ON THE MOVIE SCREEN, Harriet Tubman was passionately declaring that the basic human rights and needs of Black people were not being acknowledged: “I have heard their groans and their sighs. I’ve seen their tears.” Tubman’s famous words, spoken over a century ago, resonated deeply with me so many years later.
At that time, in 2019, I was in intense negotiations to save the clinic where I had been the medical director for more than ten years. Officially, its closure would be due to “poor finances,” and “consolidating” this clinic’s population with a bigger one would balance the cumbersome, fragile budget of a safety-net medical system vulnerable to the whims of federal assistance programs and with a clientele of mostly self-paying patients. But in my heart, I knew this wasn’t the truth.
“Consolidation” is said to create stability—but for whose benefit? The answer is, for a white, dominant culture with financial security and solid citizenship. “Consolidation” is a commonly used reason to justify taking resources from communities like mine in East Lake Minneapolis, which comprises Brown, Black, economically vulnerable, and immigrant people. Consolidation is a strategy employed to mask the devaluation of Brown and Black lives. It undercuts all the reasons I made the commitment to go into medicine, to serve this community, and to help alleviate suffering.
Consolidation felt like an attack on the needs of my community, and sitting in the movie theatre that night, watching the portrayal of Harriet Tubman and her stirring words,
