Family and Friends Hold City Hall Vigil For Man Who Died Without Paid Sick Leave

Supporters of sick-leave bill say Council Speaker Christine Quinn is partially to blame for death of Brooklyn grocery store worker

Supporters of a paid sick-leave bill suggested Wednesday that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is partially to blame for the tragic death last month of Felix Trinidad, a Brooklyn grocery worker.

Healthcare and other activists organised a memorial vigil in tribute to Mr. Trinidad, 34, who died of stomach cancer after "putting in 12-hour days, six days a week, at the Golden Farm supermarket in Kensington, which does not offer sick days," reported The New York Daily News. The vigil was organised outside City Hall. “He would have been better if the bill had been passed because he wouldn’t have had to worry so much about having to miss work,” his widow, Anastacia Gonzalez, 31, told The New York Daily News.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to that entire family,” Speaker Quinn said. “That said, my position on paid sick leave legislation has not changed.”

Speaker Quinn has repeatedly said that she does not support giving paid sick leave days for people, who are sick and may be dying.

According to The New York Daily News report, Speaker Quinn has "refused to allow a Council vote on a bill requiring most employers to offer at least five paid sick days a year[,] and advocates of the bill have been pressuring her to change her mind as she prepares to run for mayor next year."

#myopinioncounts and @informedvoting to support community organising in New York City

#myopinioncounts is a new hashtag and @informedvoting is a new Twitter account launched to support community organising in New York City leading up to the 2013 mayoral election.

To support community organisers across the five boroughs of New York City, the blogger and activist Louis Flores has launched a new Twitter account, @informed voting. He has also launched a related hashtag, #myopinioncounts, to support reforms to improve the democratic participation of citizens in our own governance.

This Twitter account will follow the activists and citizens in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. This Twitter account will highlight areas, were we can find common ground and link up together, to bring about reforms in our government. For example, how did "stop and frisk" become the only acceptable answer to crime prevention, when the solution all along is passing stricter gun control laws ? The same thing goes for hospital closings : why are so many major hospitals closing, when Congress just expanded healthcare to tens of millions of Americans ? Cutting costs to healthcare are unacceptable, and yet where do politicians find the legitimacy to close down hospitals across all five boroughs ?

"If we are going to change the system, we need to organise. This means taking action together. With this new Twitter account and the related hashtag, I will support the work that others do," said Louis Flores.

Time is also running out to reach our goal for the Kickstarter project to support the publication of Roots of Betrayal : The Ethics of Christine Quinn, a work-in-progress survey of the political ethics of the New York City Council Speaker. Funding ends on August 16, and for this book to inform voters, the community must come together to support this project. Please make a pledge and help spread the word. Thank you for everything that you do.

Brooklyn Hospital Closings - Updated

UPDATED : Interfaith Medical Center plans to file for bankruptcy this week. (Revised : Sunday 02 Dec 2012 8:52 p.m.)

About ten months after Gov. Andrew Cuomo floated the idea of hospital closings to cut the New York State Medicaid budget, there came an article in The New York Times that purports to portray Gov. Cuomo as a saviour of Brooklyn hospitals, but the reality is that he has been trying for years now to close safety net hospitals in Brooklyn in order to cut the state's healthcare budget.

Is there a deliberate plan to merge hospitals until they fail ? nydailynews.com/new-york/hamil… @nygovcuomo @newyorkmrt @propublica @healthcarefor99

— StopNYMRT (@StopNYMRT) February 18, 2013

In February 2011, it was announced that Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn had been saved from closing ; it eventually merged with SUNY Downstate Hospital.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo found enough state grant money in February 2011 to save Long Island College Hospital, NY1 reported. Because of that 2011 deal, 2,500 employees, who work at LICH, will be able to keep their jobs.

But in the time since, Gov. Cuomo has been window-dressing the New York State budget by closing down entire hospitals in a scorched earth campaign to make savage cuts to Medicaid, the state of public health be damned. In fact, two years after Gov. Cuomo portrayed himself as a hero of public health, employees of LICH and residents and patients of LICH participated in a protest right outside of Gov. Cuomo's Manhattan offices. As time went on, Gov. Cuomo came to be seen for his true intention : willing to shut down entire hospitals to make severe budget cuts off the backs of the people most in need : underinsured and insured hospital patients.

Aiding and abetting Gov. Cuomo has been neoliberal Christine Quinn, who, as Speaker of the New York City Council, has oversight of the city budget, including that of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which is charged with overseeing the state of public health here in New York City. Speaker Quinn also administers billions of dollars in City Council discretionary funds, which, instead of allocating resources to develop a truly sustainable funding model for healthcare, makes disbursements according to political expediency that benefits her immediate political and personal ambitions. To wit, during the time that she has been in charge of City Council, Speaker Quinn has stood by and done thing as ten city hospitals have closed :

• Westchester Square Medical Center up in the Bronx was sold in 2013 after its own bankruptcy proceeding and is expected to be downsized into an urgent care center ;
• Peninsula Hospital Center in Far Rockaway declared closed in 2012 after having declared bankruptcy ;
• North General Hospital in Harlem declared bankruptcy in 2010 ;
• St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village was shut down in 2010 after shady backroom meetings ;
• St. John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst went bankrupt in 2009 ;
• Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica went bankrupt in 2009 ;
• Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills decided to close in 2008 ;
• Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan closed in 2008 ;
• Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge closed in 2008 ; and
• St. Vincent's Midtown in Manhattan closed in 2007.

In October 2010, New York magazine published an exposé written by Mark Levine, which described the dangerous public health issues resulting from all the hospital closings.

"Last year, a pair of hospitals in Queens closed suddenly, just before the outbreak of H1N1, causing overflow conditions in the emergency rooms of nearby facilities, one of which set up a triage area on a loading dock."

In January of 2011, The New York Post has made a list more Brooklyn hospitals, which are in danger of closing, if New York State government makes major cuts in Medicaid funding :

• Brooklyn Center
• Brookdale
• Interfaith
• Kingsbrook
• Wyckoff

In the summer of 2012, members of the Healthcare for the 99% Working Group of Occupy Wall Street participated in a demonstration outside of Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in solidarity with employees and residents of that community, to say "No" to the closing of Wyckoff.

For more information, see : Governor's Medicaid cuts may kill 10 city hospitals. (Note that the link to The Post article sometimes does not work. Hmmmm. Try this link for some corroborating information about the hospital closings that would come about as a result of Gov. Cuomo's Medicaid cuts.)