Fearless Leading by the Youth releases music/educational video about lack of south side trauma centers
"Not having a trauma center in one of the most violent areas of our city says a lot about our country, says a lot about the state of our healthcare... If we can't get proper healthcare, if we can't be saved four minutes away from one of the most prestigious hospitals in our country, then that means that the state of our healthcare is very poor," says Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY) organizer/member Veronica Morris-Moore at the end of the chilling new video about FLY's campaign to get the U of C Medical Center to address the lack of trauma centers on the south side.
With the release of the new video, "How can you ignore, we're dying at your door," FLY uses music and electronic media to tell a wider audience that the lack of a south side trauma center symbolizes the vast racial and economic disparity in healthcare access in this city and country.
While public spending on basic services continues to shrink, non-profit hospitals like the U of C that get tens of millions in tax-breaks are refusing to provide their fair share. The U of C gets more tax breaks than any south side hospital yet provides amongst the lowest rates of charity care. It closed its trauma center in 1988, which overwhelmed other south side trauma centers and within two years created a complete desert of trauma care on the south side of Chicago.
For two decades people in car accidents, fires, shootings and other traumatic injuries have bled as they are sped straight past the U of C Medical Center all the way to Northwestern Hospital in the north loop, Stroger Hospital on the west side or Christ Hospital in suburban Oak Lawn. An untold number of people have died because of the cold financial calculations of U of C administrators, who have attempted to set a national precedent making it acceptable for research hospitals to withdraw from or outsource community care.
But the silence of two decades of neglect is being smashed by a fierce group of south side youth enraged that one of their founding members, Damian Turner, was shot four blocks from the U of C but taken all the way to Northwestern where he died. As his cousin Kennard Johnson says in FLY's new trauma center video, "We tryin' to make life possible, but how is that when we dyin' by the hospital?"
FLY has held a die-in, two mass marches, a mock funeral, a teach-in and numerous other events as part of the campaign and is not giving up until there is a level 1 trauma center at the U of C. It is struggles like this that make the fight for a human right to healthcare tangible and relevant to the most affected communities. Whether you live on the southside or not, all of us who believe healthcare is a human right have a stake in the outcome of this struggle. Please re-post the FLY video far and wide!
