The Gainesville Sun Editorial Board
East Gainesville has long experienced a lack of access to health care and economic opportunities as compared to the west side of our community. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came along.
The pandemic has shown how long-standing racial and socioeconomic disparities affect the lives as well as livelihoods of too many Gainesville residents. Black residents in particular face higher rates of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, a problem worsened in east Gainesville by barriers to getting health care.
City Commissioner Gigi Simmons is serving her first term representing District 1, which includes east Gainesville, downtown and the Porters neighborhood where she grew up. Even before she was elected to the job, she was a community advocate who worked on such efforts as bringing GED classes, voter registration drives and an expanded crime watch program to the neighborhood.