Video of M12: Save Wyckoff Hospital
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Yearly Archives: 2012
Mental Health & Single-Payer Healthcare
Join Healthcare for the 99% in recognizing Mental Health Awareness Month this May. We will be walking this Saturday morning in solidarity with NAMI’s walk for greater mental health access and to combat the stigma of mental illness. We’ll bring our message of healthcare justice and how universal single payer healthcare would benefit those with mental illness.
What: National Alliance on Mental Illness Walk
Date: Saturday, May 12th
Time: 9am Assemble / 10am Walk
Where: South Street Seaport
Details: Please click here to register to walk with us.
NAMI does want this walk to raise money; however, we don’t have that much time to do so and a lot can be accomplished for us simply by voicing our anti-stigma and healthcare-for-all points. But if you want to try to raise money, please do so. Bring the usual Healthcare for the 99% signs, as well as more specific mental health-related signs.
Background
Mental health is an integral part of overall health, and its prevalence and severity are yet another reason to demand single-payer healthcare. About one in six adults lives with a disorder of the brain such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. The pain caused by mental illness radiates even further, through family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and more, into the fabric of our society. Mental health is also a key issue for our veterans, many of whom return home with PTSD caused by violence seen and experienced in combat. The pervasiveness of mental illness calls for a single-payer health system, as such a system would finance mental health care for many of those who cannot afford it on their own.
So if one in six adults lives with a mental illness, why don’t we all know a lot of mentally ill people? You do. However, stigma prohibits many people from speaking openly about their mental health problems. Our language is riddled with offensive terminology (“schizo”, etc). Incorrect ideas about mental illness abound, such as the idea that mentally ill people are obviously strange or abnormal, or that mentally ill people will never recover from their illnesses.
Contrary to popular belief, some mental illnesses do in fact go away with treatment, and those who do have lifelong illnesses can still live extremely normal lives. However, this requires treatment, generally a combination of medication and therapy, and that requires insurance and money. Mental illness left untreated often leads to poverty and eventually to homelessness. When people cannot get out of bed or perform daily activities, they soon end up out of work, and this can snowball into homelessness and abject poverty. All of this can be prevented by treatment of the mental illness. However, therapy can cost two hundred dollars a session or more, and even good insurance often covers only 12 sessions a year. This is absolutely inadequate, and yet further sessions are often prohibitively expensive.
Add to that the cost of medication, which drug companies drive up as much as possible by patenting their drugs so that no generic form is made, causing some drugs to cost as much as $8 per pill without insurance, or when insurance companies refuse to pay. Additionally, since in American society health insurance is tied to jobs, when one loses one’s job one loses health insurance as well, compounding the problem: exactly when the mental health treatment is most needed, all funding for it is taken away. It’s simple: some people can afford treatment and can lead relatively normal, healthy lives, and others who cannot afford treatment get sicker and sicker as society turns away.
It has also been established that poverty and homelessness can themselves lead to mental health problems, as the impoverished and homeless face factors the rest of us don’t. The stress of having many unpaid bills or not having food or shelter, as well as a lack of security for the future, can be the catalyst for a mental illness, or can exacerbate an existing one. The homeless are also far more likely to be victims of crime and trauma. The poor and the homeless generally do not have the money for early treatment that can stop the disorder from becoming severe (or for any treatment at all).
When mental illness becomes severe, with a person of any socioeconomic class, suicide is always a concern. A death by suicide is always a tragedy, yet becomes even more tragic when one realizes how preventable these deaths are. 90% of people who die by suicide have a psychiatric illness that is not only diagnosable, but also treatable. But if people are denied the means to treat their mental health problems, they are often quite literally being left to die.
America needs single-payer health insurance. It will ensure that all of the mentally ill get the treatment they deserve and that they can live normal, successful lives. Insurance companies must stop letting people fall through the cracks by refusing to provide adequate mental health benefits. When single-payer healthcare becomes a reality, the mentally ill will have the support and resources to live the fruitful and happy lives they were meant to live.
M12: Save Wyckoff Hospital!
The community says:
Save Wyckoff Hospital!
Fight Budget Cuts!
Join Healthcare for the 99% for a Day of Action Against Budget Cuts!
Governor Cuomo appointed Wall Street banker Stephen Berger to fix healthcare in Brooklyn. Berger recommended merging and downsizing Wyckoff and other Brooklyn hospitals that provide necessary healthcare in low-income and medically underserved communities.
Join us to speak out against hospital closings, service reductions, and budget cuts! Reclaim Healthcare for the 99%!
