Virtual Vigil Supporting Healthcare Workers & Abolishing Healthcare Profiteering

Virtual Vigil Supporting Healthcare Workers & Abolishing Healthcare Profiteering

Join Put People First! PA, the Nonviolent Medicaid Army and the National Union of the Homeless for this online vigil (in-person, socially distanced protest vigils are being held in Pennsylvania).

Healthcare is a human right!

Facebook event post: https://www.facebook.com/events/710242249870620/

Facebook livestream: https://www.facebook.com/PutPeopleFirstPA/

National Union of the Homeless YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCg1sQ5ALv-Z3bLMsajHCkA

Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 3:30 PM - 5 Pm PT (6:30 PM – 8 PM ET)

Put People First - PA
Put People First- Altoona HRC
Put People First PA Lancaster Healthcare Rights Committee
South Central PA Region, Put People First
Non-Violent Medicaid Army
National Union Of The Homeless

THIS EVENT IS BOTH VIRTUAL AND IN PERSON

We will come together as healthcare workers and all workers to show our support and appreciation for our healthcare workers, to bring attention to the crisis we are in, and to show how one of the best ways that we can appreciate healthcare workers is to fight to transform the system that is putting all our lives at risk and causing untold misery and death.

The workers inside our healthcare facilities are under extreme pressure and stress due to a healthcare system that places profit above human life. Many healthcare workers within these walls will be diagnosed with PTSD as a result of the daily trauma they’re facing in the workplace compounded with the everyday trauma of living through a pandemic.That’s in addition to already putting their health and the health of their families at greater risk by working in a high-risk environment.This stress has a butterfly effect throughout families, communities, and our nation.

Healthcare corporations like Geisinger had the entire summer to prepare for this fall surge and prevent the escalating crisis we are currently facing. Instead, they chose to pay ever-increasing profits to executives and invest millions of dollars in such things as advertising. When profits are prioritized over people, our hospital systems operate at high rates such as 85% or more capacity on a consistent basis, and have little ability to scale up in the face of a widespread healthcare emergency. Meanwhile in other places there are hospitals closing down because they’re not generating enough of a profit, leaving communities like Johnstown with no stable healthcare system and some places, like Pike County, with no hospitals at all.

This will be a hybrid event allowing for both socially distanced in-person actions in Pennsylvania as well as the safety of virtual attendance. Our plan is to hold candlelight vigils at local healthcare facilities, particularly ones which are at or nearing capacity with COVID-19 patients and to host an online event simultaneously that will connect to each in person vigil at the appropriate time.