Registered nurses, doctors, social justice advocates, hospital workers, and faith-based community members are demanding that Providence Hospital in Northeast D.C. remain open as a fully functioning hospital with acute-care services.
“My surgical unit is full of people from our community who need immediate care,” says Rose Farhoudi, a registered nurse at Providence and a member of National Nurses United. “Where will these people go? We already know the emergency room waits in D.C. are too long. With only one other acute-care hospital on the east side of D.C., we cannot afford to lose any more medical services.” “Closing Providence will hurt our most vulnerable,” said Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ. “The poor, the elderly, those most in need will be forced to live with their diseases. They will have to die untreated, that is what we have to fight against. We need everyone in D.C. to demand Providence remain open because when we come together we can prevail.” Tune in at 1 o’clock today here on WPFW when Ed Smith and I will host an expanded edition of “Your Rights At Work,” focusing on the threat to Providence Hospital. And tonight, a diverse group of community members from around D.C. will gather to strategize and coordinate efforts to keep Providence Hospital open. The community meeting is from 7 to 9 p.m. at Plymouth Congregational Church at 5301 North Capitol Street NE. Also on today’s labor calendar, the AFL-CIO is hosting a reception with legendary photographer Earl Dotter in celebration of his new book “LIFE’S WORK, a Fifty Year Photographic Chronicle of Working in the U.S.A.” 4:30pm at the AFL-CIO. As always for all the latest local labor news and calendar postings, check out our website at dclabor.org, where you can also subscribe free to “Union City,” our award-winning daily newsletter. In today's labor history, on this date in 1926, the Post Office Department ordered 25,000 railway mail clerks to shoot to kill any bandits attempting to rob the mail. We have two labor quotes today, the first from the manifesto of demands by prisoners who took control of the New York State’s Attica Correctional Facility from September 9-13, 1971, and the second from Jerry Wurf, president of the correction officers’ union. Eleven AFSCME-represented prison employees and 33 inmates died in four days of rioting at Attica and the retaking of the prison. The riot caused the nation to take a closer look at prison conditions, for inmates and their guards alike. In their manifesto, the Attica prisoners said: "In our peaceful efforts to assemble in dissent as provided under this nation’s U.S. Constitution, we are in turn murdered, brutalized, and framed on various criminal charges because we seek the rights and privileges of all American People." And Jerry Wurf, president of AFSCME, the correction officers’ union, called for more “secure and humane penal facilities” rather than the “decaying relics of penal theories discarded long ago.”
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