Marathon Pundit: Four protesters arrested at U of C Med Center's New Pavilion--across from Reagan apartment

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Four protesters arrested at U of C Med Center's New Pavilion--across from Reagan apartment

New Pavilion in background--Reagan
apartment is on the right

The University of Chicago Medical Center's New Hospital Pavilion opens soon. Across the street from the pricey facility is the only Chicago home of Ronald Reagan. Through a surrogate, the U of C has filed a demolition permit on that structure. However, historical preservationists and conservative thinkers, including this one, are working to save the six-flat where the Reagans lived in 1915.

But the Med Center faced a less polite group of activists this afternoon, as the Chicago Tribune tells us.

Protesters who want a trauma center on the South Side of Chicago marched into the University of Chicago’s new $700 million medical center Sunday afternoon unannounced.

Four people were arrested, including a 17-year-old student at King College Prep High School.

Dozens of people sat in the brand new facility’s lobby, 5758 S. Maryland Ave., awaiting a tour when the 50 or so protestors came in, shouting and holding signs.

Southside Together Organizing for Power, the group behind the protest, had five members who volunteered to stay behind, and likely be arrested, when most of the group would inevitably be kicked off the private property.

Here's some tasty irony: White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett is the former chair of the Board of Trustees at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Michelle Obama was once the community affairs director for the Med Center. They hired David Axelrod's firm ASK Strategies to steer patients away from the Med Center to other South Side Chicago health facilities, dubbed the Urban Health Initiative.

The U of C has not operated an adult trauma center since the 1980s.

The Chicago Reagan apartment is at 832 E. 57th Street.