Stories from the Stoop: Pete R.

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic a year ago, Asian Americans have been the target of more racial profiling and xenophobia. What are the effects of this mistreatment? We learn from UMBC Professor Charissa Cheah about the toll it’s taken on the mental health of Chinese American families. And John C. Yang, president of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Asian American Justice Center, tells how his group advocates on behalf of scientists and scholars under scrutiny by the FBI, an initiative set in motion by the Trump administration.

Links: Asian Americans Advancing Justice/AAJC; StandAgainstHatred; Strengthening Asian American Families' Exellence and Resilience During Covid-19.

In his book "The Black Butterfly," former community-health professor Lawrence Brown cites a century of policies and budgets he says sapped resources from Baltimore’s African American neighborhoods, forcibly uprooted Black families and triggered generations of trauma. He calls it apartheid, and contends it was planned and deliberately maintained.

Brown says undoing it will take deep changes like dismantling the Baltimore police department and ending toxic lead poisoning.

On Wednesday at 7 p.m. Brown will discuss the book as part of Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Writers’ Live! Series.

Over the past decade, Maryland hospitals filed more than 140,000 lawsuits against patients, to recover unpaid bills. The median amount owed was just $944. Left unpaid, this debt can lead to a lien on a person’s home or car, or even garnished wages. Marceline White, of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, describes the crushing burden of an unpaid hospital bill. This interview originally aired Dec. 21, 2020.

Read the report on Maryland's medical debt lawsuits here.

Today at noon, the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition and other supporters are holding a virtual event. Register here. At 1:30 pm, the House Health & Government Operations Committee will hold a hearing on House Bill 565 - The Medical Debt Protection Act. The Senate Finance Committee will take testimony on its version of the bill next week.