WEBVTT
1
00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:11.759
Hi everyone. This is Carmen and Christina and this is
2
00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:14.320
a Studias Unknown, a podcast where we talk about Latin
3
00:00:14.359 --> 00:00:17.839
American history, sometimes a horrible and deals with tibetop It's
4
00:00:17.879 --> 00:00:22.280
like racism, corruption and genocide. And today we are continuing
5
00:00:22.359 --> 00:00:26.960
with the Young Lords, the Lincoln Offensive and Carmin Rodriguez
6
00:00:27.039 --> 00:00:29.519
and what led to what we all know today as
7
00:00:29.559 --> 00:00:33.759
a patient bill of rights. You don't need a refresher, right, okay,
8
00:00:33.759 --> 00:00:36.119
fresh in my mind. So in part one we ended
9
00:00:36.159 --> 00:00:39.240
with the Young Lords leaving Lincoln Hospital, and in the
10
00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:43.240
days that followed, the offensive became the center of political
11
00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:46.399
debates in the city. Conservatives called the occupation of the
12
00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:50.759
hospital of vigilante action and denounced it, of course, and
13
00:00:50.920 --> 00:00:53.159
they even called that the mayor for having sent the
14
00:00:53.200 --> 00:00:57.920
chief assistant to negotiate with quote unquote extremists. And in
15
00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:00.920
the meantime, those in charge of the hospit hospital agreed
16
00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.280
that the statements made by the Young Lords were valid,
17
00:01:03.520 --> 00:01:06.519
but they disagreed with the actions of the group. And
18
00:01:06.599 --> 00:01:09.480
as all this back and forth was going on, something
19
00:01:09.519 --> 00:01:13.680
that sparked action was about to take place. So on
20
00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:17.319
July seventeenth, nineteen seventy three days after the occupation of
21
00:01:17.319 --> 00:01:20.519
the hospital, thirty two year old Cadvan Rodriguez went into
22
00:01:20.560 --> 00:01:24.319
the hospital's gynecology services for a scheduled abortion. She was
23
00:01:24.319 --> 00:01:26.760
a mother of two living in South Bronx and she
24
00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:29.120
was pregnant with her third child, and she had been
25
00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:31.959
a long time patient at Lincoln and she also happened
26
00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.280
to be a member of the Young Lords as well
27
00:01:34.319 --> 00:01:37.400
as the member of the Logos of the What Logos
28
00:01:37.560 --> 00:01:41.239
Logos Yeah and Logos was a community run heroin treatment
29
00:01:41.319 --> 00:01:45.599
center in South Bronx where doctors from Lincoln also volunteered,
30
00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:48.959
and she herself had received treatment at Logos because she
31
00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:52.719
struggled with heroin news herself, and so everyone that knew
32
00:01:52.719 --> 00:01:57.239
her described her as carrying, kind and intelligent. She inspired
33
00:01:57.239 --> 00:02:00.680
everyone around her to treat each other with kindness, and
34
00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:05.239
she was known to always carry around books by Khalil Gibron.
35
00:02:05.680 --> 00:02:09.599
He was a Lebanese American writer, poet and artist. He
36
00:02:09.719 --> 00:02:12.039
was often called the Prophet. That's what he was, just
37
00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:16.199
known as the prophet and a philosopher. And here's one
38
00:02:16.199 --> 00:02:19.159
of his very short pieces of writing, just so you see,
39
00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:21.960
this is what she was carrying around. If you reveal
40
00:02:22.039 --> 00:02:24.360
your secrets, to the wind. You should not blame the
41
00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:29.400
wind for revealing them to the trees. Oh wow, I
42
00:02:29.680 --> 00:02:32.520
liked deep. Yeah, I like it. I like it. And yeah,
43
00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:35.639
she carried one of his many books with her every
44
00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:38.319
single day. And just two weeks before she had been
45
00:02:38.360 --> 00:02:41.719
scheduled for her abortion, the state of New York legalized abortion,
46
00:02:42.159 --> 00:02:46.439
but god Man had been approved for her procedure under
47
00:02:46.520 --> 00:02:50.240
the old law, which was only for life threatening reasons,
48
00:02:50.719 --> 00:02:54.639
because god Man, if she had if she delivered a baby,
49
00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:58.479
it wouldn't dager her life because she had rheumatic heart disease.
