BROOKLYN, NY, July 28 — “They are trying to turn back the clock, but we are not going back to the cotton fields!” declared a nurse from Interfaith Hospital.
She was referring to the racist nature of the planned cuts in healthcare and jobs as bosses move forward with plans to close two major hospitals in Brooklyn. Workers continue to come out in the hundreds in rally after rally to fight these racist, sexist closings. But as we go to press, Long Island College Hospital (LICH) is down to a handful of patients and workers have been put on “administrative leave” until the courts can sort out how to close the hospital and Interfaith bosses have submitted a closure plan to the Department of Health and Hospitals.
Workers at a third hospital, State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate, are also fighting for our lives. Our administration took over LICH and now plans to close it. Many think this has to do with the fact that real estate moguls will pay $500-800 million to build condos where LICH stands. Unfortunately SUNY bosses, with the active and tacit support of the union misleadership, have succeeded in dividing LICH and Downstate workers. On July 15, when LICH and Interfaith workers picketed the sexist bosses’ meeting at SUNY Downstate campus, the unions at Downstate did not support them and in spite of the efforts of some of us who work inside, only a handful of Downstate workers attended.
Many LICH workers think closing Downstate campus will save them and Downstate workers think closing LICH will save us. Not so! In fact Downstate workers have a lot to learn from LICH workers’ day-in-and-day-out struggles to save their hospital and we had better learn quickly, because the bosses and politicians will be turning their attention to cutbacks at Downstate as soon as they finish with LICH. And you can bet Downstate workers and patients will not see much of any real estate money, either!
Because the ruling class control the press, the courts, the politicians and the police, they may succeed in taking healthcare and jobs from us. What they cannot take from us is what we learn from the struggle. We learn how to organize and unite men and women, black, white Latino and Asian, professional and noprofessional. We learn who our friends and enemies are. We should not be fooled by the politicians who speak at every rally. They are mainly beholden to the wealthy donors who fund their campaigns. Part of their value to these bosses is that they tend to keep our struggles within narrow confines that don’t include things like striking or taking over the hospital.
In fact, hospital workers and patients across New York and across the country need to unite to fight the bosses’ plans to cut healthcare to divert funds for war plans with Iran and later on down the road with imperialist rivals China and Russia. PLP members at these hospitals are working to develop and recruit new members so that we can have greater impact on turning these fights into a struggle for workers’ power, egalitarian communism, a society where workers collectively rule and share the wealth we produce to meet our needs.
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BROOKLYN, NY July 27 — “When I was a young woman in the Philippines, I sympathized with the communists and they were the only ones fighting back. Many of us did secretly but you never talked about it. We were afraid of being disappeared, which happened all the time under the [U.S.-supported] dictatorship there. Now at this age I see. I moved to this country decades ago for a better life for my family but now look what’s happening around us. Those who fought were right.”
That’s the conclusion drawn by a veteran worker at Long Island College Hospital (LICH). She and her co-workers are fighting to keep the 150-year-old community hospital open. The hospital’s scenic waterfront location overlooking the Manhattan skyline is valued at over $800 million. SUNY Downstate, which owns LICH, and Governor Cuomo hope to sell it off to the highest bidder to build luxury condos.
LICH serves the black and Latino residents of the giant Red Hook housing project and many more. There are demonstrations almost every day as the hospital has been turned into an armed camp. Despite winning every court battle and numerous injunctions to keep LICH open and staffed, Downstate abruptly removed every medical resident at LICH and declared the hospital at “unsafe” staffing levels. EMS 911 calls are banned from bringing patients to the LICH Emergency Room, and patients have been illegally transferred to other hospitals. Hundreds of staff are on paid leave and entire floors, including the Intensive Care Unit and Operating Room, are padlocked. In one incident, the Director of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit fought the ER Director to have an infant admitted.
To terrorize workers and patients out of fighting back, the bosses hired three different private security agencies, at least one of them carrying concealed weapons and no visible ID. This is in addition to hospital security and the state troopers posted here. Nurses have reported being followed to the bathroom. In one well-publicized incident, an elderly man with dementia was given a one-way bus ticket to Florida, even though he has no family there. When the Attorney General’s staff arrived to investigate, the man had mysteriously “disappeared,” and none of the five types of security surrounding the hospital ever saw him.
Some patients are refusing to be transferred elsewhere. Others will clutch at your arm and share their fear at where they will end up. Methodist Hospital, located in upscale, mostly-white Park Slope, has received many of the EMS runs rerouted from LICH. Last week, their morgue was filled to capacity with no place to put the corpses. That same day, the ER was overflowing with over 120 patients and the hospital didn’t have enough meals to feed them.
Union Leaders, Politicans =
Dead End for Workers
Local 1199 SEIU and the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) have been staging rallies to bolster a strictly legal effort to save LICH. At the same time, they have undermined any attempts to build unity with the Red Hook residents or stage direct actions like a sit-in in the ER with staff and patients or blocking the removal of equipment. They have hitched their wagon to Mayoral hopeful Bill DeBlasio, who turns every action into a campaign appearance and “civil disobedience” photo-op.
PLP is in the thick of this struggle, trying to expand the readership of CHALLENGE while participating in meetings, rallies and endless discussions with our co-workers about the need for unity with Red Hook residents, fighting racism, and for communist revolution. There’s a good chance that LICH will be added to the list of St. Vincent’s, Peninsula, North General, and the dozen hospitals that have closed in as many years in New York City. The bosses have announced that Interfaith is next and SUNY Downstate has already laid off about 1,000 workers even as they sell off LICH. And for all the union’s campaign contributions and providing foot soldiers, Obamacare will not restore any of these racist, murderous healthcare cuts.
LICH may likely close, but like the woman quoted above, many workers and patients can be won to see that “the communists are right.” We need to expose the double-edged racist and sexist nature of these attacks on workers. PLP can grow with new friends and new fighters and the revolutionary communist movement can be strengthened.