The number of prisoners currently on hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay has reached 100, forcing the United States to send 40 nurses and medical specialists to the detention center to monitor the situation over the weekend. Of those on strike, 21 are being force-fed. The inmates, many of whom are held without charge, are protesting their detention with the hunger strike, which began in February.

BBC:

Although such actions are frequent at Guantanamo, the current protest is one of the longest and most widespread.

Guantanamo officials deny claims that the strike began after copies of the Koran were mishandled during searches of prisoners' cells.

Violence erupted at the prison on April 13th as the authorities moved inmates out of communal cell blocks where they had covered surveillance cameras and windows.

Some prisoners used "improvised weapons" and were met with "less-than-lethal rounds", camp officials said, but no serious injuries were reported.

Nearly 100 of the detainees have reportedly been cleared for release but remain at the facility because of restrictions imposed by Congress and also concerns of possible mistreatment if they are sent back to their home countries.

During a White House press conference on Tuesday, President Obama said he will renew his first-term efforts to close the detention center. Obama reasoned that the existence of the facility damages the country’s image abroad, costs too much money and undermines U.S. counterterrorism efforts by serving as a recruiting tool for militants.

“I’m going to go back at this,” he said. “I’m going to reengage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people.”

What began as a temporary first aid tent along the Occupy Eugene movement in October 2011, morphed into the Occupy Medical clinic in February 2012. It's there that every Sunday from noon to 4p.m., volunteers gather at their mobile clinic to make a difference by offering free healthcare in downtown Eugene, Oregon.

Sue Sieralupe, a certified herbalist, was one of the founders of Occupy Medical. She has been the clinic manager since it started.

“What we are trying to do is show Oregonians what it looks like to have single-payer,” she says, a system in which the government pays for all health care costs. “It doesn't matter how much money you have, how much insurance you have, what your background is, if you need help - you get help. That's it .”

With around 30 volunteers, including ten nurses, three doctors, three people on the herbal supplement team, four people in the mental health committee and two people on the pharmacy team, Occupy Medical provides 100 percent free treatment. If the volunteers can't offer the service needed, they also go “behind the scenes” in other organizations to help people through it.

As the clinic manager, Sieralupe solicits funds, donations and supplies. She looks at the volunteers’ background to put them in the right job. She is also the spokesperson for Occupy Medical. She attends panels with other healthcare advocates, and gives classes at OSU on how to open your own clinic.

Continue reading »

You can't possibly praise the Occupy movement enough for their response to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. There are the volunteers who deliver food, water, and clothing to those in need, and even experienced medical professionals going door-to-door in elderly communities to provide whatever assistance is needed far quicker, and it seems they're doing it far more thoroughly than the traditional first-response groups.

Via:

Anna Lederman, a Russian-speaking nurse working with Occupy Sandy, walked up fourteen flights of a pitch-black stairwell in the Surfside Gardens housing complex in Coney Island on Monday and knocked on an apartment door, the only light coming from her small headlamp. An elderly woman wearing a babushka, walking slowly with a cane, told Lederman in Russian that she was all alone. She had her medications, but could not get down the stairs, and needed food. “This,” she said, “is like the second blockade of Leningrad.”

Many New Yorkers affected by the storm have complained about the uneven response from the city, FEMA, and Red Cross. Veterans of the Occupy movement, with experience in New Orleans at the Common Ground Clinic after Katrina, and in Zuccotti Park last year, have stepped in to fill the gap. “That’s one of the reasons we mobilized here first,” said Becca Piser, a street medic trained as a first-responder. “No one’s telling us where to go or not to go.” The Occupy crew in Coney Island also included some of Lederman's fellow nurses from Columbia University, who had been working in shelters and on the Occupy mission to Far Rockaway; a Russian and Spanish translator, who had answered the call on Facebook; Shawn Westfahl, one of the first medics at the Occupy encampment in Zuccotti Park; and Roger Benham and Jeff “Fidget” (his Occupy name), who worked together doing disaster relief in New Orleans and in Haiti after the earthquake.
...
FEMA and the NYPD have been distributing MREs — freeze-dried meals-ready-to-eat—that come in heavy plastic pouches and must be handled correctly to self-heat, have a high sodium content that is problematic for elderly people and those with hypertension, and have instructions printed only in English. A few packets lay scattered in the dark hallways. A number of residents said they did not know what to do with them.
...
It was growing dark. Piser and Westfahl left to answer one last dispatch call for a cancer patient who needed a daily dose of chemo. Fidget duct-taped a sign on the outside of the building saying that every floor had been checked by Occupy Sandy for urgent needs. “It comes down to the fact that they got these knocks,” said Lederman, the nurse. “I think it could be a psychological disaster — at the very least — if nobody at all came for six days.”

No doubt the strategy of Occupy Sandy's emergency response will be examined for some time to come, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the movement's "teach-in" sessions become even more popular and in demand.

If you're able, please visit the Occupy Sandy website and donate if you're able, or better yet -- volunteer to help.

"For the fired auto workers who were twisted, tricked and robbed / To the
peasant in Guatemala in a sweatshop got your job / And she can't feed
her family on the pennies that she makes / Meanwhile the crime
rate's rising up and down the Great Lake states"

Moyers talks to RoseAnn DeMoro, who heads the largest registered nurses union in the country, and will lead a Chicago march protesting economic inequality on May 18th. DeMoro is championing the Robin Hood Tax, a small government levy the financial sector would pay on commercial transactions like stocks and bonds. The money generated, which some estimate could be as much as $350 billion annually, could be used for social programs and job creation, ultimately to people who, without a doubt, need it more than the banks do.

DeMoro and her organization, National Nurses United, have an inspiring history of defeating some of the toughest opponents in government and politics.

[Via BillMoyers.com]