A sit-in in front of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office Tuesday to protest the proposed closing of six of Chicago’s 12 public mental health care clinics was loud, enthusiastic and organized by a scrappy, media-savvy grassroots advocacy group known as STOP – Southside Together Organizing for Power.
With less than 24 hours before the City Council was scheduled to vote and pass Emanuel’s $6.3 billion budget plan, which includes the closing of the clinics to save money, the protesters from STOP marched into City Hall with a flock of reporters, camera crews and dozens of supporters following them at about 12:30 p.m. expecting to be arrested as they demanded Emanuel keep the clinics open. As a dozen members of STOP and their supporters locked arms and sat on the marble floor in front of the glass doors of the mayor’s office, a trio of burly officers looming over them, they blocked the entrance to the fifth-floor suite.
But a police official said Emanuel had left the building. And rather than arresting the protesters, the police let the demonstrators occupy space and avoided confrontation. Not until late Tuesday–after the 10 o’clock news had ended–did the protesters finally leave, under their own power and without other incident.
Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, 29, an organizer for STOP, seemed to anticipate a long sit-in as he as he sat on the floor in a blue hospital smock. “We’ve been asking to see him for months,’’ Ginsberg-Jaeckle said of the absent mayor. “We’ll wait.’’
Nearly ten hours later, the protesters packed it in, long after police locked the City Hall bathrooms when the building closed at 5 p.m.. The sit-in ended at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, with 10 protesters still sitting-in and 10 supporters looking on, according to Ginsberg-Jaeckle.
STOP is a diverse and stubborn group. For eight years the interracial organization that includes University of Chicago students and graduates, residents of a low-income housing development and area teenagers has been fighting gentrification and displacement in the struggling Woodlawn neighborhood just South of Hyde Park, the home of the U. of C. and President Barack Obama.
STOP has also been involved in juvenile justice issues and helped organize the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, which assists families facing home foreclosures and evictions. And for the past year, the group’s youth wing, FLY — Fearless Leading by Youth, has been at the forefront of the effort to pressure and persuade the University of Chicago Medical Center to reopen the level one adult trauma center it closed in 1988.
“More than just radical gestures, STOP has been involved in real community organizing,’’ said Jamie Kalven, a writer and longtime advocate for the poor. “The most sustained organizing I’ve seen in recent years has been through STOP and its various offshoots.’’
Cheryl Reed, a spokeswoman for the medical center, said hospital officials have met with the young activists in the past and will do so again if asked. But medical center officials believe reopening the adult trauma center would take resources away from other vital medical services and is not necessary.
“We’ve tolerated a lot of protests,’’ Reed said. “We’ve had protests on our campus, protests in front of the hospital. But our concern is we have an open dialogue with them going forward.’’
STOP was founded in 2004 by a group of U. of C. students and tenants of a nearby low-income housing development to fight gentrification.
“Over time, we realized you just can’t engage around housing issues,’’ Ginsberg-Jaeckle said. “There’s so much going on in people’s lives. We ran into people who said, ‘It’s great you saved my building, but my clinic down the street is closing.’’’
So for STOP, Tuesday’s sit-in was a case of new mayor, old battle.
Two years ago, STOP staged a sit-in in Mayor Richard M. Daley’s office when he threatened because of budget woes to shutter several of the clinics, which thousands of mostly low-income Chicagoans rely on for their mental health needs.
At the time, Chicago was still in the running to host the 2016 Olympic Games. The Mayor did not meet with STOP, but his chief of staff did.
The clinics remained open. But it appears doubtful the six endangered clinics will survive for much longer despite the noisy sit-in that stretched into Tuesday night, with periodic chants of “No clinics. No votes.’’
On Wednesday, the City Council is expected to vote to approve Emanuel’s budget and the elimination of the six clinics. Emanuel allies are predicting the budget will pass with a clear majority of votes.
Tarrah Cooper, a spokeswoman for Emanuel, said in a statement, “The City supports the rights of protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights and voice their opinions.’’
Cooper added that the Emanuel’s budget proposal “allows the city to partner with community providers, delivering needed services at a lower cost while still maintaining a high level of care for uninsured patients and those most in need within their own neighborhoods and communities, and the Administration is putting an additional $500,000 towards psychiatric services, a top priority expressed by mental health providers.â€
Indeed, Ald. Carrie Austin (34th Ward), the chair of the council’s Budget Committee, said she was satisfied with the mental health clinic closings because it will allow the Department of Public Health to provide better services.
“Even though we are closing facilities,’’ Austin said, “I want individuals to get the best care. I don’t want them to get half care or partial care. I want them to get the best care because those are the individuals that are most vulnerable.’’
But Ald. Nicholas Sposato (36th Ward) said closing the clinics is one of his primary concerns with Emanuel’s budget plan. Sposato said he is worried about layoffs and the impact on patients who will have to travel farther to other clinics.
“This is a major disruption,’’ Sposato said, adding that he has not decided how he will vote on the budget. “These people have nobody to protect them and look out for them.’’
The protesters say closing the clinics will only save the city $3.3 million and will have a devastating impact on the people that rely on them. Helen Morley, 55, is one. She said she travels from her North Side home to the clinic in Beverly on the Far South Side to see “my therapists I’ve been with for 15 years.’’
“I’ll die if they close my clinic,’’ Morley said as she joined Tuesday’s sit-in.
The night before the sit-in, a dozen STOP members, their supporters and a volunteer lawyer met on the South Side for a practice protest and to go over the ground rules of non-violent civil disobedience.
“We want to look like regular citizens going in,’’ N’Dana Carter, 57, told the training session. “Don’t wear any political buttons. They might spot you.’’
“It’s very important that this is non-violent and we come off as the reasonable ones,’’ Ginsberg-Jaeckle added. “No resisting. Stay calm. We have right on our side.’’
Earlier Monday, two members of STOP “cased’’ City Hall to find the best way to get the most protesters and television news crews into the mayor’s fifth floor office before the police could move in to block the entrance.
When the protesters made their move for real, the police proved quicker. The protesters did not make it into the mayor’s office and had to settle for declaring the lobby “Rahm Emanuel’s Psych Ward.’’
Hunter Clauss contributed reporting.
