UCSF Healthcare Workers Rally for People of Chile, the People of Chile Are Rising Up!

UCSF Healthcare Workers Rally For People Of Chile
The people of Chile are rising up!

Please join the Do No Harm Coalition and our Chilean friends in a peaceful performance/action on:
Tuesday November 19
12pm-1pm
at Parnassus campus (513 Parnassus Ave)

in support of the healthcare workers and the people of Chile, and specifically to call attention to the brutal attacks on demonstrators' eyes as a health and human rights emergency.

Background info from DNH member Lisa Milos:

Since October 18th, doctors, medical students, nurses and other healthcare professionals have joined the call to action by Chilean civil society to protest decades of economic inequality, which has meant years of low-quality healthcare and lack of access due to privatization of healthcare.

Healthcare workers have been treating thousands of patients who have been injured by police violence just for exercising their legitimate right to protest.

After more than 40 years of living under a political constitution that was created under and by a dictatorship and a neoliberal economic model that has privatized the entire country, the people said No Mas Abusos (No more abuse)

History:

Chile had a democratically elected socialist President, Salvador Allende, until in 1973, a CIA sponsored coup overthrew the Allende government. The military coup lasted 17 years and cost thousands of lives. Opponents of the Pinochet dictatorship were killed, disappeared, tortured and imprisoned and exiled.

The social upheaval that began little more than 3 weeks ago was triggered by a Metro fare hike which high school students considered unfair given the low wages their parents earn. They jumped the turnstiles and the rest is history.

A little more than 50% of the people of Chile earn minimum wage (300,000 pesos= about $420/mo) The vast income inequality and flagrant fraudulent practices by major industries during the past 30 years that have resulted in major theft and tax evasion by CEOs with little consequences; coupled with a privatized individual retirement system that leaves retirees in poverty after 35 years of work, the fare hike and more importantly the police violence against the youth was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Civil society is demanding change from below and protestors, which in many cases include entire families have been out in the streets, gathering loudly yet for the most part peacefully only to be faced with the most brutal repression not seen since the dictatorship of Pinochet.

There have been demonstrations numbering in the millions throughout Chile and civil society is demanding a Constituent Assembly in order to make the needed changes to live in dignity. Their demands include collective bargaining rights, lower work week to 40 hours, increase of the minimum wage, an end to the neoliberal economic model imposed by the Chicago Boys which had made education and healthcare a business instead of a right, and end to the privatized individual retirement system, water, and other natural resources, restoration of land rights and economic justice for the Indigenous nations, women’s rights, etc.

In response to the massive demonstrations by civil society demanding economic equality and political freedom, the Pinera government called a State of Emergency and sent the troops out into the streets. Though the State of Emergency has since been rescinded, there continues to be massive arrests, raids, and people hospitalized due to injuries by the militarized police. There have been deaths and torture and even sexual violence inflicted on men, women and children.

One of the most alarming aspects is the brutality in which the police have operated. They have been systematically targeting demonstrators’ eyes with their high-powered shotgun pellets. Already 230 have suffered injuries to their eyes resulting in total or partial blindness.

To put this in perspective and according to the President of the Chilean Ophthalmologist Association, during the last 25 years throughout the entire world including areas of social upheaval, there have been a total of 300 cases of eye loss due to police violence via pellets or other projectiles. In just the past 3 weeks, Chile has 230 cases.

This will be a lunch time performance action on the steps of the Medical Science Building on Parnassus Campus which will highlight the loss of an eye due to social upheaval as a result of police violence.

JOIN US!

https://facebook.com/events/2450252385223409/?ti=icl

Below, there are a few articles and videos


https://wearemitu.com/things-that-matter/the-police-in-chile-are-permanently-blinding-and-maiming-protesters-with-rubber-bullets/

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000006795557/chile-protesters-shot-eye.html?fbclid=IwAR14Pdr7ZtS54RGga0JVwax1H-ajlDkLQMYMsJZGM339HI6rHvdpGjt_oXA

Medical personnel in the Regional Hospital of Antofagasta hold a demonstration to protest police violence.

https://www.soychile.cl/Antofagasta/Sociedad/2019/11/12/624622/Medicos-del-Hospital-Regional-de-Antofagasta-protestaron-contra-el-uso-de-balines-en-manifestaciones.aspx?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=%5BGuille%5D&utm_campaign=Fanpage&fbclid=IwAR2J9dGdFDv3z8l_KOu4v25e8Ywmr3CVvYMps-DJUK2ZG_uEH08U0MqLwGM

18 year old youth talks about how his eye was just shot out by police while he was protesting. The other man in the video is a musician who also had his eye shot while he was playing music during one of the protests.

https://www.facebook.com/lanacioncr/videos/430076094594639/