Brad Hoylman has been handpicked by Deputy Mayor Christine Quinn to run for City Council. As you may know, Hoylman, Quinn, and their cronies have sold out to the dark side of the Bloomberg administration, betraying progressive Democrats, their constituents, and they are strong advocates for bad development that closes hospitals, schools, and fire houses in a mass displacement of working families -- all in order to build more and more luxury condominiums.
Why is it acceptable for us to allow hospitals go through such desperate attempts to equally and adequately fund the healthcare needs of patients ? Look at the consequences of the blackouts of New York City hospitals in Lower Manhattan.
The issue before us is whether the rebuilding of our hospitals will continue to favour wealthy institutions, which primarily serve the well-insured, or will we use this opportunity to examine and fix the unequal distribution of healthcare in New York created by the Berger Commission ?
If we believe in the dignity and equality of all people, then our healthcare system must be reformed to provide patient care-centered healthcare, to equally meet the needs of all patients. Please support a truly universal, single-payer healthcare system.
Mayor Concedes To Critics : Cancels Marathon : What Took So Long ?
Race organisers, including the Rudin Family, the New York Road Runners Club, and ING, used Mayor Michael Bloomberg to be the fall guy for criticism about the city using valuable resources to hold the New York City Marathon. Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg was forced to cancel the marathon after The New York Post reported that at least 41 generators were being hoarded by race officials. Meanwhile, large numbers of New York City residents were rendered homeless with little to no resources for food, shelter, heat, health, or safety in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Many storm victims were outraged at all the resources, not just power generators, that were being hoarded by marathon organisers for the sole benefit of runners.
"Runners were set to dine on a lavish Saturday-evening pre-race meal that included lemon-thyme chicken with shallot jus, and autumn vegetable bow-tie pasta primavera with extra virgin oil and fresh herbs — which most storm victims would have killed for," reported The New York Post.
"More than 2,000 cops are typically assigned to work the marathon. About five years ago, the city started privatizing medical coverage at the event, although scores of city paramedics and EMTs are still assigned to the race," reported The New York Daily News.
Even before Hurricane Sandy made landfall, weather experts were predicting massive flooding, which would have caused damage to the city's infrastructure. Two of the most critical infrastructure facilities that took a hit as a result of Hurricane Sandy were the subway system and the city's hospitals.
Bill Rudin said that it would be safe to close St. Vincent's Hospital, which was the only Level I Trauma Center and full-service hospital in all of Lower Manhattan. He and his billion-dollar real estate development company got easy building permits, zone-busting waivers, and approvals from New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. At the time, Mr. Rudin and Speaker Quinn said that if people in Lower Manhattan became sick, or if there was a mass civilian trauma event, patients could be transported to Bellevue Hospital, which was the next closest Level I Trauma Center.
But the aftermath of hospital evacuations at NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals following destruction by caused by Hurricane Sandy expose the risks of the Rudin Condo Conversion Plan approved for St. Vincent's Hospital.
Watch this NBC News report about the hurricane destruction. Note that Mr. Rudin is a sponsor of the NYC Marathon, and he wants the Marathon to still take place this week-end, even though first responders haven't yet finished recovering all the dead bodies on Staten Island, or, for that matter, ensuring public safety or providing emergency care to the people rendered homeless by the tsunami of the storm surge and flooding.
Looking at the images of ambulances in front of NYU Langone Medical Center evacuating the hospital, one remembers the cry for the preservation of St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan made by the community and its doctors.
Let us join together to come up with a solution so that the people of New York will have access to the critical emergency care they need.
ROBERT B. GOLDBERG
New York, Oct. 31, 2012
The writer, dean and professor at the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, is a former attending physician at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan.
Who is politically accountable for the failure of the emergency management plan in response to Hurricane Sandy that lead to infrastructure failure at New York City hospitals ?
Following the infrastructure failure of critical hospitals in New York City because of flooding and storm surge associated with Hurricane Sandy and related power failures, some healthcare activists began to demand answers for the failure of New York City's emergency management planning. The fault does not lie with the doctors and medical staff at the impacted hospitals ; rather, the politicians in charge of the city's emergency management plan must account for this irresponsible and dangerous situation. How could it be that New York City's resources would prioritise reopening business when critical hospitals could be left in the dark ? One activist has posted a new YouTube video requesting political accountability for the dangerous risks posed to public health by Mayor Michael Bloomberg's lack of real emergency planning.
In the community effort to demand a replacement hospital for St. Vincent's, politicians imposed on the community the burden of participating in a needs assessment to determine if a full-service hospital was required in the Lower West Side of Manhattan.
"The hospital evacuations following the destruction by Hurricane Sandy expose the risks of the Rudin Condo Conversion Plan approved for St. Vincent's Hospital," said Louis Flores, an activist who produced this YouTube video. "New York City needs a Level I Trauma Center and full-service hospital in the Lower West Side for disaster recovery efforts. And New York City needs real resources to improve the infrastructure of all of our hospitals, including Coler Hospital on Roosevelt Island and SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn."
Hurricane Irene
In 2011, St. Vincent's activists organized a mass civilian trauma event exercise to demonstrate what grassroots community activists described was a major risk to public health : where would sick and injured patients receive emergency and trauma care in the event of a major national disaster under conditions that had created an irresponsible geographic distribution of hospital beds in Manhattan.
In the time leading up to and following the landfall of the effects of Hurricane Sandy, the infrastructure of full-service hospitals on the East Side of Manhattan has failed. Hospital patients were forced to be evacuated from NYU Langone and Bellevue Hospitals.
To Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Speaker Christine Quinn, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, to City Planner Amanda Burden, Brad Hoylman, Bill Rudin, and to the Partnership for New York, where are New Yorkers supposed to go now, in case of a medical emergency ?
