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Examining the new Detroit City Council after this week's election

Posted at 6:14 PM, Nov 05, 2021
and last updated 2021-11-05 19:41:56-04

(WXYZ) — The November election in Detroit led to a turnover of Detroit City Council, with six new faces set to join the body. Some say this shows the need for change.

One of the newly elected council members is Coleman A. Young Jr. and he is joining us for the 7 UpFront segment to talk about what comes next.

You can see the full interview in the video player above.

"What I want to do is, we want to make sure that we make it easier for people to get vaccinated. We want to work with the community health corps that they already have to be able to make sure that we're more mobile, that we promote where we have the vaccines available, where we're going into neighborhoods. We want to partner up, not only with our recreational centers but also with our private sector partners in order to have more vaccines available for people to be able to use them," Young says. "I also think we have to do a better job in terms of just an education campaign, of letting people know that the vaccines are safe and letting people know that the vaccines are available. And we also want to make sure that we encourage our private sector partners, as well, to mandate that people take vaccine so that we can be more safe, not only so that we can protect ourselves because we see so many of our loved ones, I've lost two of my best friends, Morris Hood, as well as Representative Isaac Robinson, due to the coronavirus. And we all know family members we go home and sit at that table and look at that empty chair where their brother, their mother, or their sister used to sit who lost their life, or people who have the virus and overcome it and are still alive, but now are long haulers with mental health issues because they had the virus. So we want to do all we can and get as many people as possible vaccinated. We want to work with our private sector partners, make sure people know where to get vaccinated, but also make sure people know where to get tested as well and work with our medical partners, as well as our CVS stores and our Walgreens so that people can go and get tested, as well as make sure we have microtransit and transit available, working with our ridesharing partners as well as DDOT so that people have transit to get to TCF Center or wherever we have the vaccines available that's closest to them."