Julia Koehler, MD

The apparent on-camera murder by slow asphyxiation of George Floyd, arrested for an alleged $20 forgery, drives ongoing protests throughout Massachusetts. Together with yet more shooting deaths of Black people in recent weeks, it highlights not only how acceptance of police violence against Black people was written into law. It also comes at a time when the vastly disproportionate rates of COVID-19 infection and death in Massachusetts’ Black and immigrant communities have risen into public awareness, even as our state’s distinction of having the fourth-highest death rate in the country has not.

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