50
00:02:58.919 --> 00:03:01.919
And so once she arrived in the clinic for her procedure,
51
00:03:02.039 --> 00:03:05.479
the resident on call performed a sailing based abortion, and
52
00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:08.879
soon after injecting the sailine, Goatmin became short of breath.
53
00:03:09.199 --> 00:03:12.840
The resident assumed got Man had asthma and repeated the action.
54
00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.199
He gave her more sailine and a different medicine that
55
00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:20.080
was not good for people with heart disease for asthma yice,
56
00:03:20.479 --> 00:03:25.240
And so she obviously worsened. And this sailine that's used
57
00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:29.120
for abortions is very hard on the heart, and yeah
58
00:03:29.400 --> 00:03:32.400
it was with her condition, it was not good. It
59
00:03:32.479 --> 00:03:36.080
put her into a coma from which she never recovered.
60
00:03:36.199 --> 00:03:39.919
She died three days later, and for some reason, there
61
00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:43.879
was no chart on Godman at the hospital. The resident
62
00:03:43.960 --> 00:03:47.400
didn't ask her for her history. That's wild, right, And
63
00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:51.520
she was by all accounts well spoken and very smart.
64
00:03:51.599 --> 00:03:53.000
And I mean you could tell by you know, the
65
00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:55.639
books she was carrying around. Could they possibly have gotten
66
00:03:55.719 --> 00:03:58.080
rid of the chart or they just never did one.
67
00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:00.039
I don't know, they just didn't have one. Wow, I
68
00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:02.680
don't think they even looked for it. And so he
69
00:04:02.719 --> 00:04:05.000
could have asked her like, well, what's your medical history,
70
00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:08.080
and she would have known to say the important piece
71
00:04:08.120 --> 00:04:10.800
of medical history, which is that she has heart disease, right,
72
00:04:10.879 --> 00:04:13.000
and then they would have known to not administer the
73
00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:17.120
kind of treatment that they did exactly. But the doctor,
74
00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:21.560
the resident didn't explain anything of the procedure. She didn't
75
00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:23.600
know she needed to say. She didn't know what it entailed.
76
00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:27.319
So she didn't say anything either, and nothing was explained
77
00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:29.560
to her, because yeah, if it had been explained to her,
78
00:04:29.600 --> 00:04:32.600
maybe she would have been like, well, hey, if you
79
00:04:32.600 --> 00:04:35.240
know the doctor said this thing where injectine puts a
80
00:04:35.279 --> 00:04:36.959
lot of strain on the heart, maybe it would have
81
00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.079
prompted her to say, oh, I have a heart condition
82
00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:41.879
right right, But they didn't explain anything to her. They
83
00:04:41.920 --> 00:04:44.839
just did it, which is insane to think about in
84
00:04:44.920 --> 00:04:47.720
this now in the present. Yeah, So no one did this,
85
00:04:47.839 --> 00:04:50.199
No one explained that, they just did it, and because
86
00:04:50.199 --> 00:04:57.399
of this, she died on July nineteenth, nineteen seventy. The
87
00:04:57.519 --> 00:05:01.240
day that she died, TLC activist which if you don't
88
00:05:01.240 --> 00:05:04.399
remember from part one, but TLC was the group Think
89
00:05:04.519 --> 00:05:09.000
Lincoln Committee that was made up of doctor's residents at
90
00:05:09.079 --> 00:05:12.759
the hospital, local residents of the neighborhood, and young lords.
91
00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:16.279
So TLC activists demanded a meeting with the top top
92
00:05:16.279 --> 00:05:19.800
person of the hospital, doctor Antero Laca La Cote. I
93
00:05:19.839 --> 00:05:24.279
don't know, Lacot Last, I'm just gonna say last, I
94
00:05:24.319 --> 00:05:27.439
don't know. During the meeting, they were told that Catman's
95
00:05:27.519 --> 00:05:31.879
case was extremely complicated, so complicated they wouldn't even understand it.
96
00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:34.600
So they didn't explain it. What. Yeah, They were like,
97
00:05:34.759 --> 00:05:36.800
well you were not going to understand what happened. So
98
00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:39.639
it was just complicated, that's it, that's why it happened. Whatever.
