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In his final State of the City address, Mayor Stephen Hagerty said the community will pull together to rebound from the ravages of COVID-19. (Screenshot by Heidi Randhava)
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On April 9, Mayor Stephen Hagerty delivered his 2021 State of the City Address at the Evanston Chamber of Commerce’s State of the City Luncheon. The format of this year’s virtual event included a live question-and-answer session and recorded messages. Last year, the event was cancelled because of the global pandemic.
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In Evanston and throughout the nation, there is reason to be both hopeful and cautious about the coronavirus pandemic. Incredible progress is being made with highly effective vaccines, but new variants of the coronavirus are spreading quickly.
President Joe Biden, in his remarks on April 6, said the U.S. had crossed 150 million shots in the first 75 days of the Biden-Harris administration – on track to beat their goal of 200 million shots in the first 100 days of the Biden presidency.
“Even moving at the record speed we’re moving at, we’re not even halfway through vaccinating over 300 million Americans,” said President Biden … We’re still in a life-and-death race against this virus. Until we get more people vaccinated, we need everyone to wash their hands, socially distance, and mask up in a recommended mask from the CDC,” he said.
Evanston Officials Announce Good Neighbor Racial Equity Fund patch.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from patch.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Part of the city’s reparations plan is to use funds from a 3 percent tax on marijuana sales to finance a $10 million initiative called the Restorative Housing Reparations program. This would oversee the distribution of $25,000 worth of housing funding per resident.
Should the housing plan pass, it would make Evanston the first city to formally issue reparations to rectify previous discriminatory housing policies.
The option of implementing reparations in the form of government investment was touted during the Black Lives Matter protests in the Summer of 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Floyd’s death, a symbol of the centuries of racist policing and law enforcement policies in the U.S., highlighted institutional racism as an insidious and lingering artifact of a time in the country when slavery was legal.
Mayor Steve Hagerty and Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro announced Monday the $1 million Northwestern Good Neighbor Racial Equity Fund’s recipient programs.
The fund is part of Schapiro and NU leaders’ commitment beginning last September to give $1.5 million in the fiscal year to Evanston and Chicago for the purpose of advancing racial justice.
“We believe it’s crucial to focus on addressing historic social and racial injustices and their ongoing effects on our community,” Schapiro said in a city news release. “I believe this is how we can all make our greatest impact for the long-term health of our city.”