Saturday, May 12th
2:30pm Maria Hernandez Park, northside, at Starr St and Irving Ave. Subway from Manhattan/Brooklyn take L Train to Jefferson Stop (Map). From Brooklyn Food Conference atBrooklyn Tech High School take B38 to DeKalb Ave/Knickerbocker Ave.
3pm March to Wyckoff Hospital Speak out on healthcare cuts and hospital closings in Brooklyn, and picket at Wyckoff Hospital, Stockholm St and Wyckoff Ave (Map). Take L Train to DeKalb Stop.
Help us spread the event on Facebook!
Print out and post fliers around Bushwick:
- English Color: Full Page / Quarter Page
- English B&W: Full Page / Quarter Page
- Spanish Color: Full Page / Quarter Page
- Spanish B&W: Full Page / Quarter Page
This action is part of the “Another City is Possible” Campaign which is organizing a week of action protesting budget cuts in New York City.
owshealthcare@gmail.com w owshealthcare.wordpress.com w (646) 926-4499
M12: Another City is Possible
Next Organizing Meeting:
Tuesday, May 8th
6 PM at 256 W. 38th St. (12th floor)
Email anothernewyorkispossible@gmail.com for more info.
Healthcare for the 99% is participating in the events being planned for Saturday, May 12th. More details to be announced soon!
M1: A Day Without the 99%!
Join Healthcare for the 99% on May Day!
A Day without the 99%!
A Community without a Hospital!
Tuesday, May 1
2 PM to 3:30 PM Picket, Speak Out, and “Die In” at St Vincent’s Hospital slated to be turned into luxury condos leaving the lower West Side of Manhattan without a hospital. Meet at the O’Toole Building, 30 Seventh Avenue (between 12th Street and 13th Street)
3:30pm – March to Union Square for Unity Rally
5:30pm – Solidarity march to Wall Street
Healthcare workers should wear their scrubs and white coats. All are encouraged to dress as patients — e.g. with bandages, crutches, etc. Or come as you are.
For more info, email us at owshealthcare@gmail.com
A19: People’s Power Breakfast II
Crain’s New York is holding a $300 a plate healthcare symposium entitled ”Reinventing Health Care: The Road To Reform”. The event is sponsored by the health insurance industry and will be yet another instance of members of the 1% strategizing behind closed doors about how to shape our healthcare system.
We can only guess what will be discussed inside: ways to boost profits, hospital closures, contracting out hospital jobs? One thing we can be fairly certain won’t be discussed are ways to actually fix healthcare so that it works in the interest of the 99% of Americans, such as universal single-payer healthcare (aka Medicare for All).
Members of Healthcare for the 99% will be there outside hosting our own People’s Power Breakfast, which will be open to the public and free of charge. Come share your ideas for “Reinventing Healthcare”!
WHAT: People’s Power Breakfast II
WHEN: Thursday April 19th, 8AM
WHERE: Essex House, 160 Central Park South (near Columbus Circle)
Come dressed as a billionaire to gloat over our fabulous future healthcare profits or come as you are and help to shout down the billionaires!
Please join us if you can!
A25 ACT UP AND OCCUPY
Join Healthcare for the 99% for ACT UP/NY’s 25th Anniversary Action
ACT UP and OCCUPY
TAX WALL STREET!
END AIDS!
- April 25, 2012
- 11am
- Gather at City Hall (Broadway and Murray Street)
- March to Wall Street
THE AIDS CRISIS IS NOT OVER, BUT IT COULD BE.
THE TAX: A financial transaction tax (FTT) is a sales tax on trades of stocks, bonds and currencies. A tiny tax of less than half a percent could raise $400 Billion dollars worldwide. This tax would not effect small investors with mutual funds, it would only target the large financial firms who crashed the economy.
THE SCIENCE: New evidence shows early HIV treatment can reduce HIV transmission by 96%.
THE REALITY: In the U.S. almost 4,000 people who qualify for federal ADAP assistance to pay for HIV treatment are still on waiting lists. Worldwide only 44% of people with HIV have access to antiviral drugs, leaving 8 million without treatment. Citing the global economic crisis, the US has decreased our funding to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, just when the world needs it most.
WHAT’S AT STAKE: AIDS has already claimed over 30 million lives. ACT UP, Healthcare for the 99% and others are calling for an FTT to help raise the money needed to close the gap in access to life-saving HIV treatment, and to END THE AIDS CRISIS.
The FTT demonstration is linked to a global Robin Hood Tax campaign to fund global health, global public goods, jobs, and fight climate change.