99
00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:43.759
The TC was like, nah, no, we're not Yeah. So
100
00:05:43.879 --> 00:05:46.879
they held rallies. They occupied buildings of the hospital, nothing
101
00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:49.079
at the scale of the Lincoln Offensive, but they did.
102
00:05:49.199 --> 00:05:53.279
They wouldn't leave certain buildings in protest, and the group
103
00:05:53.439 --> 00:05:57.199
called for a compensation for cadimnd Rodrias's family, for the
104
00:05:57.279 --> 00:06:00.240
removal of doctor JJ Smith, who was the head of
105
00:06:00.279 --> 00:06:04.360
the abortion clinic, or if they wouldn't call for his removal,
106
00:06:04.439 --> 00:06:07.879
if he reinstated this black obgyn who had been fired
107
00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:10.720
for sending up to them. That was their other demand.
108
00:06:10.959 --> 00:06:13.959
They also called for the establishment of a community worker
109
00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.600
committee to oversee the abortion clinic, and they also demanded
110
00:06:17.680 --> 00:06:21.040
for the clinic to be renamed after Catman. And during
111
00:06:21.120 --> 00:06:25.839
these protests, someone leaked her record, her medical record to them,
112
00:06:26.079 --> 00:06:28.759
to the group, and it was probably a doctor who
113
00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:31.680
was like, yeah, this was fucked up on their side,
114
00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:34.399
or yeah, this is where they learned that she had
115
00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:39.519
died from medical negligence, and this only obviously increased the protests. Yeah,
116
00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:42.519
that's why I feel like they got rid of her
117
00:06:42.639 --> 00:06:46.120
chart or whatever because they didn't want to like and
118
00:06:46.279 --> 00:06:48.720
obviously this is speculation because there's no evidence of this,
119
00:06:48.879 --> 00:06:51.800
but there was medical records for her, Like, doesn't that
120
00:06:51.879 --> 00:06:54.160
mean there should have also been a chart. I don't
121
00:06:54.199 --> 00:06:58.600
know ran right. Even at this point, non TLC members,
122
00:06:58.759 --> 00:07:01.680
even the doctors at the clinic who were not sympathetic
123
00:07:01.759 --> 00:07:04.839
to the Young Lords or the TLC, had to realize
124
00:07:04.920 --> 00:07:09.079
that they had failed garment, Like this was literal medical negligence,
125
00:07:09.319 --> 00:07:12.240
things that they had already been calling to fix. The
126
00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:14.720
Young Lords they were saying, like, patients are always seen
127
00:07:14.839 --> 00:07:17.000
and these are common complaints that they got in their
128
00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:19.639
medical complaint table, you know the table they set up
129
00:07:19.639 --> 00:07:21.839
at the er where people came in, the grievances table,
130
00:07:21.879 --> 00:07:24.040
that's what they called it. But yeah, patients were always
131
00:07:24.079 --> 00:07:27.399
seeing a different doctor. Oftentimes there was an inexperienced student,
132
00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:29.879
and there was never a follow up from visit to visit.
133
00:07:30.199 --> 00:07:32.879
And so if there's no follow ups and there's always
134
00:07:32.920 --> 00:07:35.879
different doctors, nobody knows what's going on with these people.
135
00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:40.639
There's no real continuity of care right as there should be. Yeah, yeah,
136
00:07:40.839 --> 00:07:45.120
mm hmm. Because of all the demand for meetings from
137
00:07:45.160 --> 00:07:48.959
the Young Lords and the TLC, hospital administrators agreed to
138
00:07:49.079 --> 00:07:53.040
hold what they called a clinical pathological conference, and what
139
00:07:53.240 --> 00:07:57.079
this was was a public hearing or hospital administrators presented
140
00:07:57.240 --> 00:08:01.160
Gotman's case, her diagnosis, her treatment and the complications that
141
00:08:01.319 --> 00:08:03.319
led to her death. Like they put it all in
142
00:08:03.439 --> 00:08:06.360
this public forum, like young Lords were in the audience.
143
00:08:06.560 --> 00:08:09.240
Anyone from the public that wanted to attend, including her family,
144
00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:11.600
were in the audience. They were free to ask questions.
