September 13, 2025
Hospitals as a mode of health management have been, & continue to be, imposed around the globe through the genocidal destruction of indigenous societies & their diverse approaches to sustaining & nurturing life.
Hospitals hold a special place within the united states empire. “Healthcare” in the imperial core is a for-profit industry; people must pay to receive treatment, or submit themselves to capitalists (directly as workers or indirectly as recipients of government “benefits”) who will pay for them.
Built by a slaveholding aristocracy at the widest point of a river with many names, “louisville” is no exception. Norton healthcare and the university of louisville are 2 of the city’s largest employers, between them controlling dozens of the most prominent hospitals, clinics, & academic institutions in “jefferson county” and the surrounding area.
Like all other ruling institutions in u.s. society, norton and UofL health are direct products of Black chattel slavery.
Norton healthcare was founded on the wealth of mary louise sutton norton, widow of reverend john nicholas norton, who—like other white “kentucky” elites—personally enslaved Black people.
Decades earlier, charles caldwell co-founded the “louisville” institute of medicine, which would grow through mergers into UofL’s school of medicine. Caldwell was a slaveholder & prominent phrenologist, using skull measurements to support his belief that “by original organization and therefore radically and irredeemably, the African is an inferior race.”
Today, these healthcare institutions are in lockstep with the rest of the city’s rulers: led, staffed & attended by people who are opposed to masking & similar protective measures; people who believe that “criminals” belong in jails or prisons or graveyards; people whose awareness of disablement & houselessness fosters ambient hostility towards the disabled & unsheltered; people who conform to daily routines as if COVID is over; people who believe entities like the “united states” or “israel” or “china” or “russia” or “india” have a “right to exist.”
There is a straight line from the founding of hospitals by white enslavers & genocidaires to the pop eugenics of today’s COVID pandemic erasure. Call it history, progress, democracy, civilization, anything you like: it remains, with legions of police & soldiers patrolling the borders.
okmana is a tool for troublemaking near the ohi:yo’. you can learn more or reach out by clicking here.
via https://rant.li/okmana/river-valley-hospitality
