Shutting down hospitals should be against the law, not a peaceful demonstration demanding the county reopens them!
Healthcare workers, local residents and community organizations rallied peacefully on September 8th at Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Upland, PA, calling on Delaware County Council to use its power of eminent domain to take Crozer-Chester back from Wall Street and reopen it as a public hospital, run by the workers and the community.
For more photos, click here to check out this album on facebook.
For more press coverage, click here out this blog post.
Fifty people, including former patients and workers, protested outside of the hospital, while eight people engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience, sitting along the side of the lobby while taking care to stay out of the way of foot traffic. Our members inside proclaimed, “We’re not leaving until they meet this demand. We are a group of people whose families have been hurt and harmed by this criminal healthcare system that puts profit over our lives. We’re sick and tired of getting sick while Wall Street gets rich, and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
For our decision to engage in nonviolent direct action, we lift up and call on the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who attended Crozer Seminary from 1948 – 1951. King proclaimed, “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. There is a fire raging now… Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.”
We ask you to join the “brigades of ambulance drivers” who answer to a higher law and demand eminent domain to take the hospital back from wall street and reopen it for the people!
Put People First PA OUR DEMANDS:
📣 For Delaware County to enact eminent domain to seize Crozer-Chester Medical Center from Wall Street
📣 For Governor Shapiro and the Attorney General to support counties to reopen closed hospitals as public hospitals
📣 For Governor Shapiro and the Attorney General to support a statewide Public Healthcare Advocate, housed in the Attorney General’s office, that would fight for the rights of everyday people in the healthcare system, NOT Wall Street profiteers
- Actions, Base-building, hospitals, Media & Communications, Nonviolent Medicaid Army, Southeast PA
- crozer, crozer-chester, hospital closures, national day of action, nonviolent medicaid army, sepa