16 THE QUEENS COURIER • OCTOBER 15, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Photos by Dean Moses
Demonstrators call for more hospital beds
in Queens during Jackson Heights rally
BY DEAN MOSES
editorial@qns.com
@QNS
Demonstrators gathered at Diversity
Plaza in Jackson Heights last week to
advocate for more hospital beds in
Queens, as the number of COVID-19
cases continues to rise in New York City.
For an hour on Friday, Oct. 9, activists
held a vigil and called for “beds, not
body bags” in Queens. Th e dozen protestors
laid out several makeshift body bags
stuff ed with newspapers and water bottles,
signifying those who died as a result
of the COVID-19 crisis.
Activists hoped to
call attention to
the fact that, per
capita, Queens
has the lowest
rate of hospital
beds in
the United
States.
L e o n
Kirschner, a
Jackson Heights
resident and
member of Rise and
Resist Group, the group
that organized the demonstration,
explained that the
low number of hospital beds
is directly related to the borough’s
mortality rate.
“The hospital beds
are directly linked to
the mortality rate,”
Kirshner said.
According to
the organizer,
the reason for
the disparity relate
d to Medicaid funding.
“Th e reason that that happened is
because of medicaid funding. Medicaid
funding is very low,” Kirshner said.
“Hospitals that don’t depend on Medicaid
like those in the east side of Manhattan,
that have gotten richer from insurance,
while the hospitals that depend on
Medicaid haven’t been able to pick up so
they’ve closed or been taken over.”
He said that the Rise and Resist Group,
formed in 2016 right aft er the President
Donald Trump was elected, helped to
organize the event and that the idea for
the body bags was to create a visual that
people can conceptualize.
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