Health care workers march for racial justice

Protesters call for CPD funding to be diverted to services

The health care workers who gathered outside the old Cook County Hospital building Saturday can speak all too well about the discrimination Black people face when seeking care — many of them have faced it firsthand.

Denise Stiger, an organizer with the Teamsters Local 743 union that represents health care workers at University of Chicago, Rush and Mercy medical centers, said dismissive attitudes of health care professionals endangered two of her pregnancies.

In the case of her son’s birth eight years ago, Stiger asked for a vaccination that would protect her baby from respiratory syncytial virus, the leading cause of infant pneumonia and bronchiolitis. Her doctor said Stiger didn’t fit the criteria and sent her home with assurances her son’s condition would improve overnight.

Instead, he stopped breathing.

“That was the day I knew they don’t care about us,” Stiger said. “We’re just a number to them.”

Around 140 protesters joined the National Nurses United union in rallying to pressure Mayor Lori Lightfoot to divert funding for the Chicago Police Department to the city’s health care and social services.

Speakers from Black Lives Matter Chicago, Southside Together Organizing for Power, Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, and other unions and social justice groups pointed to issues like the city’s 2012 closing of half its mental health clinics as evidence that people of color are sidelined while police funding climbs.

“If we had more mental health clinics, our jail system (population) would go down, because half the people in jail have mental health problems,” Stiger said. “If they put nurses back in the school system, psychologists and truancy (officers), I tell you, society will be much better.”

About nine police squad cars were on hand to escort the marchers from outside Cook County Hospital to Douglas Park, which organizers noted is where Rekia Boyd was killed by an offduty police officer in 2012.

At the start of the march, a squad car and a vehicle of protesters collided, with the protesters’ vehicle sustaining more damage to its bumper and driver’s side. Protesters angrily decried the incident as a means of blocking their caravan and accused officers of striking their vehicle after it had stopped.

After a brief exchange, the march continued as planned, with squad cars trailing about a dozen vehicles bringing up the rear of protesters. A lieutenant on the scene said he didn’t know how the “fender bender” took place, but said his focus was on getting the march underway to clear streets for hospital traffic.

Among the marchers was Margaret Ladner, a midwife who works on Chicago’s West Side, and her young children. Her patients, who are mostly Latino, “have suffered disproportionately from this virus,” she said, because many are considered essential workers in sectors like food production, but lack personal protective equipment to keep them safe.

To her, attending the rally was a vital way to show her children the realities of the world and to fight for a better one.

“Racism is systemic, and it creates so much unnecessary death,” Ladner said. “People are dying all the time because of their race.”

Black Chicagoans are dying from the coronavirus at far higher rates than other racial demographics, according to a Tribune analysis. In the first month of the stay-at-home order, 60% of COVID-19 deaths were Black people, despite them making up about 30% of the city’s population.

But racial disparities in health care are nothing new, as study after study has shown. Black women are six times more likely to die from pregnancy-related conditions and are less likely to have good heart health while pregnant. Black and Latina women report more pain postpartum than white women, but receive less opioid medication to treat it.

In emergency rooms, nonwhite patients get less pain relief amid health issues like migraines and bone fractures. Black and Latino children are more likely to be living with undiagnosed chronic fatigue. There has been a historic lack of funding for sickle cell disease, which is most common among Black people.

As marchers passed by Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, a Black man named Jimmy King looked on. With a few minutes to spare from his work in the housekeeping department, he took in the sight of dozens of marchers hoisting signs calling for change.

“It’s a beautiful thing, because you have all these races and creeds and colors finally coming together and saying enough is enough,” King said. “It needs to continue until something is done.”