This might be a long morning #TraumaCenterNow pic.twitter.com/v7BOmTmbxD
— SHE UChicago (@SHEUChicago) May 19, 2014
Damian Turner’s death enraged many South Side students and community members. The 18-year-old activist was just minutes away from the University of Chicago Medical Center when he was shot in August 2010. But Turner was driven miles north to Northwestern Memorial Hospital because the university’s medical center doesn’t have an adult trauma center, and none of the city’s four adult trauma units are on the South Side. Turner later died.
Since then University of Chicago students, medical professionals and local activists have urged the school to add a trauma center to its South Side medical center. Today, they are still fighting for the trauma unit, even as the university moves forward with plans to expand its medical center.
The Trauma Center Coalition, composed of students, doctors and community members, chose this week to hold a series of rallies as the university bids to house the Barack Obama Presidential Library and Museum.
They kicked off the week by staging a sit-in at the construction site for the medical center’s planned expansion.
The group sat in front of construction trucks with their arms linked together through plastic tubes that read “trauma center now.”
Tweets from the event show the protesters halting construction and ignoring pleas from university staff to move before being dragged away by police.
