By Brentin Mock, Bloomberg CityLab, July 31, 2020
Jeanette Kowalik, a Black woman, is the health commissioner for Milwaukee, a city that regularly ranks as one of the worst cities for livability for Black women. She now presides over the health future of a city that at one point was the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S., particularly for African Americans. The discovery that the majority of people with the virus in Milwaukee were middle-aged Black men was one of the first signals in the nation that this disease was not just for white people who had recently traveled abroad.
Fortunately Kowalik, who was appointed health commissioner in September 2018, was prepared to deal with the racialized revelations concerning coronavirus. In July 2019, Milwaukee became the first city in the nation to declare racism a public health crisis, following the lead of Milwaukee County, which made the declaration a few months prior. Since then, more than 80 cities and counties across the U.S. have followed suit with declarations of their own.
Under Milwaukee’s ordinance, Kowalik has been deputized, in a way, to help lead the city in addressing its racial disparities, in addition to her other police powers to enforce law and order during the pandemic. In Milwaukee, people are mandated to wear masks, via city ordinance, and the city is one of the few that offers free masks to its residents — rather stylish ones at that.
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