Voicemail Message, People’s Corner

Brooklyn, July 1998

I’m leaving this message for Lorraine Simmons. Look around you. Look... Look, for God’s sake! Folks are getting very sick. When you ask the doctors why, you get the fucking run around. They say, “It’s a rash. Or, it’s a skin condition, and it’s nothing to worry about.” Doctors working in that death trap of a hospital known as Carr Memorial don’t know what it is. Some people go in and don’t come back out. “Transferred,” they tell us, but their families don’t know where. A harmless skin rash, my ass. We’re not seeing the whole picture. Since your organization is supposed to be doing something for this community I’d thought you’d damn well better know about it. Please investigate it. Please do something for us.