A Slow Death

A hearing today (September 23, 2009) at 9 am in the Superior Court of Fulton County (Georgia) produced no ruling on a restraining order to Grady Memorial Hospital to maintain the life-saving Dialysis Clinic that the new privatized, corporate board voted months ago to close on September 20. Attorney Lindsay Jones argued that Grady Hospital, having begun treatment for 96 kidney patients is obligated to find available treatment elsewhere. Mr. Taylor, Grady attorney for 27 years, argued that there is no constitutional right to health care in the United States or in the State of Georgia.

A poignant scene in the court room included a moaning dialysis patient on a stretcher whose family had taken him to Florida as directed by Grady social workers. The patient was denied treatment by the hospital in Florida. He is back in Atlanta seeking help to remain alive.

Mayoral candidate Lisa Borders, President of Atlanta City Council and Chair of Grady Hospital Foundation reports that $90 million has been raised for Grady over the last year. Unfortunately, this money must be used for capital improvements, not for operational expenses such as a Dialysis Clinic.

Several people present in the court room for this hearing described the stretcher and the critically ill man lying on it. Family members watched, helpless. Dr. Neal Schulman, the hero who has begged and fought to keep this Dialysis Clinic open watched, helpless. Doctors and nurses of the dying 96 watched, helpless. You have to wonder if that man on the stretcher were the father or grandfather or grandson or son or son-in-law or brother or uncle or cousin or neighbor, would the privatized, corporate Grady Board change their vote? Would a personal touch, touch the heart of Chairman Pete Correll? Would the champion of private enterprise, Tom Bell, be moved if his son were on that stretcher moving to get his breath. Would the Reverend Joseph Roberts, heir to Martin Luther King, III’s pulpit, twitch if that man twitching on the stretcher were his brother?

Quess what? Those 96 kidney patients, every one of them, is our brother, our sister, our father, our mother, our friend, our neighbor. John Donne taught us that no man is an island, and Jesus taught us that if we reach out to one of these little ones, the least of these, we have reached out to Him. Jesus also taught us that the two religious community leaders who passed by the dying man beaten and left in the ditch for dead were not the man’s neighbor. The business man who stopped, gathered up the broken man, and paid for his stay in the next hotel was the neighbor. God give us more corporate people like that good Samaritan. And what did Jesus say about being one’s neighbor? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength.” Then He said “You are to love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16

TASK FORCE WINS TODAY’S HEARING TO COMPEL!

The weather was cloudy and bleak. Zeus had spoken earlier with flashing lightning and rolling thunder. He’s not happy. However poor little David walked away from court smiling with five smooth stones still at his side. The sun was shining everywhere. In the Superior Court of Fulton County, at 10:30 AM, Judge Ural Glanville denied a motion filed by Atlanta attornys to dismiss the case, The Alanta Task Force for the Homeless v. The City of Atlanta (Mayor’s office). A motion had been filed for this hearing to COMPEL Central Atlanta Progress to produce Documents and to produce A.J. Robinson, President and Richard Orr, Senior Projects Manager, for deposition.

The Judge having said that he found the information in the argument on the motion to COMPEL “relevant” ordered the attorneys, Steve Hall for the Task Force and Steve Riddell for CAP to meet. This meetiing lasted about fifteen minutes. Riddell did not want the Judge to give the order. This means that CAP lawyers will produce all previously subpoenaed documents and all previously subpoenaed persons to be deposed. Those persons so far who have been subpoenaed are Robinson and Orr.

Has Atlanta’s Leadership Gone Bat-Shit Mad?

Today, September 10, 2009, The Grady Coalition held a press conference on the steps of Fulton County’s Grady Hospital. Dr. Neil Shulman, other physicians, nurses and three kidney patients spoke passionately to 100 people. The press conference was called in order to beg the new privatized Board of Directors of the hospital to continue dialysis treatment for 90 patients. The Board announced several months ago its decision to close the Dialysis Clinic. No other hospital in Atlanta offers this treatment to indegent patients.

Anyone over 12 and awake in Atlanta knows that our City has not been “poor friendly” for the last dozen years. In fact, Atlanta’s leadership has labored to exterminate the homeless population since the Campbell Administration. The Atlanta Housing Authority headed by Renee Glover is yet another exterminator of housing for the under belly of Atlanta’s populace. AHA like housing authorities across America is no longer an organization that welcomes the poorest of the poor. And the “low lifes” that Glover’s regime has put on the streets are not considered worthy of the upgraded housing of the Atlanta Housing Authority. Thirteen housing communities under the umbrella of AHA have been leveled within the last 36 months.

But Grady Hospital! The last bastion of medical care for the poor! The latest victims of the War Against the Poor are not homeless people. It is understandable that Atlanta, the city too busy to hate, would do away with homeless people and the lower than low income renters. Those folks are unsightly. They are not pretty. There’s no place for them in Horace Sibley’s Tourists’ Triangle or Central Atlanta’s Sanitized Zone. The homeless folks from Peachtree-Pine smell bad. Ratchet Rob Hunter has seen to that as he has lived up to his name, Ratchet Rob “I’ll turn your water off” Hunter.

But not Grady! Reason dictates that a hospital would be the last place the corporate vultures would invade. WRONG. It is beyond imagination what has happened. Over the protest of a few Fulton Count Board of Commissioners, Grady Hospital has become a privatized business, answering only to a corporate board. The most recent result of privatization is the Board’s decision to shut down the Dialysis Clinic, presently serving 90 patients. The clinic according to the board is not economically feasible. The fiscally responsible board has counted the cost, a short fall of $4,000,000. To hell with the 90 people whose lives depent on this treatment. Besides 60 of them are from other countries, anyway. To be sure most of them won’t live long, anyway.

