Black Women Lead Fight vs. Hospital Closings

BROOKLYN, NY, June 16 — “Healthcare Yes! Wall Street No! Racist [governor] Cuomo’s got to go!” This chant, started by members and friends of Progressive Labor Party and taken up eagerly by hundreds of mainly women hospital workers, rang out for the entire march fighting against closing of Downstate Hospital. Many union leaders and politicians looked decidedly uncomfortable. The speeches were more militant in response to the mood of the workers.Brookdale Hospital workers and Occupy rally to oust the racist administration Mdysis and fight their healthcare cuts in November 2011.
For a year, hospital workers and residents of the neighborhoods served by us have been fighting against the downsizing and/or closings of both Downstate Hospital and Long Island College Hospital (LICH).  Downstate, comprising 8,000 workers and nearly 2,000 medical students, is the fourth largest business in Brooklyn.
The hospital and NY State bosses have been waffling on their plans, partly in response to this fightback. In the current economic environment, Governor Cuomo and Sate University chancellors want to cut our wages and benefits; their plan has no good solutions for hospitals that serve a large percentage of Medicaid and uninsured patients. The Public Benefit Corporation experiment proposed in Downstate bosses’ “Sustainability Plan,” will referee the imposition of more and deeper cutbacks.
This is a despicable sexist, racist attack on the working class here. Both politicians and union leaders fear that our struggles will progress into more militant actions than just petitions. Hundreds of CHALLENGEs sold at the hospital were welcomed by workers.
At the frontline of this fight are women workers, most of whom are black and immigrant. Considering the sexist fact women bear most of, if not the sole, responsibility of raising children and taking care of their parents, we are at the forefront of the struggle for healthcare for our families. Those of us who may lose jobs at these hospitals are major, if not primary, wage-earners for our households. In spite of the unpaid labor in the house and the exploited wage labor in the hospitals, women workers are getting involved and taking leadership, often for the first time.
PLP has been deeply involved in organizing these hospital struggles. We were there when Brookdale Hospital workers took on the criminal hospital administration, Medisys. We were part of organizing the first demonstration last June at Downstate with Occupy Wall Street.  We have tried to help mobilize the neighborhood Red Hook residents (survivors of Superstorm Sandy) to fight for workers and patients at LICH. Throughout we have warned that this crisis in healthcare is caused by the capitalist need to move resources out of social services into its efforts to maintain control over its world empire.
Workers in all hospitals must stick together and enlist the support of our patients. We cannot rely on voting and politicians. Mass, rank-and-file, militant struggle is our only chance to push back these attacks. Finally we have always said that a system based on profits can never provide decent health care for the working class. That is why we fight to build a mass communist movement in this antisexist struggle.