Rudin Mayday Hospital Closing Protest

May Day Protest Against Rudin Management Company, Inc.

On May 1, New York City voters will protest outside the real estate empire offices of the Rudin family.

Activists will issue the "Mayday" signal to indicate the life-threatening emergency caused by the Rudin family's billion-dollar luxury condominium and townhouse conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital.

New York City has been experiencing a massive wave of hospital closings, which is triggering a new wave of the single-payer healthcare movement.

In the time that Christine Quinn has been Speaker of the New York City Council, at least eight city hospitals have closed. In 2010, North General Hospital in Harlem declared bankruptcy and St. Vincent's Hospital in the West Village shut down after shady backroom meetings. In 2009, two hospitals in Queens – St. John's Queens Hospital in Elmhurst and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica – went bankrupt. In 2008, Cabrini Medical Center in Manhattan, Parkway Hospital in Queens, and Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge closed. And in 2007, St. Vincent's Midtown in Manhattan was closed. Separately, one other hospital in Brooklyn, Long Island College Hospital, was saved in early 2011 : it had been on the brink of closing, and the only way the hospital was saved was by merging it with SUNY Downstate. Still yet one other hospital, Peninsula Hospital Center, filed for bankruptcy in late 2011 and was slated to close ; but Peninsula's bankruptcy workout plan is now threatened, meaning, that Peninsula may yet still close. Everywhere you look, incumbent politicians like Speaker Quinn are overseeing the shredding of the social safety net.