By Liam P-A.
On Thursday, March 12, community members sat down on the wet sidewalk in front of Christ Hospital and refused to leave. For three days and two nights Jersey City neighbors, Hudson County residents, workers, electeds, organizers, and DSA members demanded our political representatives take action to keep Christ Hospital’s for-profit operator from closing it.
In November, owner Hudson Regional Health (HRH) closed every part of Christ Hospital except the emergency department. This immediately threw the health care workers into a panic. Most of the staff laid off or transferred to other HRH facilities found out at the same time as the public. They knew what was coming next: closure of the emergency room.
DSA takes action
The Health Justice Working Group (HJWG) of the North New Jersey chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NNJ DSA) took action. Led by Campbell C. and me, the HJWG quickly assembled a coalition of Jersey City organizations, including Central Heights Neighborhood Association and Knitty Gritty JC. As the Save Our Hospital Coalition, and using the tagline “Save Our Hospital, Save Lives”, we planned a three-day sit-in protest leading up to the date of the closure of the emergency room. It was our “Hail Mary to save Christ.”
Through three days and two cold nights, NNJ DSA members held the sidewalk in shifts. We talked to reporters, posted updates that pulled in more neighbors, wrote op-eds, called electeds, and slept on the concrete.
On the first day, winds blew so cold and strong that tarps and tents the group tried to erect almost flew away. Community members contributed weights to hold the tents down, food, coffee, water, blankets, chairs, tables, rugs, space heaters — everything the sit-in participants needed to survive the cold March days and even colder nights. What kept me warm was interacting with many residents from throughout Jersey City who were grateful we were trying to save their hospital. What we hadn’t expected was how many of them didn’t know.
“I didn’t know…”
A taxi driver pulled up with a passenger who needed emergency care. I had to tell him the ER wasn’t taking new patients anymore. A local who ordered pizza for us said he hadn’t heard that the hospital was closing. Over three days, we heard the same from neighbor after neighbor: “I didn’t know Christ Hospital was closing.” One of the city’s two hospitals was about to disappear, and the people it served were finding out from us, on a sidewalk, in March, months after most of the hospital had ceased operations already. Throughout the day, residents spoke about being born at Christ Hospital, surviving heart attacks there, and having loved ones die there.
Later in the day, the crowd grew. DSA member and Ward D Councilman Jake Ephros arrived with fellow council members Tom Zuppa and Eleana Little. They were joined by Jersey City Mayor James Solomon, HPAE President Debbie White, Assemblywoman Katie Brennan, and dozens of community members for a press conference. They called the closure illegal and said people would die because of it. Nurses described overflowing ERs at Jersey City Medical Center and Hoboken University Hospital since November. While the media absorbed the conversation, even more Heights residents showed up to Christ for regular visits and emergency needs just to learn about the impending closure.
Hitting the pavement
Seeing the cameras pack up after the press conference, we held a meeting on the sidewalk and collectively decided the sit-in would become a die-in. The following day we laid down on the concrete in front of the hospital, bodies strung out along the parking lot — the way people would be left if the closure happened. Then we went inside the hospital. Two DSA members were tackled, dragged off in handcuffs, and charged with trespassing. A police officer knocked another protester, a retired nurse, to the concrete. She walked into the Christ Hospital ER for treatment and became one of its last patients. At 7:30 p.m., the ER closed and has not reopened as of the end of April.
The movement to save Christ Hospital did not manage to move the state to force HRH to reopen the hospital, but it did organize the Jersey City community to combat corporate greed and the capitalist government machinery that protects it. This is the crucial ingredient that DSA provided: a vision for how Christ Hospital could be not only reopened but transformed to better serve the community.
The fight continues
The fight hasn’t ended either. Days after Christ Hospital closed, the City Council voted unanimously to consider eminent domain as a potential option. Eminent domain would allow the city to seize the hospital from HRH and put it under public control. The state Department of Health fined HRH $128,000 for breaking the law. After the landlord who owns the land on which the hospital is on threatened to sue them — claiming that the land would lose value without its hospital license — HRH ran to court and wanted to halt the closure process. Before a public hearing was supposed to happen, they obtained a temporary restraining order against the DOH. Twenty minutes before the doors opened at Dickinson High School on April 15 for the public hearing, state officials were forced to walk out, per the restraining order. The community stayed put. For two hours, residents and elected officials took the microphone and again shared both the impact Christ made on them and the need for healthcare in the Heights.
The next chapter in this saga will be HRH’s lawsuit against the DOH. HRH claims that the DOH is violating their right to Due Process under the New Jersey State Constitution by refusing to accept their withdrawal of their application to close. They argue they never intended to close the hospital permanently, describing their actions as a “temporary suspension of services.” The DOH has responded that not only is it glaringly obvious that they intended to close the hospital permanently, but that the suspension of all services without going through the mandated Certificate of Need process is still illegal, and so the process must be allowed to continue. On May 22, a Hudson County judge will decide whether HRH can keep gaming the regulatory clock.
The Save Our Hospitals coalition will submit an amicus brief in support of the DOH, represented by NJ Appleseed Public Interest Law Center lawyer Renée Steinhagen, a longtime advocate against hospital closures that has represented many other similar coalitions. NNJ DSA’s Health Justice Working Group meets at least once a month and is the place to plug in if you want to help build what comes next. Help us fight for the Heights and demand public excellence in healthcare.
Thank you for reading
This article is part of Issue No. 01 of Garden State Socialist, a publication of the North New Jersey chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NNJ DSA).
DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.
We are a political and activist organization, not a party; our members use a variety of tactics, from legislative to direct action, to fight for reforms that empower working people.
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