Tell New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah to #SaveLICH! nrs02@health.state.ny.us or

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Executive Board members of the State University of New York (SUNY) voted unanimously Friday morning to shutter Brooklyn’s century-and-a-half old Long Island College Hospital (LICH). The vote was held at SUNY’s Manhattan College of Optometry on E. 42 St..

“I feel very disrespected that they didn’t give us a proper voice in this vote,” said Nidia Downer, a receptionist at LICH for 30 years who braved snow and rain to attend Friday morning’s vote. “If this happens we will lose a very good hospital. I had both of my kids at LICH. We have very good doctors, nurses, and caregivers. The staff is very efficient. That hospital is what our community needs.”

SUNY officials, who hastily announced the unanimous vote and then all but ran out of the board room, say the closure is necessary for the financial health of SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Workers say something more insidious is at play.

“LICH has a lot of real estate,” says Marc Alfred, a LICH respiratory technologist. ‘They just want to sell it and build condos.”

Thursday afternoon at the Manhattan SUNY building, scores of 1199SEIU and New York State Nurses Association members spoke passionately at a raucous public hearing about the necessity to keep LICH open. They were joined by numerous coalition partners, concerned citizens and elected officials who expressed outrage at the SUNY board’s rash actions and disingenuousness. Outside the hearing Union members rallied, chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, your plan for condos got to go” and hoisting signs demanding that SUNY not “Shut the door on Brooklyn families.”

Bethsy Brown-Johnson, a PCA at LICH for 23 years, was outraged after the Friday morning vote.

“There are people working in that hospital that were born there. What about them?” said Brown-Johnson. “The board has no conscience. I am going to keep fighting until the bitter end.”