Support Cleo Silvers' Medical and Living Costs

We are a group of concerned students and community members fundraising on behalf of Former Black Panther Party & Young Lord Elder, Cleo Silvers. As a community mental health worker, labor organizer, and community advocate, Cleo helped organize the historic Lincoln Hospital Takeover, the first Acupuncture Drug Detox program in the U.S. and was instrumental to drafting the Patient Bill of Rights protecting patients informed consent and access to care with dignity. Cleo has spent her life fighting for radical health justice for Black people and other oppressed people and she is now in need of community support for her own medical and living costs like acquiring a hospital bed.

Cleo turned 78 last fall. Since then she has been in and out of the hospitals experiencing blood clots, chronic nausea, lack of appetite and abdominal pain. This year alone she survived a 6 day coma. As a result she also had a PEG stomach feeding tube installed. Days later she was discharged to a skilled rehab facility, but soon she returned to Emergency Room due to low blood pressure, black stools and pain around PEG. She was later diagnosed with a blood clot in lungs and in both legs. Since May 1st she has acquired pneumonia, micro strokes and continued low blood pressure. Currently she is not able to stand or walk but is working on it. 

Often we are told - and history shows - revolutionaries do not grow older. Elder activists and organizers accumulate a life long history of trauma and violence from counterinsurgency, FBI spying, and direct violence. They also do not have the safety net others who did not give their life to radical organizing have. In this climate it’s imperative we support people who gave their bodies, hearts, and souls into building the infrastructure necessary health justice. Cleo deserves to recover and live in dignity but achieving this feat will require community support.

The funds raised will help cover the accumulated costs of her medical care and daily living as well as help Cleo and her partner as they move to a smaller more accessible first floor apartment.

Read and hear more about Cleo’s incredible life of committed struggle and service to the people here:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5024401/

https://jacobin.com/2014/07/when-the-unions-the-enemy/

https://youtu.be/aK_ALMA1NMk?si=8kaOg8EfmNHoW0wa