​The Medical Community Has Joined the Eric Garner Protests

In terms of revolutionary or reformist politics, every protest movement has a signature form of expression that is usually defined by the target of the protest. The civil rights movement had the sit-in; half a century later, Occupy Wall Street had the mic check, where one person's voice was repeated by hundreds, symbolizing the group's structure and force: collective yet blaring. Now the  ​Black Lives Matter movement has the die-in.

As police brutality protests continue to pop up across New York City—Wednesday marked the first of what has been called the "Eleven Days of Action," one each for the 11 times Eric Garner murmured "I can't breathe" before his death—the die-in continues to be the most powerful snapshot of a movement in flux. And on Wednesday afternoon, the protest went professional, finding a new home in the city's hospitals. Joining more than  70 medica​l schools nationwide, from the University of Pennsylvania to the University of California system, medical students and doctors across New York City demonstrated against the grand juries' failures to indict in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases.

"We're in a unique position because every social issue—drug use, homelessness, domestic abuse, malnutrition, lack of education—all manifest here, in the hospital," Paul Hein, a first-year New York University medical student, told me. "Everyone comes through here. All problems, or the disparities of the system, can be seen at the hospital."

Donning their white coats—"white coats for black lives" was their slogan—about 20 to 30 other NYU students and doctors lay for seven minutes on the ground floor of Bellevue Hospital in Midtown Manhattan. An audience gathered to watch, including hospital administrators, university officials, and NYPD staff. Afterward the crowd, including the police, broke out in applause as the students stood up.

"The way the health-care system works in America is economically motivated," Hein told me. "So anything else besides the die-in would say we're with the oppressive system rather than that we're trying to fix it. As medical students, we see fundamental value in all human life; in our role as future physicians, we are looking to rectify the racial disparities in medicine in any way we can."

In the 2013 National​ Healthcare Disparities Report released by the federal government, it was found that African Americans and Hispanics had worse care than whites for 40 percent of the quality measures tested. Income was another big predictor of healthcare outcomes, and over time, the racial and income gaps that are closing are being far outnumbered by the gaps that are widening. In other words: Nothing is changing.

That said, Bellevue, in particular, is uniquely suited to express solidarity: As the nation's oldest public hospital, it's known for its policy of accepting  ​pretty much whoever steps through its doors, no matter their income or race. "Bellevue has such a long history of helping the public and serving the people," Dr. Robert Roswell of NYU said. "It is in line with that mission of the die-in, that being social justice."

"Why not stage the die-in at the nation's oldest public hospital to fight against the nation's oldest scourge of injustice: structural racism?" Rhodes Hambrick, a first-year student, asked.

An hour later, just east of Central Park, nearly a hundred students and faculty at Mount Sinai Hospital assembled in the west lobby of the main building, which is also among the largest and oldest teaching hospitals in the country. Seshat Mack, a second-year student, stood above the assembly and gave instructions as the students broke into three groups. "Please remember that this is a solemn protest," she reminded her peers before the die-in, which was staged simultaneously with an action at Columbia University across town.

Shivani Kastuar, a first-year student at Mount Sinai, argued that the Hippocratic Oath is the baseline of the medical student's die-in message. "It's why all of came to medical school in the first place: to treat people," she told me after the die-in. "There is injustice in courts and in our criminal justice system, but also in our hospitals. But you don't hear about that too much."

Julia Jeffries, a second-year, added that the medical field itself has an integral role in the actual application of the mantra that Black Lives Matter. "The media has brought attention to black bodies meaning less," she said. "Physicians deal with these bodies on a daily basis. So to know [how] to treat access to health care the same for everyone needs to be part of the conversation."

Jeffries's point touches upon an undercurrent of protests in recent weeks: the issue of medical attention (or lack thereof). Groups ​shut down the Staten Island Expressway for seven minutes on Sunday—which they say is same amount of time it took EMTs to respond to Eric Garner. Also, this week, the Daily News reported that Akai Gurley, the "total inno​cent" who was killed by rookie cop Peter Liang in late November, lay dying on the floor for six and a half minutes before a neighbor called emergency responders.

Soon after the protest at Mount Sinai, more than 120 medical and graduate students, deans, administrators, and faculty at Cornell Weill Medical College in the Upper East Side held a die-in, the last of the day's events. Liz Callahan, a second-year student, summarized what seemed to be an appendix to the protests raging outside. Instead of calling for external pressures of reform, the doctors were saying that for justice to be served, it would have to come from within the system itself.

"There have been very visible demands that the criminal justice system do better by black people," she noted. "Today, across the nation, medical students lie down to say that we know the health-care system also needs to do better, and that we intend to make it better."

Follow John Surico on ​Tw​itter.