Since Mayor Lurie’s administration announced 127 layoffs, the closure of three beloved community clinics, and program cuts the first week of April, SEIU 1021 members have been taking a hard stand. Last Wednesday, April 15, about 800 union members gathered at San Francisco General Hospital at lunchtime and marched, taking over Potrero Avenue, to send a strong message to the mayor: No cuts, no layoffs, no closures.

In one of the richest cities in the world, cuts like these are a choice, not a necessity. Members are calling on the mayor to support Prop D, a tax on the largest corporations that pay their top executives more than 100x their median employee, which would generate $300 million a year to protect crucial public services like the ones currently on the chopping block.

Mayor Lurie has said he does not support Prop D, even as he claims that the cuts he is making are “painful but necessary.” Meanwhile, he is supporting tax breaks that benefit the richest San Franciscans.

All four clinical nurse specialists at Laguna Honda Hospital received layoff notices, including Kathleen MacKerrow, a 17-year veteran of SF Department of Public Health. “Without us, we’re extremely concerned about the future of Laguna Honda. We were integral to ensuring Laguna Honda was recertified for Medicare and Medicaid funding. I’m concerned for the safety of our patients and their quality of care if our positions are eliminated.”

Sophia Padilla is a licensed therapist at the Michael Baxter Larkin Street Clinic, one of the three community clinics slated for closure under the mayor’s cuts. “We serve mainly transient, unhoused youth. If this clinic shuts down, it would be devastating to the community.” Watch, like, and share her video on our Instagram here—and tag Mayor Lurie in your comments.

“The mayor is choosing to take services from the most fragile members, and mentally ill patients,” Francisca Oropeza, a therapist at South East Mission Geriatric Services—the last remaining mental health clinic for older adults and also targeted for closure—told the crowd on Wednesday. “If we are the society we believe ourselves to be — good, decent, loving—then we will look at our grandmothers and grandfathers, great grandfathers and our great grandmothers, and fight for our elders.” Read more about her fight to protect care for seniors in the Gazetteer here.

Over 150 union and community members flooded the SF Health Commission meeting on Monday, April 20, to give public comment in protest of the planned closure of the clinics and dismantling of critical programs like the Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Program.

Over nearly three hours, workers and clients pleaded with the Health Commission and SF Department of Public Health Director Daniel Tsai to reverse their plans to close the clinics and cut services.

“These funding cuts are extremely detrimental to our ability to provide healthcare to youth,” said Maddie Streigel, a case manager for Huckleberry Youth, which hosts the Cole Street Youth Clinic, also slated for closure.

Check out these stories from KTVU, NBC 11, KPFA, and the San Francisco Chronicle.