Occupy Public Health

(Please distribute widely)

On May 1st, International Worker’s Day, health workers stand in solidarity with all the workers who devote their minds and bodies to the labor of society, to demand dignity and a fair share of collective wealth, including access to healthcare, safe conditions and the right to organize.

• Workers help grow the food on our table, build the roofs over our heads, and yet bear an unfair burden of occupational pollution, injuries, and unsafe conditions.

• Undocumented and migrant workers can face dangerous working conditions, food insecurity, poor housing, and decreased access to education for their children, all leading to far worse health outcomes.

• Undocumented immigrants provide for our consumer needs with their backs, pay taxes and are continually discriminated against for access to healthcare and education.

Occupy Public health invites YOU to join a contingent of health workers that will demand “health for all”

We will meet at 3:00 P M at the entrance of La Clinica de la Raza [3451 East 12th St.], located around the corner from BART.
~  If you’d like to join up later, or have trouble finding us, call or text  510-957-8160 ~

• Print the one-page talking points on Immigrant Workers and Health for letters to the editor, talking to the media and others, and printing and passing out at the march:  MayDay Talking Points_Occupy Public Health
• We encourage everyone to wear their health garb (whether that’s an activist t-shirt, a white coat, or a pair of scrubs.
• Check out the Dignity and Resistance march website for details from the organizers!  Occupy Public Health has endorsed this effort  http://mayday2012.blogspot.com/
• Bring your own signs! Feel free to use slogans listed bellow:

Sincerely,
Occupy Public Health**
http://occupypublichealth.org/

** About Local Bay Area Occupy/Decolonize Public Health

We are a loosely affiliated group of Bay Area people engaged in public health work meets the third Monday of the month to plan how to support individuals’ efforts to connect their public health work to Occupy/Decolonize, and to come together for collective action as a group at events.  We also disseminate information relating Occupy/Decolonize to public health through  http://occupypublichealth.org/ and through our listserv. We rotate meeting planning, facilitation, note taking, hosting, and we try to contribute potluck items for meetings.

To join this group, please sign up for the listserv where meeting announcements will be posted: occupypublichealthbayarea+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Join educators, students, public health workers, and others in the 99% on Thursday March 1st for a national day of action to protect public education and social services.

Thursday March 1st:  Occupy Education

East Bay

• 8:00 – 12:00: Open University, California Hall, UC Berkeley
• 12:00 – 2:00: Rally @ Sproul Plaza & March to Oscar Grant Plaza, UC Berkeley
• 12:30 – 2:00: Rally @ Laney Plaza & March to Oscar Grant Plaza, Laney College
• 2:00 – 5:00: Student Convergence & March, Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland
• 3:30: Dance Party and Rally outside Berkeley Unified School District office, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
• 5:00:  Community Convergence, Oscar Grant/Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland

San Francisco

• 3:00 – 4:00: Teach-In & Occupation @ CA State Building, 455 Golden Gate Ave
• 4:00 – 6:00: Mass Rally, Art, Music, Speakers @ Civic Center Plaza

 March 1st – March 5th: 99 Mile March to Sacramento

Monday March 5th: Occupy the Capitol!

Learn more at www.occupyeducationca.org

Download a Flyer on Education and Health

Below is a flyer with the details above and info about how education impacts public health and health inequalities in the United States.  Please feel free to distribute this flyer widely!

Without Citations: March 1st – Occupy Education and Health.nocites

With Citations: March 1st – Occupy Education and Health.citations

En Espanol (In Spanish): Educacion y salud

Meet up with Public Health Folks in SF Bay Area

If you want to meet up with public health folks attending the Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco events, email us at occupysalud@gmail.com with your phone number and/or email.   Or just look out for the folks at Berkeley in yellow t-shirts that state “this is public health” and in both locations for the public health and education signs.  We hope to see you there!

Check out the new blog post from Seth Holmes, UC Berkeley Professor in the School of Public Health and OccupyOakland medic: http://arcdirector.blogspot.com/

From health care workers in New York:

Many health care professionals have expressed an interest in working with the Occupy movement. We prepared the following support guide in early November to provide a general orientation.  We anticipate updating the guide in early 2012 and would welcome any feedback. 

http://www.socialmedicine.org/2011/12/07/health-activism/a-guide-to-how-health-care-professionals-can-support-ows/

On November 17, Mayor Ed Lee’s administration declared OccupySF a “public health nuisance.” The mayor and other city officials are using this declaration as a justification to evict the OccupySF camps…

Read more from Sasha J. Cuttler, a R.N., Ph.D,  nurse and SEIU Local 1021 activist http://www.sfbg.com/2011/11/29/public-health-and-occupy.

Please consider leaving comments and sharing via the Facebook and Twitter buttons on the article page so we can support the Guardian in featuring articles and op-eds about inequity, Occupy, and public health!

The National Association of County and City Health Officials has created a free online learning collaborative on the roots of health inequity.

Here’s the link to the site: http://www.rootsofhealthinequity.org/

And here’s a brief description of the project: “Social justice affects the way people live, their chance of illness, and their risk of premature death. Can public health influence the unequal structuring of life conditions? This course provides an online learning environment from which to explore the root causes of inequity in the distribution of disease, illness, and death.”