About Us

We are a group of students from the SUNY chapter of White Coats for Black Lives committed to provoking conversations at Downstate Medical Center and King’s County Hospital to critically analyze our role in the gentrification of Central Brooklyn, the hospital as a site of healing and violence, and the structural inequalities that underlie the health disparities we observe on a daily basis. We also believe that our hospital system and school can be moved towards greater and radical community accountability.  We are organizing a student-led, community-facing social justice conference.  

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We believe that a social justice conference set at SUNY Downstate is essential because we are the only academic medical center in Brooklyn, and unlike other private medical schools, structural violence directly affects the physical, mental and spiritual health of all of our patients. We believe that communities inspire and drive the most radical transformations, and we feel bringing the perspectives of your organization to our school is essential to driving change in our school, hospital, and community. 

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The goals of this year's conference are:

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1. To understand how violence and trauma manifest in Brooklyn communities in particular for people who are black and brown, low income/poor, LGBTQ+, femme, disabled, and/or immigrants.

2. To dissect the structural and systemic inequalities that generates community-based violence.

3. To identify ways healthcare can be a site of violence and to prioritize healthcare as a site of spiritual, emotional, and physical healing.

4. To challenge mass incarceration as a solution to violence and re-imagine justice as community-based and transformative