hater-of-terfs:

For a brief moment on Saturday, nurses, patients and community
members seized a shuttered hospital in Philadelphia and turned it over
to the people to use as a clinic. Following a rally at the City Hall, a
crowd of around 100 people marched north to the empty hospital tower,
erected canopies, tables, and chairs, and began to attend to patients
who had joined the march and were eager to receive care. They were the
first people to be treated at the hospital since the pandemic began,
during which the absentee owner kept its doors shut to the city in the
hopes of forcing the city to pay a ransom.

Hahnemann Hospital stands in the center of the city, two blocks north
of City Hall. Before it was closed in the summer of 2019 it
predominantly treated Black poor and working class people of
Philadelphia, with social service providers housed in the same tower as
doctors and specialists. Its most recent owner, the banker turned
heathcare investor Joel Freedman, had bought it only a year before, and
when he determined it wasn’t profitable enough he filed for bankruptcy,
laid off around 800 unionized nurses, and deprived the underserved
population of Philadelphia of their primary source of care.

The rally was called by the Care Not Cops coalition
of health workers, patients and community members which had formed a
few weeks prior, moved by the examples set by the occupied Hilton in
Minneapolis after the burning of the 3rd Precinct and by the James Talib
Dean houseless people’s encampment up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in
Philadelphia established two weeks before as well. They also took
inspiration from the Black Panther Party and Young Lords’s moves toward
community self-defense through direct provision of health care coupled
with militant street activity. These models showed it is possible for
the people to seize the means of care for ourselves back from capital
and the State. And the quickly shifting character of the uprising,
moving from riots to contacting city council members within a month,
meant that it was time to act.

But as the nurses began to take out their blood pressure monitors and
PPE, occupiers noticed the Philly SWAT team assembling on the street
opposite the building. The advantage of using the base of the hospital
was that it was accessible to the crowd for quick occupation without
having to breach any doors or walls, but this also made it vulnerable to
police attack. A debate broke out regarding the desirability of
mounting a defense if the barricades didn’t keep the cops out. Some
patients were determined to stay, while some nurses felt they couldn’t
risk their license by getting arrested. The split in sentiment itself
determined the outcome. Lacking the numbers and will to defend against
police violence, the occupation packed itself up and moved on together,
but not before treating the first patients at the Hahnemann site for
months. There were, crucially, no arrests and no injuries from police
violence, despite the intense escalation of barricaded streets and
captured property. When we act together, we can care for each other and
keep one another safe.

Though the occupation itself was extremely short-lived, the response
it drew was indelible. Observers online and in the city immediately
recognized the significance of taking over a hospital, and of the cops’
role as enforcers of a hated regime of property and social death.
“[N]urses took over a shuttered hospital and open a free clinic. the
police proceeded to threaten them with violence until they left in order
to make sure the building stayed empty and unused,” summarized a
Twitter user. The cops moved to protect the villainous hospital owner’s
squatted property, guarding it against any use for the health of the
people. And organizers were disappointed but not deterred. The first
bold attempt at liberating the means for self-organizing community care
was a strong start. It will certainly not be the last.