Sarasota County advocates want better COVID-19 vaccine equity
Elizabeth Djinis
Sarasota community advocates are working to ensure that communities of color – who have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 – have equal access to the vaccine. Right now, the numbers show they don’t.
The number of white people in Sarasota County who have received at least one dose of the vaccine still far outweighs the number of Black people, according to state data from Friday morning.
As of Friday, almost 58,000 people have received at least one dose of vaccine in Sarasota County. Only 570 of those were Black, mostly from a Sarasota Memorial Hospital vaccination clinic in Newtown last month, where about 400 people were vaccinated.
As questions linger about how to get the coronavirus vaccine and whether it is safe, a panel of local and national medical experts gave some long-awaited answers Sunday.
At a virtual panel hosted by The W. Montague Cobb Institute, medical experts provided information and answered questions with a focus on communities of color in Sarasota and Manatee counties.
Dr. Randall Morgan, CEO of The Cobb Institute, said that the institute is hosting similar panels for communities across the country to raise awareness about equity issues related to the distribution of and access to the coronavirus vaccine.
“The coronavirus pandemic has uncovered conditions that have been present in this nation for 400 years,” Morgan told the Herald-Tribune.
SARASOTA – Speakers at Monday’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration in Newtown addressed the fight for unity and equality in everything we do, and used the afternoon to provide food services for the needy.
Normally featuring a large party kicked off by a delicious indoor breakfast and a unity march along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way to a memorial park named in his honor, this year s event included a scaled back event with a brief presentation because of COVID-19.
Speakers included current and former city commissioners and local leaders, as well as the presentation of awards for individuals who have served the Black community.
It was a smaller but no less spirited Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Newtown on Jan. 18.
Several Sarasota community and government figures came together to speak to King’s legacy and the work still needed to be done in the fight for equality and equity.
The event put on by the Sarasota MLK Community Celebration organization traded its typical breakfast and community march for a presentation and food voucher distribution to people in need due to COVID-19.
The committee presented MLK Community Activist Awards to Michael Kensey; former mayor and commissioner Willie Shaw; Mary Mack, Harvest Tabernacle food bank CEO Eureka Webb; and Second Chance Last Opportunity founder April Glasco.
Artists adapt to pandemic in life and work
Marty Fugate, Correspondent
The art game has many unwritten rules. It’s a good thing that nobody wrote them down.
COVID-19 trashed the artistic rulebook as it has nearly everything else in contemporary life. Artists and visual arts institutions have been flying by the seat of their pants since the pandemic hit last year. While strange changes are far from over in the art game, here are some of the new ad hoc rules area artists and arts leaders have invented to keep playing. We’ll start with a few individual artists.