Thread by @mckensiemack

So, I am at @UIHealth with my Black friend, a Black trans person. They are visiting someone who is in the hospital. While they’re standing in the hospital room, another visitor enters the room and punches them in the face. This person doesn’t say anything. [1]

They don’t greet them. Nothing. They just punch them.

I go directly to the charge nurse a woman named Isabel and I tell her what’s happened. [2]

She goes to the room at @UIHealth, asks my friend if someone has hit them, they say yes, she asks who, they point to the person, she paces back to me, and then gets on the phone. [3]

She comes back to us both as my friend is covering their eye which is swollen and red and tells us that this is our problem and that we need to go and “handle it in the street.” [4]

I am APPALLED, to say the least. Who does the woman and her boss think we are that they are telling us to go and handle “it” “in the street”. What is it? This person was unprovoked. I ask her to call security. She tells me her boss, Kiana, has told her not to. [5]

As the charge nurse is telling us that this is our problem, the person who has assaulted them is gliding down the hall as we are talking like nothing. ever. happened. [6]

I point to the sign that is just there beside us. I say, “Do you see this sign? Do you see what it says? You have a visitor here who has just assaulted someone and you are telling the person who was assaulted to go and handle it outside?” [7]

She says nothing but this is your responsibility. This is not our problem.

For people who don’t share the identities of my friend who was harmed, I cannot begin to tell you just how common experiences like these truly are. [8]

The level of anti-Blackness and transphobia I just experienced... I literally have no words.

Welcome to @UIHealth a where the racism and the transphobia are both served with a smile and an invitation to “handle it in the street.” [9]

@UIHealth you need racial equity training and LGBTQ affirming training immediately. There is no reason that a hospital should be willfully condoning violence. You have this sign posted throughout the hospital but tonight’s demonstration shows me this is not a true value.

#healthcarebias #racisminmedicine #accountability #harmreduction #transphobia #UICmedicine #antiblackness #nosafety #nocare #novalues

UPDATE: The patient we were visiting just informed us that Isabel cake into their room after we left and told them that my Black, trans friend had been banned from visiting. The person who was assaulted at the hospital is the person who gets banned @UIHealth? Shameful.

@BlkTransFutures @BlackTransMedia can you signal boost?