Seniors, Healthcare Workers Fight Back Against SF Clinic Closures & Program Cuts, Call Out CEOs Opposing Prop D
The mayor’s cuts are hitting seniors, LGBTQ youth, high-risk new mothers, and nursing home patients hard—as billionaires and CEOs dump money to fight the business tax that could protect their services. Impacted residents & workers rallied Wednesday
Photo/Video Credit SEIU 1021; can sign release form as needed
**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
Contact: Jennie Smith-Camejo, jennie.smith-camejo@seiu1021.org, (510) 710-0201
The San Francisco Department of Public Health, at the direction of Mayor Lurie, is making deep cuts that disproportionately impact the city’s most vulnerable residents: seniors with mental illness, LGBTQ and homeless youth, new and expecting mothers facing tough health and/or personal challenges, medically fragile long-term care residents at Laguna Honda Hospital. While Mayor Lurie blames the city’s budget deficit for the cuts, he has come out against Prop D, which would bring in as much as $300M in revenue a year to protect public services like these.
Wednesday, a rally outside the South East Mission Geriatric Clinic—the city’s last remaining mental health clinic for seniors, slated to be closed in August—brought together communities impacted by the cuts. Seniors who receive services at the clinic; healthcare workers from all that and the two youth clinics on the chopping block; clinical nurse specialists laid off from Laguna Honda Hospital; and public health nurses from the endangered Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Program rallied outside the clinic, calling out the billionaire CEOs bankrolling opposition to Prop D to preserve their Trump tax breaks at the expense of the city’s most vulnerable.
“I’ve been there since my son was killed by SFPD. Without them, I would have committed suicide. And I tried, and that’s how I ended up at South East Mission,” said patient Mesha Irizarry. “It’s my lifeline. It’s the only outpatient psychiatric center for seniors in the whole city of San Francisco.”
The Institute for Policy Studies released a report last month that exposed the deep pockets funding a misleading ad campaign to defeat Prop D and effectively ensure that clinics like South East Mission are shuttered. Among the corporations fighting the business tax, which would only affect corporations that pay top executives more than 100 times their median worker, are Amazon, PG&E, Comcast, Uber, DoorDash, the Gap, and Williams-Sonoma. At the rally, speakers called out these CEOs, via life-sized cut-outs, for their role in undermining public services to protect the massive tax breaks they’re getting under Trump’s HR 1.
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SEIU Local 1021 represents nearly 60,000 employees in local governments, nonprofit agencies, health care programs, courts, and schools throughout Northern California, including seven private colleges and numerous community colleges. SEIU Local 1021 is a diverse, member-driven organization with members who work to make our cities, schools, colleges, counties, and special districts safe and healthy places to live and raise our families.