More info: 212-966-4873 | www.actupny.com | info@actupny.com
Facebook ACT UP NY Page | www.facebook.com/actupny
Twitter: @actupny | #taxwallst | #endaids
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A14: Spring Awakening
Healthcare for the 99% will be joining the Spring Awakening 2012: Occupy New York City People’s Assembly
For Text Alerts and Updates: Text “@SpringAwakening2012″ to 23559
When: April 14th, 2012 (#A14), 1pm
Where: Central Park South, 6th Ave entrance, on the west side of Wollman Rink
Our weekly meeting will be held at 4pm after the General Assembly at the Spring Awakening.
Join Occupy Wall Street on #A14 to kick off exciting spring and summer events. On April 14th, New York City will converge on Central Park to unite organizations, activists, and others to create a transformative, citywide, mass movement. The day will include Occupy style open space with tabling, teach-ins, food, music, and more! It will also include a structured assembly for organizers from various organizations across the city to network and coordinate. This will be a day to revitalize, strategize, and kick-off the spring with a major focus on openness to new-comers, invigorating local GAs, further developing inter-organizational relationships, celebrating, and together building power for the spring, summer, and beyond.
The event will officially begin at 1pm with an open space format perhaps quite similar to recent Town Square events. Organizations and groups are invited to set-up tables (or blankets), soap boxing, teach-ins, and music will be afoot; neighborhoods may elect to represent themselves talking about their work, recruiting new persons into their GA’s, etc. There will be autonomous events, and a massive calendar, which can be added to by everyone to display all that will be happening in the coming months. This will be fairly free-form: ad hoc connection-making and a space for new people to be easily drawn in.
While the open space continues, at 3pm, a facilitated assembly will convene for those interested in serious citywide organizing and interactive movement building. This will not be a decision-making body. It will open with several short, rallying speeches and followed by discussion and planning of strategic vision for the next 3-6 months. Finally, concluding with another round of short, inspirational speeches and, no doubt, dancing into the night.
Members from the following groups attended planning meetings: Women Occupying Wall Street (WOW), Direct Action Working Group (DAWG), Facilitation, OWS Immigrant Worker Justice, Outreach, Empowerment and Education, Occupy Brooklyn, New York Katrina Survivors Coalition, OWS Arts and Culture, Occupy Sunset Park, Occupy DOE, Occupy Sotheby’s, Occupy Wall St., Occupy the Empty Space, People of Color Caucus, UWA, West Harlem 99 Percent, OWS Info, Think Tank, UnitedNY, Occupy Town Square, Occupy the Bronx, Occupy Williamsburg, the People’s Puppets, Occupy Queens, Occupy Astoria, Movement Building, Community Voices Heard, NY Communities for Change, SEIU, Working Families Party, Visions & Goals, Occupy Broadway, Occupy Staten Island, Ant-Racist Allies, Parents Support OWS, Occupation 4 Organization, Green Party, Occupy Museum, Labor Outreach , InfoHub, and others …
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A10: Social Media Training
You know you’ve wanted to tweet, blog and tumble all your life, now you can!
Please join us for a social media training (blogging, iPhone/Mac apps (tumblr, Twitter, CNN iReport, FB, etc.), YouTube/DailyMotion, digg, Twitter, FB). One our most inspiring leaders, Louis Flores has prepared and will deliver this training session so that we can use social media effectively to get our message out there.
- Date: Tuesday April 10th
- Time: 6:00pm-7:30pm
- Location: 220 Fifth Avenue at 26th St
- 5th floor conference room
- Note: Contact us to RSVP
NOTE: we are NOT having our regular sunday meeting today 4/8, but we will meet briefly at 7:30pm on Tuesday after the training to attend to any urgent business.
There will be WiFi capabilities so please bring your laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc If you plan on attending, please download the following suggested apps in advance.
- Facebook
- CNN app for iPhone
- Twitter
- Tumblr
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TODAY: Community Meeting Re: Interfaith Hospital’s Closing
Mr. Robert Hunter will be holding a meeting on the community response to Interfaith Hospital’s potential merger/closing. The meeting was called for at last week’s Community Board 3 meeting. This will NOT be a CB3 meeting, but a community meeting of independent actors.
Today, Mon 4/9/12: 6pm SHARP
Stuyvesant Heights Christian Church
69 Macdonough St, Brooklyn, NY 11216
(718) 783-5383
The meeting will last exactly 1 hour. The purpose of the meeting is to establish a basic direction for the resistance in the neighborhood, and to initiate the petition drive.