145
00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:14.399
There was even doctors from other hospitals who were like
146
00:08:14.720 --> 00:08:18.199
in the audience, cross examining the doctors at Lincoln Hospital,
147
00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:20.319
saying like what you should have done this, You should
148
00:08:20.360 --> 00:08:22.560
have done this, like this should have been different, which
149
00:08:22.639 --> 00:08:24.800
is like this was like the first kind of meeting
150
00:08:25.160 --> 00:08:28.000
like that, Yeah, m hmm. And it was considered a
151
00:08:28.040 --> 00:08:31.120
good thing, even though the audience was full of angry
152
00:08:31.160 --> 00:08:34.360
people calling out the doctors. You know, even the doctors
153
00:08:34.399 --> 00:08:37.919
that Lincoln recognized that this was important and that they
154
00:08:38.039 --> 00:08:40.799
viewed it as them being held accountable to the community.
155
00:08:41.279 --> 00:08:45.440
But as historic as this meeting was, it only escalated
156
00:08:45.559 --> 00:08:48.879
the situation. The Young Lords put out, you know, in
157
00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:52.840
Palante in their newspaper they charged the hospital with genocide.
158
00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.679
That's the words they used, and they published the following
159
00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:00.279
in the July thirty first Pallante issue. And I'm just
160
00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:02.600
going to read what they wrote. Our people are being
161
00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:06.159
killed every day. The facts are cold, and real drug addiction.
162
00:09:06.440 --> 00:09:09.960
Inadequate housing, and inferior medical services all contribute to the
163
00:09:10.039 --> 00:09:13.559
slow killing off of our people. Another very specific way
164
00:09:13.639 --> 00:09:16.519
genocide is committed is through the limiting of our population.
165
00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:19.679
When drug companies came out with a million dollar birth
166
00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:22.679
control pill, they tested it in Puerto Rico. As a
167
00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:26.919
result of years of experiments in quack operations, tying of tubes,
168
00:09:26.960 --> 00:09:30.000
cutting of tubes, one out of every three sisters of
169
00:09:30.159 --> 00:09:33.799
child bearing age on the island is sterilized. Those sisters
170
00:09:33.879 --> 00:09:36.679
that they have not been able to sterilize, or on pills,
171
00:09:37.159 --> 00:09:39.919
loop and all sort of jive methods to keep us
172
00:09:39.960 --> 00:09:43.039
from bearing warriors that will join the fight for our liberation.
173
00:09:43.759 --> 00:09:46.600
Just recently, on July first, nineteen seventy, a new plan
174
00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:50.720
for the limitation of our population was passed, the abortion Law.
175
00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:53.240
Under this new method, we are now supposed to be
176
00:09:53.320 --> 00:09:57.080
able to go to any city butcher shop the municipal
177
00:09:57.159 --> 00:09:59.960
hospitals and receive an abortion. These are the same hospit
178
00:10:00.320 --> 00:10:02.600
that have been killing our people for years already. The
179
00:10:02.639 --> 00:10:05.639
first abortion death has occurred at Lincoln Hospital butcher Shop
180
00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:09.440
of South Bronx godvent RODRIEZ thirty one went to Lincoln
181
00:10:09.519 --> 00:10:12.320
seeking an abortion. She suffered from many of the diseases
182
00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:15.399
that afflict all oppressed people. She was at one time
183
00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:19.000
addicted to drugs. She suffered from asthma, anemia, a severe
184
00:10:19.039 --> 00:10:21.519
heart condition. With all these health problems, she was sent
185
00:10:21.600 --> 00:10:24.200
to the operating room without her medical history chart even
186
00:10:24.279 --> 00:10:27.799
being checked. She was injected with medication for asthma. However,
187
00:10:27.919 --> 00:10:30.639
that type of medication use is the worst possible for
188
00:10:30.720 --> 00:10:32.759
a patient with a heart condition. But how are they know.
