I wrote this paper today as part of my course project for History 411: History of Science Activism with Professor Sigrid Schmalzer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Word Count: 1174<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this context of community mental health care and other radical health movements, in April 1970, Bobby Seale as part of the Black Panther Party announced the founding of The People\u2019s Free Medical Clinics (PFMC) to offer accessible, free, and quality healthcare for the disadvantaged people. In these clinics, medical professionals were not medical authority; instead, laypeople\u2019s opinion and choices were valorized by the Party. Laypeople and medical professionals (non-experts and trusted experts) collaborated to construct experience and knowledge about health. The Party \u201cre-educate[d]\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 80) medical professionals by giving ideas of radical politics. Together, the Party, medical professionals, and non-expert community members promoted this knowledge about health to more people who (might) shared their political belief in free, local, and quality healthcare and in a \u201ccritique of medical authority, professionalization, and the medical\u2013industrial complex.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 79)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PFMC was a response to the challenges in healthcare \u201cincluding inadequate facilities, negligent care, and paternalistic (and sexist) interactions with medical authorities.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 76) The medically underserved people also faced \u201cmedical discrimination, ranging from disrespectful or incompetent treatment to unethical experimentation, in both private and public healthcare settings.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 78) Researcher, writer, and policy advisor Alondra Nelson wrote \u201cThe People\u2019s Free Medical Clinics,\u201d in Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (U. of Minnesota Press, 2011) to explain the operations of PFMC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Panthers re-educated medical professionals in partnership on radical ideologies to \u201cbuild a bridge of understanding.\u201d The Party offered theories as knowledge about health for professionals. Nelson argued that \u201c…as former Harlem Panther Cleo Silvers explained to me, the Party also sought to \u2018reeducate\u2019 the medical professionals who partnered with them by exposing them to the ideas of Mao Zedong, Frantz Fanon, and other political thinkers.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 80)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This reeducation of knowledge about health happened mutually and reciprocally. \u201cSilvers explained how this reciprocal interchange between medical professionals and Panthers worked: I was responsible for giving political education to the doctor\u2019s collective [that] had agreed to work with us . . . [and] they taught us. The doctors taught us to use the equipment. We didn\u2019t come up with these ideas about the results of the ingestion of lead poisoning [by] ourselves, the doctors who did the research brought the [information] to us. We broke it down and explained it to the community and acted on it: We did this as a group. We had a doctor, a nurse, a community person and a Young Lord or a Panther. The Party thus held a pivotal place in the radical health community, linking the medically underserved and the wider health movement.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 87)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Community members including patients and volunteers worked with medical professionals in developing knowledge about health. The Panthers served as a bridge between these two groups and shared partnerships with them. \u201c…at Party clinics volunteer medical professionals trained community health workers to provide basic healthcare; this transmission of expert knowledge was central to the Panthers\u2019 health politics.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 79) Nelson argued that \u201cthe operation of the clinics would have been impossible without collaboration with its trusted experts, such as members of the MCHR. As the Panthers\u2019 health work bore out, the Party did not reject medicine outright; rather, it sought to provide and model respectful and reliable medical practice.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 79) Nelson continued that \u201cthe Panthers partnered with health activists who were able to impart the knowledge necessary to administer Party initiatives and who also shared its commitment to patient empowerment to demystify medicine, to the deprofessionalization of medical practice, and to a conception of healthcare as a human right, rather than a commodity.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 80) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When operating PFMC, the Party also got help from \u201cactivist\u2013professionals in the radical health movement\u201d who served \u201cas personal physicians to cadre.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 80) These movements included MCHR and the Student Health Organization. Nelson argued that the Panthers provided the activist-professionals with opportunities to serve the underserved and thus realize their \u201cpolitical aims to assist medically underserved communities.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 80)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In PFMC, medical authority as a piece of knowledge about health was demystified; laypeople\u2019s wisdom was valued. This process took the paths of \u201cfirst, the valorization of nonexperts\u2019 experience over physicians\u2019 expert knowledge, and second, and related to this, the promotion of the practice of self-help healthcare, or \u2018self health.\u2019\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 88)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For valorization, \u201c…activists encouraged patients to have a voice in the medical encounter and urged laypeople to claim the mantle of expertise by taking a hand in their healthcare\u2014 and, sometimes, in producing medical knowledge as well. The democratization of both medical practice and biomedical knowledge, often in the clinic setting, was a tactical cornerstone of radical health politics. Members of the radical health movement worked in solidarity\u2014 and sometimes, in tandem\u2014 to provide inexpensive alternatives to mainstream medicine.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 82) Nelson continued that \u201cin free clinic examination rooms in Berkeley and elsewhere, patients learned to ask questions of the health professionals who treated them; they \u2018frequently challenge[d] the behavior of professionals\u2019 if they found it to be inappropriate and, furthermore, were encouraged to do so. Additionally, during the height of the radical health movement, it was not uncommon for health workers to be dismissed from activist- run clinics if they were deemed disrespectful to patients. \u2018We\u2026require[d] the best from the doctors,\u2019 Armour recollected. \u2018People started complaining about\u2026one pediatrician that came to work for us. The parents were complaining about some things that he said about their kids\u2026Have you ever heard of firing a volunteer? I had to tell him we didn\u2019t need his services anymore!\u2019\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 88)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specifically, the white coat as a symbol of medical authority was demystified in PFMC. \u201cBecause the Party worked with populations that historically had not had regular contact with medical professionals, the white coat, worn by trusted experts, could be a welcome sign of long-sought access to quality healthcare as well as an emblem of the potential excesses of medical power. Accordingly, at the Party\u2019s clinics, community volunteers, health workers, and Panther health cadre alike donned this symbol of medical science that had evolved from late-nineteenth-century lab coats.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 84)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For promoting the practice (knowledge) of self-health (health in people\u2019s hands), Nelson invited a historical actor in PFMC, Armour, to describe the practice. \u2018Know your body, know thyself. Own your own speculum. Do your own examinations,\u2019 Armour remembered. She continued, \u2018We practiced doing Pap smears on each other. And then, we sent them to the lab [for results].\u2019 This would prove a life- saving practice for Armour, who was able to detect her own cervical cancer at an early stage. \u2018Had I not been doing [self- examination], I might not even be here today,\u2019 Armour revealed to me.\u201d (Nelson, 2011, 89)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In PFMC, medical authority was demystified and laypeople\u2019s wisdom was valued. Medical professionals and community members collaborated to contribute their experience and knowledge about health. The Party connected both and reeducated the medical professionals about radical ideologies, also receiving reciprocal education from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bibliography<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alondra Nelson, \u201cThe People\u2019s Free Medical Clinics<\/a>,\u201d in Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination<\/em> (U. of Minnesota Press, 2011), 75-114.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wrote this paper today as part of my course project for History 411: History of Science Activism with Professor Sigrid Schmalzer. Word Count: 1174 In this context of community mental health care and other radical health movements, in April 1970, Bobby Seale as part of the Black Panther Party announced the founding of The … Continue reading “The Black Panther Party\u2019s People\u2019s Free Medical Clinics (PFMC)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/tongtongyangpetra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}