Tell that to the five-year-old boy holding a sign that reads: “Keep the Dialysis Clinic Open.” The little fellow’s 34 year-old mother will die if she misses one treatment. This five-year old will feel first hand the claw of privatization, the hammer of fiscal responsibility. Along side this lad stood eight adult patients whose lives will be snuffed out without dialysis treatment. The clinic is scheduled to close September 20. That’s TEN days from this writing.

What can be done? Public outcry may make a difference. Enough clamor just might bring about an injunction from, say, Fulton County Superior Court to enjoin Grady Hospital to continue dialysis treatment for all who need it.

Perhaps in a better world every board member who voted to close the clinic would be charged with attempted murder. And if one living soul dies from lack of treatment, let that charge be changed to MURDER.

Can you imagine that five-year-old boy having to hold that sign in a civilized country that has universal health care: Canada, Great Britain, Scotland, the Scandanavian countries and others.

I dedicate this “bat-shit mad” piece to the honorable U. S. Congressman Joseph “mind your manners now” Wilson of South Carolina. He’s the man who shouted, “You lie” during President Obama’s address to the nation on health care. Imagine if you dare an elected American official outraged that human beings, not to his liking, might receive health care insurance that would pay medical expenses. What have we become? Where will we stand at the day of reckoning? When will leadership ever take us back home again?

Is Atlanta the home of Dr. King? Who could ever tell it? Jeremiah 6.14 “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.” Should you read this blog I beg you to tell two people of the proposed Grady Massacre. Please shout from the housetops the outrage, one more atrocity committed by the city we love, the city we have lost. Tell you church. Tell your mosque. Tell your synagogue. Tell a judge. Pray for the 90 victims and their grieving families. Call the White House. Bombard the Outhouse. Ask every mayoral candidate what he or she would do to save the Dialysis Clinic.

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16

Bravo, Academics!

Charles G. Steffen, PhD, History Department of Georgia State organized and led, with much help from faithful Task Force supporters, the September 8 Press Conference where the following statement was read, having been signed by some 25 academics across greater Atlanta. A note follows the names which I quote: “Institutional affiliations are included solely for the purposes of identification and not as an endorsement by the institution.” Before I quote the statement and post the names, I remind you that this press conference was held without electricity. Thank God for sunlight! The City of Atlanta in its usual fashion of hospitality would not allow its electricity to be used. First WATER, now ELECTRICITY.

PUBLIC STATEMENT OF ACADEMIC COMMUNITY IN SUPPORT OF METRO ATLANTA TASK FORCE FOR THE HOMELESS’S LAWSUIT AGAINST THE CITY OF ATLANTA, SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

We, the undersigned members of the city’s academic community, wish to call attention to the recent lawsuit filed against the City of Atlanta by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. Scheduled for a hearing on September 21 at Fulton County Superior Court, this lawsuit accuses the City of a long-standing pattern of interference in the operation of the Task Force and its Peachtree-Pine facility. Equally important, it reveals how powerful economic and political interests have pursued an agenda of downtown development that sacrifices the well-being of working families, the poor, and homeless people. As concerned academics who believe that our City’s future should be shaped by Dr. King’s dream of a beloved community, we hope that this precedent-setting lawsuit will receive the widest possible publicity. We call on the local media to cover the case, and to do so in a fair and impartial manner. We urge our fellow citizens to denounce any and all attempts to undermine the important work being done by the the Task Force and to declare their support for a just and inclusive vision for our city.

Ian Almond, English Department, Georgia State University
Frank S. Alexander, School of Law, Emory University
James Wilson Beaty, Beulah Heights University, retired
Christine Jacobsen Carter, History Department, Georgia State University
Kathleen N. Cleaver, School of Law, Emory University
Ian C. Fletcher, History Department, Georgia State University
Monica H. Halka, Honors Program, Georgia Institute of Technology
Charles E. Jones, Department of African American Studies, Georgia State University
Lindsay Jones, School of Law, Emory University
Larry Keating, City and Regional Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology
Matthew Lasner, History Department, Georgia State University
Vincent Lloyd, Department of Religious Studies, Georgia State University
Gregory H. Nobles, School of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology
Deirdre Oakley, Sociology Department, Georgia State University
Joe Perry, History Department, Georgia State University
Jared Poley, History Department, Georgia State University
Walter Reed, English Department, Emory University
Mary Rolinson, History Department, Georgia State University
Erin E. Ruel, Sociology Department, Georgia State University
Natsu T. Saito, College of Law, Georgia State University
Christine Skwiott, History Department, Georgia State University
Charles G. Steffen, History Department, Georgia State University
Akinyele K. Umoja, Department of African American Studies, Georgia State University
Isaac A Weiner, Department of Religious Studies, Georgia State University
Larry Youngs, History Department, Georgia State University

Under Oath

“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.”

On Wednesday, September 2, 2009, Advisor on Homelessness to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and former Atlanta City Councilperson Debi Mae Starnes was deposed at Atlanta City Hall from 2pm to 7:30pm. Attorney Steve Hall of the Baker Donelson Law Firm questioned Dr. Starnes for the five and one-half hours. The deposition will continue next week on a day not yet announced. The Fulton County Superior Court has set a pretrial hearing for Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. v. The City of Atlanta on September 21, 2009, at 9am.

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16