voids local mask mandates.
Gov. Brian
Kemp
Gov. Brian
Kemp returns to his office after giving a coronavirus briefing at the Georgia
state capitol on Friday in Atlanta. Kemp is suing Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance
Bottoms over its face mask mandate. | John Bazemore/AP Photo
The move,
he said, "is on behalf of the Atlanta business owners and their
hardworking employees who are struggling to survive during these difficult
times." That echoes arguments made by President Donald Trump and fellow
GOP governors, who complained the country’s response has overreacted in its
lockdowns and restrictions as it seeks to contain the virus, and that the
economic and personal damage of lockdowns should be weighed more heavily. The
rhetoric plays well with Republicans’ predominantly white political base, which
have been skeptical of public health advice, a distrust fanned from within the
White House.
On Tuesday,
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
foremost U.S. expert on infectious disease, in a USA Today op-ed, writing that
the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has
been “wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”
In an
interview on the “Today Show,” Friday, Bottoms said she didn’t think it was
happenstance that Kemp’s lawsuit “came the day after Donald Trump visited
Atlanta,” pointing out that the president did not wear a mask at the airport.
“This is the same governor who didn’t know until well into the pandemic that it
could be spread by asymptomatic transmission. He didn’t go to Emory for
guidance. He didn’t go to the CDC for guidance.”
Kemp and
other Republican governors who pushed most aggressively to reopen communities
and restart economic activity are now presiding over sharp upticks in
coronavirus infections and rapidly filling hospitals. And it’s urban areas and
places with large communities of color, like Atlanta, that face the toughest
consequences.
Since Kemp
re-opened George businesses in late April, daily cases have been on the rise,
at more than 3,000 people testing positive per day. Of the more than 3,100
total reported deaths in the state, nearly half are African American, despite
making up 32 percent of the population.
And Atlanta
and its suburbs are at the epicenter. Fulton County, where Atlanta is based,
has reported 335 deaths, while the surrounding counties of Gwinnett, DeKalb and
Cobb have reported a combined 642. The area is 51 percent Black.
A Center
for Disease Control study published June 17 found that 79 percent of Covid-19
patients hospitalized in the Atlanta metro area in March and April 2020 were
Black.
According
to the CDC, Georgia ranks fourth among U.S. states when it comes to the number
of Covid-19 cases reported in the past seven days, behind fellow Sun Belt
states, Texas, Florida and California and just ahead of Arizona. Available data
on infections, hospitalizations and deaths in those states reveal a similar
racial divide, with a disproportionate effect on the Black and Latino
populations.
The CDC,
for example, has found that Hispanic residents of Harris County, home to
Houston, are four times as likely to be hospitalized due to Covid-19 than their
white counterparts.
Face
coverings, public health experts agree, are one of the best ways to slow
coronavirus transmission.
“The
guidance is clear from the public health perspective. How that's enforced is
something different,” said Dr. Stephanie Miles-Richardson, Professor of
Community Health and Preventative Medicine at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
“The coronavirus doesn't have any kind of politics or any political
affiliation.”
While
mask-wearing remains anathema to many conservatives, more and more Republican
officials are acknowledging their necessity. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reversed
course and issued a statewide mask mandate at the beginning of July. Arkansas
Gov. Asa Hutchinson followed this week. Florida Gov. Ron De Santis continues to
buck pressure to do the same, but aides also said he would not challenge local
masks requirements in his state.
Large
corporations like Walmart and Target also recently began requiring face
coverings in their stores.
In Georgia,
several local leaders have followed Bottoms’ example and defied Kemp’s order by
making masks mandatory in public spaces. Kelly Girtz, Mayor of Athens, Kemp’s
hometown, said he plans to keep the mask mandate in place in his city.
“I find it
unfortunately, a waste of our valuable time and energy, when we really need to
be working together to do the things that are demonstrably healthy,” he said.
“I've been in local government now for 14 years. And I've seen political winds
and alliances come and go. I think what has to be steady is doing the right
thing for the people, the community and the right thing right now, is
implementing a foundation for safety.”
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