189
00:10:33.279 --> 00:10:36.600
They never bothered to check her chart. The punk that
190
00:10:36.799 --> 00:10:40.360
was treating her was a student. Lincoln is affiliated with
191
00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:44.759
Einstein Medical School, which assigns inexperienced students to learn medicine
192
00:10:44.759 --> 00:10:47.559
by practicing on our people. He continued to give her
193
00:10:47.639 --> 00:10:50.960
this medication until finally her heart stopped. Then they proceeded
194
00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:52.480
to open her chest up, but by then it was
195
00:10:52.559 --> 00:10:55.960
too late. Her brain had been damaged. Gotama's brain stopped
196
00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:59.159
functioning on July seventeenth. Although she was dead, the hospital
197
00:10:59.279 --> 00:11:02.159
tried covering it up until July twentieth, when her heart
198
00:11:02.240 --> 00:11:06.519
muscles stopped beating. Doctors have recently decided that death occurs
199
00:11:06.600 --> 00:11:10.240
when the brain stops. This death was no accident. God
200
00:11:10.360 --> 00:11:13.639
Man died because America is killing our people. Got Man
201
00:11:13.799 --> 00:11:16.720
was forced to go for an abortion because under this
202
00:11:16.879 --> 00:11:20.840
capitalist system which that which is our right, food, clothing,
203
00:11:20.919 --> 00:11:23.720
and shelter is kept from us. Instead, we become the
204
00:11:23.840 --> 00:11:26.679
drug addicts, the prostitutes, the ill, and the hungry. What
205
00:11:26.879 --> 00:11:29.279
choice does a sister have when she is pregnant thinking
206
00:11:29.360 --> 00:11:32.080
of providing for her child? Will he or she grow
207
00:11:32.159 --> 00:11:33.919
up to be a junkie or maybe die in the
208
00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:37.039
wars created by American greed and madness. We know there
209
00:11:37.159 --> 00:11:40.399
is but one choice. Armed self defense and armed struggle
210
00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:43.519
are the only means to liberation. We will continue to
211
00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:45.919
five for our liberation. We will continue to serve and
212
00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:48.600
protect our people in the hospitals, on the streets everywhere.
213
00:11:48.799 --> 00:11:51.120
We know that the realities of oppression will continue to
214
00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:53.559
force our sisters to seek these abortions, and so we
215
00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:56.320
will continue to educate that this genocide will only stop
216
00:11:56.360 --> 00:11:59.240
when we rise up against our oppressors. I mean, they're
217
00:11:59.279 --> 00:12:03.120
not wrong, and it's super interesting. I don't remember what
218
00:12:03.320 --> 00:12:08.960
I was listening to or watching. They talk about reproductive
219
00:12:09.120 --> 00:12:15.799
rights and how in the United States, black, indigenous, and
220
00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:19.360
women of color have had to fight for their right
221
00:12:19.559 --> 00:12:23.360
to have children while and of course it's like very
222
00:12:23.559 --> 00:12:26.840
throughout like history or whatever. And then how white women
223
00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.759
have had to fight for their right to not have children,
224
00:12:30.240 --> 00:12:33.919
but how it all falls under the umbrella of reproductive rights.
225
00:12:34.679 --> 00:12:36.840
But how often we don't think about the right to
226
00:12:36.919 --> 00:12:40.360
have children as a reproductive right. And you know, here
227
00:12:40.799 --> 00:12:44.639
they're talking about abortion, but they're talking about like women
228
00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:47.440
are not able to have like children on their terms,
229
00:12:48.279 --> 00:12:51.720
not only because of health issues, but because of capitalism. Yes,
230
00:12:51.960 --> 00:12:54.360
And is this not the same thing that came up
231
00:12:54.480 --> 00:13:00.159
also during the sterilizations in California episode, because it was
232
00:13:00.159 --> 00:13:05.759
the same argument while white feminists were protesting in these hospitals,
233
00:13:05.919 --> 00:13:09.320
arguing with the women who were protesting against the serilizations,
234
00:13:09.639 --> 00:13:12.960
It's like, it's the same argument. And if they only
235
00:13:13.679 --> 00:13:19.120
expanded this definition of what they are seeing as abortion rights,
236
00:13:19.559 --> 00:13:21.559
they would see that. But because they were so busy
237
00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:24.399
trying to keep their right to not have children, they
238
00:13:24.440 --> 00:13:28.279
were encroaching on the rights of these Mexican women in
239
00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:31.720
California who wanted to have their children and weren't able
240
00:13:31.759 --> 00:13:34.600
to and who had that taken away. And there's a
241
00:13:34.759 --> 00:13:38.480
long history of this happening to non white women in
242
00:13:38.519 --> 00:13:42.039
the US and Puerto Rico, which they specifically mentioned in
243
00:13:42.159 --> 00:13:46.799
the Panante issue, the sterilization of Puerto Rican women. I